God Deciding My Place in War Time

From the time when I first consciously gave myself to God’s service, in my young manhood, I have never had reason to doubt, at any given time, that God wanted me to serve him in the place where I then was. Or, if he wanted me to enter a new field of service, he made that as plain to me as if he had spoken out of the heavens in thunder tones telling me where to go next. This has, of course, been a comfort to me in my life work, for which I am profoundly grateful. Such rest of faith as to one’s sphere of service is, I believe, open to every child of God who seeks it in a sense of dependence and of confident trust.

Far be it from me to claim or to suggest that I have always felt that I was doing just right, or that I was uniformly even Ulustrative Answers to Prayer

trying to do so. Many, very many, times I have failed, and known that I was failing, to do the best I could. I have not always even tried to do my best. This I have to confess; but, on the other hand, I have not had occasion, at such times, to doubt as to what and where was my sphere of duty in which I ought to be doing my best, or trying to do so.

The most desirable spot in the universe for a child of God is ever the spot where God wants that child to be. That point made clear to the child, he ought to feel that he would not gain, either in honor of in profit, by a change from where he is to another spot, whether it be to tend a cabbage field, to open up a diamond mine, or to evangelize a continent. God knows best what de wants, and what we ought to want. As to this, let us never have any doubt.

Hardly had I taken the step of formally entering God’s service, when an unmistakable call from God, as I have already

narrated, summoned me to superintend a 40

Jd Sn city-mission school. From that time to the present every successive change of field for me has been as distinctly pointed out of God as was that first sphere of service. The indications of my duty and God’s wish at the turning-point have been sometimes as remarkable as they were explicit. Some of these are worthy of recall in this recital of illustrative experiences of God’s special guidance.

At the opening of the Civil War by the firing on Fort Sumter, in April, 1861, I was in active work in the Sunday-school missionary field in New England, to which I had been clearly called of God. The new emergency, in the summons to defend the government in its peril, seemed to me, as to most of the loyal able-bodied citizens of the North, to be a providential call to enlist in the army. But, unfortunately, I was not supposed to be an able-bodied citizen. I was in frail health, worn down by nervous effort in much traveling and speaking.

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When Governor Buckingham offered me the position of major in one of the earlier three years’ regiments, and I referred the question of my physical fitness for the place to my physician, the latter assured me that my accepting it was quite out of the question. He said I could not live six weeks in army service. A younger and stalwart brother of mine, who had already enlisted, said that I could not live a single week in active service. He added that my accepting the position would only tend to keep out of it a man who could fill it. Thus I seemed shut out from army service by my physical incapacity.

In view of my prominence as a Sunday-school worker and lay preacher, the officers of the Tenth Connecticut Regiment, when it was making ready for the field, proposed to me to go as their chaplain; but, on taking counsel, I felt that that also was beyond my strength. In view of all the difficulties, therefore, I had to content myself with urging others to enlist, as I could 42 not, and to this work I devoted myself enthusiastically. Of course, I was available in ¢/zs line, at such a time, as an able-bodied speaker would not be. If any one whom I urged to enlist asked me why I did not myself volunteer, I was ready to reply that I would go at once if the government would accept me. Therefore my appeal came with greater force to others to do likewise. In this sphere, as a consequence, I had, for the time, plenty to do. Yet I regretted all the time that I was unfitted for more active service when such pressure was on all, and this feeling grew on me constantly. I was renewedly asking myself whether indeed it would not be possible for me to have some other share in the paramount duty of the loyal citizen in that crisis. This was not in the way of chafing under God’s ordering, but it was in the way of dutifully inquiring just what God would have me to do with my limits as they were.

In the summer of 1862, after the terrible fighting in the seven days’ battles before Illustrative Answers to Prayer

Richmond, and the new call was made for volunteers to replace losses in McClellan’s army, the pressure on me was greater than before. One Saturday evening I returned to my home exhausted after a vigorous campaign through the towns of Hartford and Tolland counties, where I had accompanied Colonel Dwight Morris, of Bridgeport, commander of the new Fourteenth Regiment, appealing for volunteers. Although it was near midnight when I reached home, instead of retiring to my room for sleep, I stopped in my parlor below stairs, and sat before the Lord for a season of communing with him. My own earnest appeals that evening to others to count their country’s imperative call for help in its life struggle to be limited in their case only by their possibility of service, came back on my mind at this hour with tremendous force. I asked God earnestly if there was not something more that I could do in view of that summons.

In response the Lord seemed to ask me 44

—~ whether it did not seem decided that I lacked the physical ability to serve in either the field or line in the army. I said it did, but I had come to question more and more whether I might not do something as a chaplain or as a lay Christian worker in camp or hospital, even if I might not in more active service.

At this the Lord pointed me to the remark made by Colonel Morris that very evening as to the surplus of applicants for a chaplain’s commission at the present time. He had told me that some thirty clergymen had applied to him for an appointment as chaplain. Therefore there was no special call on me to proffer my service in that line just now. But, I suggested, an unsolicited call had come to me a year ago from the officers of the Tenth Connecticut Regiment to be their chaplain. “Yes, but that regiment now has a chaplain. If the place proffered you a year ago were again before you, you might indeed count its

acceptance a duty, but in the lack of such 45.

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a call you must be contented as you are.” And with this conclusion I had to rest the case at issue, and retire for the night.

Sunday, with its duties, followed that night. On Monday morning the first mail delivery brought me a letter from New Berne, North Carolina. It was from the colonel of the Tenth Connecticut Regiment, saying that their chaplain had resigned, and he now again proffered the position to me. He spoke of the needs of his regiment and of the military post where it was now stationed, and he suggested reasons why I should accept the call. The providence was too marked to leave me in any doubt as to God’s purpose for me. From my library chair I called to my wife in the room above:

“Alice, God has called me to the war.”

“Then I suppose you’ll go” was the quiet response of the brave and patriotic and self-denying little woman.

And this was the way that God pointed

out my place in army service.
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