that notwithstanding their manifold sins, iniquities and transgressions, the divine favor might not be withdrawn from a land where the Lord had planted his own vine, and where the precious seeds of heavenly grace deposited in the soil and nurtured and cultured by men “of whom the world was not worthy,” had sprung up and borne the inestimable fruit of civil and religious freedom.  Upon the conclusion of the prayer followed another hymn, and after these “exercises,” the sermon.

The text was the ninth verse of the twenty-sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, “And He hath brought us into this place and hath given us this land, even a land that floweth with milk and honey.”  The Thanksgiving sermon was formerly one on which more than common labor was expended, and was intended to be a celebrity of the year.  On this occasion the preacher laid out a wide field for his eloquence.  He commenced by comparing the condition of the first colonists to that of the children of Israel when they fled from the house of bondage.  He painted the Pilgrim fathers landing on Plymouth Rock, snow, and ice, and desolation around, but the fire of faith in their hearts.  He contrasted the feebleness of the beginning with the grandeur of the result, whence he deduced the inference that the Lord had led his people with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; he alluded to the changed appearance of the country, converted from a heathen wilderness into a Christian garden, whence the perfume of Christian devotion perpetually arose; he portrayed the horrors of the war of the Revolution, and exhorted his hearers to cherish the memory of the men who had consecrated their lives and fortunes to Liberty, and sealed that consecration with their blood.  Warming with his subject, his eyes shone with a brighter lustre and seemed gazing into a far future, as in prophetic tones he proclaimed the advent of the latter days, when the beacon fires of Freedom kindled on the mountain tops of the new Canaan should send their streaming rays across the seas, and the kingdoms of this world should become the heritage of God and of His Christ.  “Seeing these things are so, brethren,” he concluded, “seeing that God hath chosen you unto himself for a peculiar people, the weak things of the world to confound the strong, the rejected, the cast away and despised, to be held up as an example to the wondering and admiring nations, what manner of men ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness?”

Such is an imperfect sketch of the remarks of Mr. Robinson.  With such language sought the ministers in times past to keep alive the flame of patriotism, and to inspire with humility, yet animate with a just pride.  Nor are such discourses thrown away.  They do much towards the formation of a national character.