THANKSGIVING; A Psalm for the Day; OR, REASONS OF THANKFULNESS TO GOD ON HIS BEING AN EXPOSITION OF PSALM CIII. BY THE REV. JOHN CUMMING, D.D. MINISTER Of the natiONAL SCOTTISH CHURCH, CROWN LONDON: ARTHUR HALL AND CO. PATERNOSTER ROW. 1850. TO THE RIGHT HON. THE LADY JOHN RUSSELL. DEAR MADAM, It is with no ordinary pleasure that I inscribe this memorial of a National Thanksgiving to your Ladyship. The prayers of the people of God for the removal of the epidemic were heard, and our congregational offering-to which, as on other occasions, you liberally contributed-mitigated the sufferings of many of those in whose hearts are left life-long impressions of 1849. The National Thanksgiving that so soon followed a day of prayer arose like incense to the skies from churches and chapels crowded as they had never been before, and both days-perhaps the former more than the latter gave unequivocal testimony to the depth and reality of the piety of our country. There was mercy in the recent visitation. The epidemic gave an apocalypse of the lowest strata of London life such as we had no idea of. It revealed duties heretofore partially seen and inadequately discharged, and it now seems likely to be followed by sanitary measures equal to the necessities of the case, and by increased efforts on the part of all Christians to overtake and evangelize the heathen at our doors. The fourteen thousand added to the ordinary mortality of 1849 were not cut off because signally guilty. We who remain have been spared not because signally righteous, but for duties clear, urgent, and long due. |