Our Comfort in Dying

The Heidelberg Catechism asks: What is thy only comfort in life and in death? Answer: That I with body and soul both in life and in death am not my own but belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. Robert Lewis Dabney preached this doctrine in Confederate camps throughout the American Civil War serving as the chaplain of the 18th Virginia in 1861 and the parson-adjutant to Stonewall Jackson during the Valley and Peninsula Campaigns of 1862. Poor health forced Dabney eventually to resign but his sturdy piety gripping sermons and fervent prayers were a great impetus to the religious awakening which later swept through the Army of Northern Virginia. In the 1880s Dabney wrote out a number of his wartime sermons which were formed indelibly impressed upon [his] memory hoping to have them published under the title Army Sermons or Discourses. This compilation lay forgotten in the archives of Union Seminary for a century but Sola Fide Publications presents it now for the first time with a new title glossary and introduction along with some additional sermons. Eyewitness accounts are also included to illuminate Dabneys effectiveness as a minister of the Protestant faith in the Confederate armies. Never before has such an extensive set of Civil War camp sermons been published.