Tract and Missionary Department.
By S. N. Haskell
EVERYBODY in this enlightened land knows all about Thanksgiving Day. It is usually appointed about the last Thursday in November. On this day, family relatives and kindred friends are invited to the old homestead to feast on beef, pork, and fowl of all kinds filled with highly-seasoned dressing, &c., then to have a pleasant visit. Could a person rise from the dead who had never heard of an American Thanksgiving Day, and at one glance take a view of the tables, spread as they usually are, and then listen to the evening's conversation which, in many instances, follows, he might reasonably conclude that it was a day of gormandizing and reckless mirth. But it is not always that the day is spent thus. A brother in the southern part of New Hampshire prepared a table of grains, vegetables, and delicious fruits, wholesomely cooked, and invited the poor, lame, and I know not but the blind, to partake of the same, and then spent a season of prayer and praise, and in recounting the mercies of the past year, and the deliverances God had wrought for them. And so full of gratitude to the Author of every good and perfect gift did the heart of this brother become, that he made a thank-offering of twenty-five dollars to the tract society, which will purchase 80,000 pages of tracts (at the prices now furnished to the tract societies by the Office of the Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association) for free distribution. And who would dare to limit the number of thanksgivings that will be made to God by individuals who will receive the truth through the judicious circulation of these tracts? January, 1873, has come. Who, in the wide harvest-field, will not, at the commencement of this year, recount the mercies of God during the past year, call to mind where God has rescued them from the hand of death, wrought deliverances from trouble and affliction, and saved from the darkness of error by causing the glorious light of the Sabbath and kindred truths to shine in their pathway, and make a thank-offering to the cause of God? With such thanksgivings God will be well pleased, whether it be in November or January. The ancient method of offering unto God the first-fruits I do not think would be out of place. They were to eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears, until the selfsame day that they brought an offering unto their God. The Spirit of God has recorded the following: “Honor the Lord with thy substance, and with the first-fruits of all thine increase; so shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.” Who will adopt the above plan?