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Christian Duty in the Time of Trouble

"There is another consideration from which I derive great comfort, and which is certain to give comfort to all who receive it.

It is that whatever we may think of some of the earlier steps in these disputes, yet as to the present questions between the North and the South, we can calmly, conscientiously, and, I think, conclusively, to all impartial men, maintain before God and man that now at least we of the South are in the right.

For we are on the defensive, we ask only to be let alone."Christian

Duty in the Present Time of Trouble

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📷📷📷📷📷Please Rate Vote 1 Vote 2 Vote 3 Vote 4 Vote 5 "There is another consideration from which I derive great comfort, and which is certain to give comfort to all who receive it.

It is that whatever we may think of some of the earlier steps in these disputes, yet as to the present questions between the North and the South, we can calmly, conscientiously, and, I think, conclusively, to all impartial men, maintain before God and man that now at least we of the South are in the right.

For we are on the defensive, we ask only to be let alone."Christian

Duty in the Present Time of Trouble

A SERMON PREACHED AT ST.

JAMES' CHURCH,

WILMINGTON, N. C.,

ON THE

Fifth Sunday after Easter, 1861,

BY THE

RIGHT REV.

THOMAS ATKINSON, D. D.,

BISHOP OF NORTH CAROLINA.

PUBLISHED BY REQUEST

WILMINGTON, N. C.

FULTON& PRICE, STEAM POWER PRESS PRINTERS.

1861.

CORRESPONDENCE:

WILMINGTON, MAY 6th, 1861

RT.

REV.

THOS.

ATKINSON,-- Dear Sir:

We enjoyed the privilege of hearing the Sermon delivered by you at St. James' Church, on Sunday last, and being assured that its publication would be productive of great good, we beg you will consent to furnish us with a copy for the purpose indicated.

Most respectfully,

THOS.

D. WALKER, THOS.

W. BROWN, J. H. FLANNER, THOS.

H. HARDIN, J. E. LIPPITT, WM. A. BERRY, WALKER MEARES, WM. A. WRIGHT, JAMES S. GREEN, L. LANE, W. H. LIPPITT, A. MARTIN, JAMES G. BURR, D. S. COWAN.

WILMINGTON, MAY 10th, 1861.

Messieurs THOMAS D. WALKER, W. A. WRIGHT and others,--

Gentlemen:--The Sermon you ask for is at your service, and I am truly pleased that the line of conduct it recommends should approve itself to the judgment of persons whose opinions have so much weight as yours; and who, I believe, were not able altogether to agree on some of the preliminary questions connected with our present troubles.

I remain, with great respect and regard, Faithfully, your friend, THOMAS ATKINSON

A SERMON

"Blesed is the man that endureth temptation; for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life which the Lord hath promised to them that love Him."--

KJV

St. James, first Chapter, 12th Verse.

We stand to-day, dear brethren, in the midst of circumstances of great doubt and anxiety, with provocations tending to kindle the bitterest and most vehement passions, and with the line of duty in many instances difficult to trace, and difficult to follow, even when traced.

Never did we stand more in need of right counsels, deliberate and conscientious reflection, earnest purpose to do our duty, and heartfelt dependence on God our Saviour, for guidance and strength to enable us for its performance.

We stand to-day, face to face with civil war, a calamity, which, unless the experience and universal testimony of mankind deceive us, is direr and more to be deprecated than foreign war, than famine, than pestilence, than any other form of public evil.

The cloud we have all been so long watching, which we have seen, day by day, and month by month, enlarging its skirts, and gathering blackness, is now beginning to burst upon us.

It seems to me that no one but an Atheist, or an Epicurean, can doubt that it is God who rides in this storm, and will direct the whirlwind, and that He now calls upon us to look to Him, to consider our ways and our doings, to remember the offences by which we have heretofore provoked Him, and to determine on the conduct we will hereafter pursue towards Him, toward our fellowmen, and towards ourselves.

I feel that we have some solid grounds of encouragement to hope for His favour.

This Commonwealth, with whose fortunes our own are linked, cannot be said to have had any hand in causing, or precipitating the issue before us.

She has sought, till the last momen to avert it, and she his incurred censure by these efforts.

But when compelled to elect between furnishing troops to subdue her nearest neighbors and kindred, and to open her Territory for the passage of armies marshalled to accomplish that odious, unauthorized and unhallowed object, or to refuse to aid, and to seek to hinder such attempts, she chose the part which affection, and interest and duty seems manifestly, and beyond all reasonable question, to require.

What she has done, and is about to do, she does, as an old writer finely says in such a case, "willingly, but with an unwilling mind," as an imperative, but painful duty.

Such is the temper, we may be well assured, in which it best pleases God, that strife of any sort, especially strife of this sort, should be entered on.

There is another consideration from which I derive great comfort, and which is certain to give comfort to all who receive it.

It is that whatever we may think of some of the earlier steps in these disputes, yet as to the present questions between the North and the South, we can calmly, conscientiously, and, I think, conclusively, to all impartial men, maintain before God and man that now at least we of the South are in the right.

For we are on the defensive, we ask only to be let alone.

That old Union to which we were all at one time so deeply attached, is now dissolved.

It cannot be, at this time, amicably reconstructed.

No one proposes it shall be done--no one supposes it can be done.

Shall there then be a voluntary and friendly separation, or an attempt at subjugation.

This is really the question before the people, lately known as the people of the United States.

How strange that there should be any doubt as to the answer!!

That men should hesitate which to prefer, a peaceful separation of those who cannot agree, or civil war, with all its horrors, and all its uncertain issues!

We ask the former--those so lately our brethren demand the latter.

Should they insist on this, and should they succeed in this detestable strife to the very height of their hopes, it would be worse than a barren victory.

It would be a victory that would cost the conquerors not only material prosperity, but the very principles of government on which society with them, as with us, rests.

I cannot then doubt, and it seems a singular hallucination that any man should mistake, the righteous cause in this present most lamentable controversy, and I hope and I believe that God will bless with temporal success the righteous cause.

He may not, however, for He does not always see fit to make right visibly triumphant.--But

succeed or not, it is the cause on the side of which one would desire to be found.

Yet, however this thought may cheer us, we cannot disguise from ourselves that success, should we obtain it, will not probably be reached until after an arduous and painful struggle, involving severe trials of the feelings, and of the character of the community, and of ourselves individually.

And no man yet knows how he shall meet these trials.

The most self-confident are usually the first to fail.

"Let not him that girdeth on his armour boast himself as he that taketh it off."

Since, then, a searching trial seems to await us, let us, in God's strength, endeavor to prepare for it, and in order thereto, listen with obedient faith to the instructions of that holy man, whose righteousness was so exemplary that Jews, as well as Christians, knew him by the name of James the Just.

"Blessed, says he, is the man that endureth temptation, for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love Him."

Temptation or Trial (for they mean the same thing) comes to man in two forms, Prosperity or Adversity, of which the former is the more generally dangerous.

Prosperity tempts us by inclining us to forget God, and to love the world which so smiles upon us, by slackening the reins on the necks of our appetites and passions, by opening the door to vices which our very circumstances might otherwise shut out from us, by nourishing selfishness, by deadening sympathy, and by weakening faith.

Great prosperity has been the ruin of many countries, and of many men in every country.

It has surely been the occasion of a large part of our present miseries.

Never in the history of the world was there such a rapid advance made by any people in all the elements of power, abundance and splendor, as was made by this nation in the last forty years.

We passed, as in a day, from national childhood to a most robust and formidable manhood.

We were the admiration, the envy, the wonder, and I may say, the fear of all other people.--

England and France bore that from us which they never would have endured from each other.

It was not of our Army and Navy that they stood in awe, but they were reluctant to give umbrage to a people who fed their commerce, and upheld their manufactures.

With this influence abroad, when we looked at home we saw villages growing up in a few years into great cities, a soil which to-day was a quaking morass, to-morrow sustaining immense blocks of buildings, warehouses bursting with their stores, dwellings not merely provided with comfort, but decorated with splendor, and this not in one or two favored spots, as sometimes in Europe, but on the contrary, we saw vast territories where the Buffalo roamed, and the Deer bounded, and the form of man had not appeared, except as the Indian was observed marching along his war-path, or the solitary trapper gathering his furs; we saw these wild regions changed almost as in the shifting scenes at a Theatre, into great, rich and populous States.

Astonished Europe heard year by year, that another million had been added to the numbers of the mighty Republic, and that its agriculture and commerce, and manufactures were increasing even more rapidly than its population.

Then came the Mexican war, like another volume of steam, and made the rush and roar of our rapid progress still more astounding.

Then came more and more of gold and glory, and expanding territory.

We have been tried by prosperity as no nation ever was tried before, and we have yielded to temptation as completely and unresistingly as any people ever did.

Those old stories we have all read were outdone.

Rome corrupted by the conquest of Greece and of Asia, Spain demoralized by the subjugation of the Indies, were prophetic of our destiny.

Our material prosperity, swift as was its advance, did not keep pace with our moral deterioration.

Within the memory of any middle- aged man we were regarded in Europe as rigidly, perhaps ridiculously precise and scrupulous in morals and manners.

No one dreams of this being our character at present.

In one single state, and that a small one, the number of suicides average annually nearly a hundred.

What the number of homicides is, no statist, I presume, would undertake to tell.

This we know, that if the blood of man, shed by his fellow-man calls to God for vengeance, the cry that pierces the ear of the Lord of Hosts from our land ceases not day or night.

Need I say any thing of other forms of vice --drunkenness, lewdness, gaming, fraud, bribery, peculation, public and private?

And with this such lawlessness, such haughtiness, such self-glorification!

Who that looks abroad on our country, can read without a shudder, the prophetic language of St. Paul in that last Epistle written from Nero's Dungeon with the axe and block at hand, when with purged eye he reads the signs of the last times, and thus describes them: "This know also, that in the last days, perilous times shall come, for men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high- minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God."