Fast day.
President Davis has recommended the observance of the 13th of June as a day of national fasting and prayer.We have no doubt this recommendation will be generally observed throughout the Southern Confederacy. It is gratifying to witness the devout recognition of a Divine Power which, from the beginning, has been manifested by the Confederate Government and by those in authority in the various States. In this they truly represent the religious spirit of the South, which is generally a Christian people, and knows comparatively nothing of that compound of infidelity and fanaticism which prevails so widely in the Northern and Western States. Yet, human nature, in its best estate, has about it so much of the dross of earth and evil that it behooves the best man who ever lived, and the most virtuous community that ever existed, to fall prostrate upon the earth when the Almighty draws near to judge the nations, and in sackcloth and ashes, with prayer and fasting and penitence, to invoke the forgiveness and the aid of Him who ruleth among the armies of Heaven and the inhabitants of earth.
No nation and no individual were ever untrue to their country who were faithful to their God. George Washington ever sought and acknowledged the Divine protection and guidance, and, with no claims to the great genius of a CÆsar or Napoleon, he was the means of accomplishing infinitely grander and more beneficent results. The chosen people of God, as long as it preserved its religious loyalty, went on conquering and to conquer. In the Divine Saviour himself, the sentiment of rationality and patriotism is fully recognized, and one of the most pathetic of His sacred utterances is that outburst of majestic grief when he looked upon the capital of his country, and foreseeing the woes that the Roman armies were about to launch upon her head, made that memorable invocation to ‘"Jerusalem! Jerusalem!"’ which breathes in every word the anguish of a man and the eloquence of a God.
If, even then, Jerusalem had repented and believed, like Nineveh of old, she would have been saved from her enemies, and the Roman eagles would never have fluttered in victory over her temple walls. Let us, then, turn with one consent to the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, and whilst Goliath looks sneeringly upon David, who comes against him with only a sling and a stone, and whilst the giant boastfully threatens that he will give his flesh to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, let David reply: ‘"Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield; but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. And all this assembly shall know that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord's, and He will give you into our hands."’
The simplest weapons in the hands of a people who have God on their side are more than a defence against the greatest human power.
