Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Sermon, Preached at the Church in Brattle Square, on Sunday Morning, January, 19, 1840, on the Destruction of the Lexington by Fire, January 13th
I feel confident, my friends, that I shall be meeting the state of your minds, as Well as obeying the dictate of my own feelings, if I take my subject this morning from real life, and gather my sermon, not so much from some passage of scripture, as from that sad and appalling calamity, the news of which a few days since filled all hearts with sorrow.
During the last few weeks or months, our commu mity has borne a melancholy resemblance to the scenes connected with the text. As messenger after messenger came unto Job, bringing him tale after tale of loss and disaster, of the swift destruction of his property, and the death, Violent and sudden, of those in whom his affections were bound up, even so has it been with us. Every week, every day almost, has been fraught with some sad intelligence. Scarcely have our minds recovered from the shock of one, ereanother story comes, borne on the wings of the wind, to rend our hearts, by the fearful images of suffering and sorrow it calls up. A city in the southern sec tion of the republic, far offin its location, yet near to us in many social and commercial relations, is visited by pestilence and fire. Even as in Egypt of old, the voice of lamentation, mourning and woe goes up from every dwelling, for in almost every dwelling is one dead; and while disease is making these dwell ings desolate, a conflagration buries them in ruins. Night after night, a fire sweeps through large quar ters of the city, spreading terror and dismay before it, leaving ruined hopes, and prostrate fortunes, and wide spread suffering behind it. While We are ex pressing our sympathy, and in the midst of our efforts to relieve and comfort, a fearful tempest sweeps over our own borders. Traces of its ravages are left in various quarters of our city, at our wharves and in our streets. But they are slight and insignificant. We think not of ourselves. Comfortably housed and guarded, we feel not the cutting blast. But as we hear, amid the watches of the night, the wild wailing of the tempest without, the rush of the angry Wind.
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