Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 3.pdf/129

 day: the providences and dispensations of God have been so stupendous.

What 1 judge to be the end of your meeting, the great end, which was likewise remembered to you this day; to wit, is healing and settling. The remembering of transactions too particularly, perhaps instead of healing—at least in the hearts of many of you—might set the wound fresh a-bleeding. And I must profess this unto you, whatever thoughts pass upon me: That if this day, if this meeting, prove not healing, what shall we do? But, as I said before, I trust it is in the minds of you all, and much more in the mind of God, to cause healing. It must be first in His mind: and He being pleased to put it into yours, this will be a day indeed, and such a day as generations to come will bless you for! I say for this and the other reasons I have forborne to make a particular remembrance and enumeration of things, and of the manner of the Lord's bringing us through so many changes and turnings as have passed upon us.

Howbeit I think it will be more than necessary to let you know, at least so well as I may, in what condition this nation, or rather these nations, were, when the present government was undertaken. And for order's sake: It's very natural to consider what our condition was, in civils; and then also in spirituals.

What was our condition? Every man's hand almost was against his brother—at least his heart was, little regarding anything that should ce-