Transcribed from the 1859 Rivingtons edition by DavidPrice.
PREACHEDAT
CHRIST CHURCH, KENSINGTON,
On May 1, 1859,
BEING THE DAY APPOINTED FOR AGENERAL
THANKSGIVING TO ALMIGHTY GOD,
FOR THESUCCESS GRANTED TO OUR ARMS IN SUPPRESSING THE
REBELLION AND RESTORING TRANQUILLITY INHER
MAJESTY’S INDIANDOMINIONS.
BYTHE
REV. WILLIAM WRIGHT, M.A.
SENIOR CURATE OF ST. MARY ABBOTTS,KENSINGTON.
LONDON:
RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE.
WINTER, HIGH STREET TERRACE, KENSINGTON.
1859.
As an aggregate of individualsprofessing faith in Christ, we, the people of Great Britain, maywith truth and reason venture to assert that our Queen and ourLegislature are on a footing, as to God’s protecting care,with highly favoured and heaven-honoured David of old. IfAlmighty God, under his earlier revelation, did actually guardand help in temporal matters a ruling prince of this lower world,who was a man “after his own heart”—asDavid’s plainly-told history everywhere assures us that Hedid—none can reasonably say that it is either impossible orimprobable that He should vouchsafe to guard and help ourpresiding Monarch and our law-giving Senate in the administrationof public affairs, baptized as they are “in the name of theFather, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost;” educated asthey are in the very details of his later p. 8and lastrevelation; and supposed, pledged, and believed as they are to beseeking individually after the mind which is in Christ,and the sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit of God. All, indeed, must at once see, and grant as a foregone conclusionfrom which there is no appeal, that our monarchical andrepresentative government, being essentially andgenerally Christian—being so in spite of theJudaism, vice, and infidelity which may be discerned in it, andwhich in no way interfere with our present argument—is, byvirtue of its admitted and preponderating Christianity, broughtunder the immediate guardianship and protection of the MostHigh.
Such being the case, or since we believe such to be the case,we most naturally, and, I may add most consistently, pray for the“High Court of Parliament” which assembles from timeto time “under our most religious and graciousQueen.” Our prayer in this matter is as simple as itis beautiful. A prayer is it which none who are in thehabit of praying at all for others can possibly object to. It simply asks of God that He