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.
