PRAYER OFFERED ON MEMORIAL DAY (May 30, 1883) AT BRUNSWICK, MAINE
O Thou who art equally supreme in the moral and the material universe, guiding the sea-bird to her nest amid the blinding snows, the breaker’s foam, and the driving mist of ocean, who makest small the drops of rain, and a way for the lightning of thunder, and the thing that is hid bringest forth to light, we adore thy power and thy wisdom; we magnify thy grace; we hallow thy name. With penitence we confess our manifold transgressions as individuals and as a nation. Holiness belongeth unto Thee, but unto us shame and confusion of faces.
We thank Thee that Thou didst direct our forefathers to these shores, and inspire them with purpose and wisdom to form a civil compact built upon the principles of religion, education, law, and labor. We thank Thee that, in the face of famine, pestilence, and relentless foes, they accomplished their purpose, and with a spirit of self-sacrifice worthy of the cause, devoted themselves as stepping stones to bridge the path of future generations that they might create a republic, lay the foundations of civil liberty, resist oppression, and seal their devotion to their principles with their blood. We thank Thee that though they have passed away, their principles have survived, and that when the republic they had reared was rocking to its foundations, assailed by foes without and treachery within, their children did not prove unworthy of the sires who begat them, nor recreant to the principles they drew in with their mothers’ milk and were taught at their fathers’ knees. We thank Thee that they were equally ready to vindicate at the cannon’s mouth and maintain with property or life the principles of civil and religious liberty, and the inalienable right of every man to the fruit of his own labor.
We pray Thee that, on this day, set apart by the Executive of the nation as a day of grateful remembrance, we may appreciate the true nature of the perils we have escaped and acknowledge our indebtedness to the providence of that Being who ruleth over the affairs of nations. May we not in our prosperity forget those dark hours when all faces gathered blackness. May we not merely decorate the graves, but may we ever cherish with affectionate remembrance our obligations to those whose courage mounted in proportion to the imminence of the danger, and who approved their loyalty with their blood. May we not on this day fraught with associations so sad to those whose wounds, partially healed, are this day reopened, forget the fatherless whose parents sleep in bloody graves, and the widows whom this day reminds of all they have lost, and the aged parents from whom war took the support of their declining years. We commit these to thy care and keeping; we commit unto Thee all those who suffered and sacrificed that the Union might be preserved. And we thank Thee for the comfort of a vast army come back from the deadly uproar of arms to take up again the unheroic duties of life, and strive by honest living to maintain the principles they fought to defend.
We pray for thy blessing upon thy servant. May he be enabled to expound and enforce those principles which lie at the foundation of social happiness and free institutions; those principles which have made this republic, which a little more than a century ago was a mere shrub with bare shade sufficient to cover its roots, to become a tree that hath sent forth its roots to the sea and its branches to the rivers, and on whose foliage the sunlight loves to linger, and on whose branches the dew of heaven lieth all night.—Amen.
VERSE
FROM “THE PHANTOMS OF THE MIND”
[First printed in Bowdoin Portfolio, September, 1839.]