"O Give Thanks unto Jehovah"
It is good to give thanks to God; for he that offereth praise glorifieth God. It is good to have a day of thanksgiving, when together God's people can meet to recount His praises and blessings. It is good that that day should come when the harvests and fruits of the year are gathered, and the blessings of God are more manifest tho not more real than at other seasons. For all the fruitage of autumn is but the ingathering of the year—the frost and snow of winter, the rain and seeding of spring, and the warmth and fulness of summer. Not the best of crops in all things has the year given us. Many apple barrels will be empty, and potato bins will run low. But notwithstanding the failure of a few crops and the partial failure of others, still in this great, prolific country there is plenty for all at home and much to be spared for the devouring millions of earth's lands beyond the seas. For all this we should thank God. Thank God for liberty of conscience, liberty to worship God as His word and conscience dictate, with none to molest, none to hinder, none to overawe the timid or stir the resolute and determined. And yet these conditions are not absolute. While many of us have known or seen nothing of intolerance or religious tyranny in our own experience, yet in several places in this broad land Christians have suffered and are suffering fine and imprisonment for working and resting as did their Master. Such things ought to stir the very soul of every true American. Yet we thank God for the freedom there is; thank Him that there are still those in legislative halls who throw their influence against every measure which fetters conscience or circumscribes Christian liberty. Thank God that despite the corrupting influences of immense predatory wealth and colossal law-breaking combinations, there are still those whose acts are open and honest as the day, who are God's salt in the seething corruption. Thank God for every victory true temperance has gained during the year in staying the awful tide of drunkenness and its ever-constant attendants—vice and crime and poverty and misery. Thank God that notwithstanding the infidelity manifest in religious circles, there are still voices of faithful watchmen crying His warnings, preaching His word, proclaiming His Gospel of grace as the only power to save. Thank God that He has given us that great panacea for all earth's ills—the everlasting Good Tidings, clear, pure, and strong-laden with the life and love of God. Thank God for the light of His word, and especially His prophetic word which gives us light in the midst of the gloom and uncertainty of this world. Thank God that beyond all the misrule, corruption, and tyranny of earth He is coming again, coming to reward justly and to reign righteously over all the earth. Thank God that His Gospel has lost none of its recreative, regenerating power. Notwithstanding all the hypothesis of evolution, the aberrations of Christian Science or New Thought, that Gospel is still the power of God unto salvation to every one who believes. It can make of the drunkard a sober man; of the liar, a truth-teller; of the covetous and stingy man, one generous and charitable; of the hater of men, a lover of men; of the dissolute and idle, the diligent and industrious; of the vicious, the virtuous; of the sinner, a saint. There is hope for the despairing, strength for the weak, courage for the fearful, salvation for the lost. For all these and many other blessings in home and public life, for the great, common, every-day-and-hour blessings, we "give thanks unto Jehovah; . . . for His loving-kindness endureth forever." But let not our thanksgiving be for an hour in a day or for one day in a year. Rather let it be day by day, hour by hour. The pouring out of thanks to God will enlarge the heart and make it an inviting channel for greater blessings. Let us show how grateful we are to God by rendering to others who are needy and despairing. "That man may last, but never lives
Who much receives, but nothing gives;
Whom none may love, whom none can thank,
Creation's blot, creation's blank! "But he who marks, from day to day,
In generous acts his radiant way,
Treads the same path his Saviour trod,
The path to glory and to God."