University of Virginia Library

V.—THE PREACHER OF BRANDYWINE.

It was the eve of the battle of Brandywine.

I see before me now that pleasant valley, with its green meadow stretching
away into the dim shadows of twilight. The stream, now dashing
around some rugged rock, now spreading in mirror-like calmness; the hills
on either side, magnificent with forest trees; the farm houses, looking out
from the embrace of orchards, golden with the fruitage of the fall; the
twilight sky blushing with the last kiss of day—all are there now, as they
were on the 10th of September, 1777.

But then, whitening over the meadow, arose the snowy tents of the Continential
encampment. Then arms gleamed from these hills, and war-steeds
laved their limbs in yonder stream. Then, at the gentle twilight hour, the
brave men of the army, sword and rifle in hand, gathered around a Preacher,
whose pulpit—a granite rock—uprose from the green hill-side, near Chadd's
Ford.

Look upon him as he stands there, his dark gown floating around his tall
form, his eye burning and his brow flushing with the excitement of the
hour. He is a man in the prime of manhood—with a bold face, tempered
down to an expression of Christian meekness—yet, ever and anon, a warrior
soul looks out from that dark eye, a warrior-shout swells up from that
heaving bosom.

Their memories are with me now; those brave men, who, with God for
their panoply, shared the terrors of Trenton, the carnage of Brandywine,
the crust and cold of Valley Forge; their memories are with me now, and
shall be forevermore. They were brave men, those Preacher-Heroes of
the Revolution. We will remember them in hymns, sung on the cold
winter nights, around the hearthsides of our homes—we will not forget
them in our prayers. We will tell the story to our children: “Children!
there were brave men in the Revolution—brave men, whose hearts panted
beneath a preacher's gown. There were brave men, whose hands grasped
a Bible, a cross, and a sword. Brave men, whose voices were heard amid
the crash of legions, and beside the quivering forms of the dying. Honest
men were they, who forsook pulpit and church to follow George Washington's
army, as it left its bloody footsteps in the winter snow. Honor to
those Preacher-Heroes, who called upon their God in the storm and heard
his answer in the battle-shout!”

We will sing to their memory in hymns of the olden time; on the
Christmas night we will send up a rude anthem—bold in words, stern in
thought, such as they loved in the Revolution—to the praise of these children
of God.

Washington, Wayne, Pulaski, Sullivan, Greene; there all are grouped
around the rock. The last ray of sunset gleams on their uncovered brows.

Far away spread the ranks of the army. Through the silence of the
twilight hour, you may hear that bold voice, speaking out words like these.

Come—we will go to church with the Heroes. Our canopy the sky,
the pulpit, you granite rock, the congregation, a band of brave men, who,
with sword and rifle in hand, await the hour of fight; our Preacher a
warrior-soul, locked up in a sacerdotal robe. Come—we will worship with
Washington and Wayne; we will kneel upon this sod, while the sunset
gleams over ten thousand brows, bared to the beam and breeze.

Do you hear the Preacher's voice swelling through the twilight air?

And first, ere we listen to his voice, we will sing to his memory, this
rugged hymn of the olden time—

Soldiers and Countrymen:—We have met this evening perhaps for the
last time. We have shared the toil of the march, the peril of the fight,
the dismay of the retreat—alike we have endured toil and hunger, the contumely
of the internal foe, the outrage of the foreign oppressor. We have
sat night after night beside the same camp fire, shared the same rough soldier's
fare; we have together heard the roll of the reveille which called us
to duty, or the beat of the tattoo which gave the signal for the hardy sleep
of the soldier, with the earth for his bed, the knapsack for his pillow.

And now, soldiers and brethren, we have met in the peaceful valley, on
the eve of battle, while the sunlight is dying away beyond yonder heights,
the sunlight that to-morrow morn will glimmer on scenes of blood. We
have met, amid the whitening tents of our encampment—in times of terror
and of gloom have we gathered together—God grant it may not be for the
last time.

It is a solemn time. Brethren, does not the awful voice of nature, seem
to echo the sympathies of this hour? The flag of our country, droops
heavily from yonder staff—the breeze has died away along the plain of
Chadd's Ford—the plain that spreads before us glistening in sunlight—the
heights of the Brandywine arise gloomy and grand beyond the waters of
yonder stream, and all nature holds a pause of solemn silence, on the eve
of the bloodshed and strife of the morrow.

“They that take the sword, shall perish by the sword.”

And have they not taken the sword?

Let the desolated plain, the blood-soddened valley, the burned farm-house,
the sacked village, and the ravaged town, answer—let the whitening bones
of the butchered farmer, strewn along the fields of his homestead answer—
let the starving mother, with the babe clinging to her withered breast, that
can afford no sustenance, let her answer, with the death-rattle mingling with
the murmuring tones that mark the last struggle for life—let the dying
mother and her babe answer!

It was but a day past, and our land slept in the light of peace. War was
not here—wrong was not here. Fraud, and woe, and misery, and want,
dwelt not among us. From the eternal solitude of the green woods, arose
the blue smoke of the settler's cabin, and golden fields of corn peered forth

from amid the waste of the wilderness, and the glad music of human voices
awoke the silence of the forest.

Now! God of mercy, behold the change! Under the shadow of a pretext—under
the sanctity of the name of God, invoking the Redeemer to
their aid, do these foreign hirelings slay our people! They throng our
towns, they darken our plains, and now they encompass our posts on the
lonely plain of Chadd's Ford.

“They that take the sword, shall perish by the sword.”

Brethren, think me not unworthy of belief when I tell you that the doom
of the Britisher is near!—Think me not vain when I tell you that beyond
that cloud that now enshrouds us, I see gathering, thick and fast, the darker
cloud, and the blacker storm, of a Divine Retribution!

They may conquer us to-morrow! Might and wrong may prevail, and
we may be driven from this field—but the hour of God's own vengeance
will come!

Aye, if in the vast solitudes of eternal space—if in the heart of the boundless
universe, there throbs the being of an awful God, quick to avenge, and
sure to punish guilt, then will the man George of Brunswick, called King,
feel in his brain and in his heart, the vengeance of the Eternal Jehovah!
A blight will be upon his life—a withered brain, an accursed intellect—a
blight will be upon his children, and on his people. Great God! how
dread the punishment!

A crowded populace, peopling the dense towns where the man of money
thrives, while the laborer starves; want striding among the people in all its
forms of terror; an ignorant and God-defying priesthood, chuckling over
the miseries of millions; a proud and merciless nobility, adding wrong to
wrong, and heaping insult upon robbery and fraud: royalty corrupt to the
very heart; aristocracy rotten to the core; crime and want linked hand in
hand, and tempting men to deeds of woe and death; these are a part of the
doom and retribution that shall come upon the English throne and people.

Soldiers—I look around among your familiar faces with a strange interest!
To-morrow morning we will all go forth to battle—for need I tell you,
that your unworthy minister will go with you, invoking God's aid in the
fight? We will march forth to battle. Need I exhort you to fight the good
fight—to fight for your homesteads, and for your wives and children?

My friends, I might urge you to fight by the galling memories of British
wrong! Walton—I might tell you of your father, butchered in the silence
of midnight, on the plains of Trenton: I might picture his grey hairs, dabbled
in blood; I might ring his death-shriek in your ears.

Shelmire, I might tell you of a mother butchered, and a sister outraged—
the lonely farm-house, the night-assault, the roof in flames, the shouts of
the troopers as they despatched their victims, the cries for mercy, the pleadings
of innocence for pity. I might paint this all again, in the terrible colors
of vivid reality, if I thought your courage needed such wild excitement.

But I know you are strong in the might of the Lord. You will go forth
to battle to-morrow with light hearts and determined spirits, though the
solemn duty, the duty of avenging the dead, may rest heavy on your souls.

And in the hour of battle, when all around is darkness, lit by the lurid
cannon-glare, and the piercing musquet-flash, when the wounded strew the
ground, and the dead litter your path, then remember, soldiers, that God is
with you. The Eternal God fights for you—he rides on the battle-cloud,
he sweeps onward with the march of the hurricane charge.—The Awful
and the Infinite fights for you, and you will triumph.

“They that take the sword, shall perish by the sword.”

You have taken the sword, but not in the spirit of wrong and ravage.
You have taken the sword for your homes, for your wives, for your little
ones.—You have taken the sword for truth, for justice and right; and to
you the promise is, be of good cheer, for your foes have taken the sword,
in defiance of all that man holds dear—in blasphemy of God—they shall
perish by the sword.

And now, brethren and soldiers, I bid you all farewell. Many of us may
fall in the fight of to-morrow—God rest the souls of the fallen—many of us
may live to tell the story of the fight of to-morrow, and in the memory of
all, will ever rest and linger the quiet scene of this autumnal night.

Solemn twilight advances over the valley; the woods on the opposite
heights fling their long shadows over the green of the meadow; around us
are the tents of the Continental host, the half-suppressed bustle of the camp,
the hurried tramp of the soldiers to and fro; now the confusion, and now
the stillness which mark the eve of battle.

When we meet again, may the long shadows of twilight be flung over a
peaceful land.

God in heaven grant it.

Let us pray.

PRAYER OF THE REVOLUTION.

Great Father, we bow before thee. We invoke thy blessing—we deprecate
thy wrath—we return thee thanks for the past—we ask thy aid for
the future. For we are in times of trouble, Oh, Lord! and sore beset by
foes merciless and unpitying: the sword gleams over our land, and the
dust of the soil is dampened by the blood of our neighbors and friends.

Oh! God of mercy, we pray thy blessing on the American arms. Make
the man of our hearts strong in thy wisdom. Bless, we beseech thee, with
renewed life and strength, our hope and Thy instrument, even George
Washington. Shower thy counsels on the Honorable, the Continental
Congress; visit the tents of our hosts; comfort the soldier in his wounds
and afflictions, nerve him for the fight, prepare him for the hour of death.

And in the hour of defeat, oh, God of hosts! do thou be our stay; and
in the hour of triumph, be thou our guide.

Teach us to be merciful. Though the memory of galling wrongs be at
our hearts, knocking for admittance, that they may fill us with desires of
revenge, yet let us, oh, Lord, spare the vanquished, though they never
spared us, in the hour of butchery and bloodshed. And, in the hour of
death, do thou guide us into the abode prepared for the blest; so shall we
return thanks unto thee, through Christ our Redeemer.—God prosper the
Cause—Amen.

As the words of the Preacher die upon the air, you behold those battle
hosts—Washington in their midst, with uncovered brow and bended head—
kneeling like children in the presence of their God.

For he is there, the Lord of Sabaoth, and like a smile from heaven, the
last gleam of the setting sun lights up the Banner of the Stars.