ters of business
with the Confederate government agent; pay over money for the
exemption of brethren. Come home; cold day.

TUESDAY, December 16. Go to Harrisonburg; attend to seeing that the
brethren get certificates of exemption as provided by the Confederate
Congress.

WEDNESDAY, December 31. I have traveled in this year 4,791 miles;
preached fifty-six funerals; nineteen for children under five years of
age; thirteen for children over five and under ten. Diphtheria has
done a fatal work. Five for persons over ten and under twenty; three
over twenty and under thirty; one over thirty and under forty; fifteen
over forty years of age.

THURSDAY, January 1, 1863. Meeting of thanksgiving to the Lord for his
kind affection toward us in our meetinghouse. I have somewhere read
that in the reign of one of the sovereigns of Great Britain, when the
outlook of the kingdom was very dark and threatening, one of the
king's advisors proposed appointing a day for public thanksgiving in
all the churches throughout the realm. The king answered the
proposition by saying that he could see nothing for which either he or
the nation had cause for special thanksgiving to God. The minister
responded by saying that the king and the nation both had great cause
to thank God _that things were no worse_. The king yielded and the day
was set. The Christian people assembled; the preachers recounted the
blessings still left in the nation's store, with the rich promises of
God to provide for the future as things should be needed, and there
was a day of thanksgiving in England the like of which is not often
seen.

It has been my experience, Brethren, and I think I have heard some of
you say the same, that prosperity does not always make people most
truly thankful. Great success in business is apt to foster a feeling
of independence. Men may forget God. It was in the days of Israel's
prosperity in the goodly land of Goshen in Egypt that they forgot the
name of the God of their fathers. When God appeared to Moses in Horeb,
he had to tell him from out the burning bush what his name was, and
also by what name he should make him to be known to his brethren in
Egypt. Some of the deepest heartfelt expressions of gratitude break
forth in times of misfortune. A brother once told me that he was away
from home when his barn was struck with lightning and burned to the
ground. At his return he beheld nothing but the smoking destruction of
his gathered harvest.