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.  But when his children came running to meet him, and he saw them all safe, and their mother standing in the door unharmed, he burst into an expression of thanksgiving, which, he confessed to me, surpassed every other emotion of joy he had ever felt.  Our best experiences come to us when we are made to realize properly the good that is still left us.

We must look upon our exemption from army service as one proof of those interpositions in behalf of his children which our heavenly Father has promised, and which he is constantly fulfilling.  “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”  God has not called us to prayer in vain.  He invites us to come boldly to a throne of grace.  Does he do this otherwise than with a will to hear?  And the apostle’s exhortation is:  “In every thing give thanks,” for “all things work together for good to them that love God.”