TIMORE, _November_ 25, 1855.

GENTLEMEN--The request for a copy of my Thanksgiving Discourse, so
generally made, I cannot refuse. The manuscript is herewith placed at your
disposal.

Very truly yours,

N. C. BURT.

DR. G. S. GIBSON.

R. K. HAWLEY, Esq.

J. HENRY STICKNEY, Esq. and others.

DISCOURSE.

PSALM 33: 12.--BLESSED IS THE NATION WHOSE GOD IS THE LORD.

We have met to-day, at the call of the Governor of this Commonwealth,
to render thanks to the Supreme Governor of the world for his mercies
granted us during the past year. Surely we have abundant cause for
thanksgiving. In the present instance, our annual festival not only
calls us to recognize the common bounties of God's providence most
richly bestowed, but also affords a most suitable opportunity for
rendering special offerings of gratitude for our happy exemption from
that pestilence, which, for months just past, lifted its frowning
clouds in our near horizon, and committed its devastations on our very
borders,--a pestilence which, if God had permitted it to march upon
our City and to do a like deadly work amidst our population, would now
be exulting over as many slain victims from among us, as there are
persons now assembled in all our Churches for this thanksgiving
service. Let us give hearty thanks for this distinguishing sparing
goodness.

Being called together by our civil authorities, and that to recognize
the hand of God over us as a people, the occasion is suitable for
considering the general subject of NATIONAL CHARACTER, and in
connection with it, the duties and destinies of our own nation.

What now, to begin at the beginning, is the proper idea of a nation?
The idea is a complex one, involving, to a greater or less extent, the
ideas of community of birth, community of language, occupation of the
same territory, citizenship under the same government.

The _word_ nation signifies a body of men descended from the same
progenitor,--those having community of birth. We may, from the sense
of the word, call the Jews a nation, though using a diversity of
languages, and though scattered over the earth, without distinct
territory or separate government.

Community of language commonly follows upon community of birth. Yet
community of language does not of itself determine or secure
nationality. The English and ourselves speak the same language, yet
are distinct nations. The Swiss are one nation, yet speak some of them
Frenc