Transcribed from the 1857 Thomas Hatchard edition by DavidPrice,
THESUBSTANCE OF
A SERMON
PREACHED ON THE FAST-DAY,
IN
TRINITY CHURCH, TUNBRIDGE WELLS.
BYTHE
REV. EDWARD HOARE, M.A.,
INCUMBENT.
LONDON:
THOMAS HATCHARD, 187, PICCADILLY.
TUNBRIDGE WELLS: MRS. HASTING,
AND ALL BOOKSELLERS.
1857.
p. 2MACINTOSH,PRINTER,
GREAT NEW-STREET, LONDON.
Luke xvi. 2.
“Give an account of thystewardship.”
At no time in England’shistory has she been called to humble herself before God undermore harrowing circumstances than the present. We have notto deplore the discomfiture of our armies, or the hardships ofour soldiers,—not the privations on the heights ofSebastopol, or the deadly conflicts of Balaklava and theRedan,—events which are, more or less, to be expected in asoldier’s life; but we are now summoned to prayer by thecries of tortured infants, by the unutterable agonies ofheartbroken mothers, of daughters, sisters, and wives, who havebeen called to endure outrages and witness scenes in comparisonof which it would have been a light matter to have been torn limbfrom limb by the tigers of the jungle. Satan appears tohave been let loose in India, in all his deadly and corruptferocity. There has been a kind of filling up ofGod’s four sore judgments. Famine, pestilence, andwar had already followed each other in quick succession; but wethought we were free from noisome beasts. But now we havesomething incomparably worse let loose on our p.4fellow-countrymen to fill the fair plains of India withwailing, lamentation, and woe.
But it is not needful to recapitulate these tales ofhorror. I am persuaded that I need not stand here to exciteyour sympathy for the sufferers. You have felt thatalready, and I trust that many an earnest cry has long ere thisgone up from your homes for India. If not, just think onthe little garrison at Lucknow, hemmed in by rebel thousands,with provisions every day diminishing, with the massacre ofCawnpore before their eyes, and with the horrid murderer at thehead of the blockading force thirsting for their blood, andeager, if ever he can gain the power, to re-enact the samebarbarities on themselves. Think what those women mustendure, as the little stores are doled out day after day; andthey know that, unless they are relieved, they have no prospectbut the foulest massacre; and every heart must acknowledge thatthe time is come, if it be not already past, for the universalcry of wrestling prayer, and most earnest pleading with God ontheir behalf.
But this is a day for humiliation as well as prayer, andnational judgments are so intimately connected with nationalsins, that the nation’s prayer should clearly beaccompanied by the nation’s humiliation. It behovesus, therefore, to consider what ground there is for suchhumiliation, and what sins there are to call forth our repentanceand confession. But we nee