The Rev’d George Henry Clark (1819– 1906), author of this 1860 sermon on the Book of Common Prayer preached at St. John’s Church, Savannah, Georgia, was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and graduated from Yale College in 1843 before attending the Virginia Theological Seminary. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1846. Clark’s ministerial charges were at All Saints, Worcester, Massachusetts (1846– 1849); St. John’s, Savannah, Georgia (1854–1861); and Christ Church, Hartford, Connecticut (now the cathedral of the Diocese of Connecticut, 1861–1867). He was an active member of the corporation of Trinity College, Hartford, which conferred on him the degree of STD in 1863, and his brother Thomas March Clark served as Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church from 1899 to 1903. He is buried at Spring Grove Cemetery in Hartford.
Just a week and a half after delivering this sermon, Clark preached another on a Wednesday, appointed by Georgia’s governor, Joseph B. Brown, on the then-looming secession crisis. ‘My hearers’, he said, ‘my heart trembles, and the blood thrills through my veins, when I contemplate the dissolution of these States.’ Nevertheless, he preached that ‘if there be no remedy, in darkness and in gloom, in sackcloth and in ashes, looking up to heaven for light to guide our sons, for mercy to protect our