Personal sanctity must be made a business of.[A]
[Footnote A: This page is mainly a series of quotations from Dr.
R.D. Hitchcock's sermon on "Religion, the Doing of God's Will."]
A little more than thirty years ago a regiment was sent home from
the Army of the Potomac to enforce the draft after the riots in this
city. Some of you may picture to yourselves a thousand men with silk
banners and gold lace and bright uniforms, resplendent in the
sunshine. You could not make a worse mistake.
First in that gray early morning came two old flags, so torn by shot
and shell that there was hardly enough left of them to tell whether
the State flag was that of Massachusetts or Virginia. And behind
these came scant three hundred men. All the rest were sleeping
between Washington and Richmond, some on almost every battle-field.
The uniforms were old and faded from sun and rain. Only gun-barrel
and bayonet were bright. And the men were scarred and tired and
foot-sore, haggard from hard fighting and long, swift marches. For
these men had been trained to be hurried back and forth behind the
long line of battle, that they might be hurled into it wherever the
need was greatest. I do not suppose that one of them could have
delivered a fourth-of-July oration on Patriotism. They were trained
not to talk, but to obey orders.
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