LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, Gtyup, Ccjmrigljt ¥)n. Shelf d$i THANKSGIVING SERMONS AND OUTLINE ADDRESSES AN AID FOR PASTORS COMPILED AflD EDITED BY WILLIAM E.VeTCHAM, D. D. 1 We see our Father's hand once more Reverse for us the plenteous horn Of autumn, filled and running o'er With fruit, and flower, and golden corn." — Whittier. * NEW YORK "WILBUR B. KETCHAM 2 COOPER UNION \% / ^ Copyright, 1894, By Wilbur B. Ketcham. LC Control Number llillllllllil tmp96 028338 IKTEODUOTIOK Thanksgiving services are general in Chris- tian communities. There is an innate sense of the rightfulness and propriety of Thanks- giving which is in accord with the teachings of Christianity. Various are the legitimate ways the Christian minister, and especially those entering upon their arduous and impor- tant duties, may secure the needful prepara- tion to discourse upon this ever-fruitful theme of Thanksgiving. His primary resource must be God's own Word. He is, however, lacking in research, and illy qualifies himself for the discharge of this imperative duty of suitable discourse upon Thanksgiving, who fails to glean and appropriate from every field, with prayerful care, all help available, extracting the sweets from all flowers as the bee the honey. Those who have ofttimes traversed the fields in search of themes and material, and therefore whose skill and wisdom in selec- tion are matured, can well render to those of 3 4 INTRODUCTION. lesser experience wholesome aid. A single suggestion may open in the reader's mind an unexpected fountain of thought from which shall flow healthful reflection and appropriate discourse. The able clergymen whose terse, abundant, and suggestive thought is brought to the attention of the readers of this book will, we trust, contribute to render the aid in- dicated. So frequent and persistent are the inquiries for such suitable aids that we are happy to meet the demand and place within the reach of all a volume which contains the product of the best thought of a number of prominent and devout ministers. It will be observed that the Sermons and Outlines are evangelical, un sectarian, and thoroughly prac- tical. ' We send forth this book believing he best conforms to the divine ideal who is prompted to generous gratitude " to the unsparing and unwearied Giver," to whom, now and ever, be- longeth reverent thanksgiving. CONTENTS. PAGE Thanksgiving Day. Historical Sketch 9 The Table Prepared in Presence of Foes. By Hugh Macmillan, D.D., LL.D 11 The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man. By Rev. Charles Neil, M. A 32 The Parable of Harvest. By Rev. W. J. Dawson 47 The Chain of Blessing. By J. Monro Gibson, D.D 64 " The Dew unto Israel." By Rev. J. Robinson Gregory 77 The Plowman Taught of God. By Rev. Francis Standfast 88 The Voice of Thanksgiving. By Rev. O. D. Sherman . 102 The Feast of Tabernacles. By Rev. Ralph Williams. 113 All Gifts God's Gifts 122 The Harvest and its Lessons. By Rev. J. S. Pawlyn. 135 The Witness of the Harvest. By Rev. G. A. Ben- netts, B. A 147 Unto God Thanksgiving. By Rev. J. H. C. McKinney. 159 The Joy in Harvest. By Rev. Arthur E. Gregory 168 The Widow's Cruse 174 5 O CONTENTS. PAGE The Sower. By Rev. Gordon Calthrop 184 Apart from the Vine 190 God the Giver of Increase 195 A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey . 203 The Bread of Life 208 Our Daily Bread 209 The Earth a Teacher 219 The Springing Forth of Righteousness. By Rev. A. H. Vine 226 A Beggar in Harvest. By Rev. G. A. Bennetts, B.A. . 231 A Thanksgiving Day 234 The Cup of Salvation 245 The Parable of the Sower. By Rev. J. Robinson Gregory 254 Growth and Increase 260 Weather-wise 265 The Secret Growth of the Seed 272 God Supplying Human Need 276 Praise 282 The Moral Lessons of the Harvest 286 Nature Waiting upon God 288 The Feast of Harvest 290 Thanksgiving—its Definition. By Isaac Barrows, D.D. 293 Thanksgiving Day. By E. H. S 294 Harvest Festival. By Rev. M. F. Sadler 295 The Harvest 297 CONTENTS. 7 PAGE For what to Give Thanks. By Rev. J. H. Brookes . . . 299 Call to Gratitude. By the Rev. John Stevenson 301 The Duty of Thanksgiving. By Isaac Barrows, D.D. . 302 The Blessings for which we should be Thankful . . . 302 Prayer and Praise. By Rev. John Stevenson 303 Thanksgiving is a Necessity. By Rev. S. Baring- Gould, M.A 304 Abstract from Thanksgiving Address. By Hon. John W. Ramsey 306 Gratitude Expressed. By Rev. R. Andrew Griffin 308 Our Thanksgiving 309 He hath Done Great Things. By Rev. W. H. Strick- land 313 Timely Thoughts : Our Benefits 322 The Glory of the Country 323 Thoughts for the Day 323 Giving Thanks always for all Things 324 Patriotism and Religion 325 Two Thanksgivings 326 The Bible 326 Suggestive Themes 327 Suggestive Texts 328, 329 THANKSGIVING DAY. HISTORICAL SKETCH. This annual autumnal festival, at or after the time of the ingathering of our harvests, is observed in our country and is akin in many features to the Harvest Thanksgiving days of other countries. History informs us of an oc- casional day of thanksgiving in foreign lands by civic order. The day was observed by the recommendation of the civil authorities at Leyden, Holland, October 3, 1575, the first anniversary of the deliverance of that city from siege. The following statement from McClintock and Strong's Cyclopedia is true to history, and concisely presents the origin and growth of this now national festival : " After the first harvest at Plymouth, Mass., in 1621, Governor Bradford sent four men out fowling, that they l might after a more special manner rejoice together.' In July, 1623, the governor appointed a day of thanksgiving for rain after a long drought, and the records show 9 10 HISTORICAL SKETCH. a similar appointment in 1632 because of the arrival of supplies from Ireland. There is also record of the appointment of days of thanks- giving in Massachusetts in 1632, 1633, 1634, 1637, 1638, and 1639, and in Plymouth in 1651, 1668, 1680 (when the form of the recommen- dation indicates that it had become an an- nual custom), 1689, and 1690. The Dutch governors of New Netherlands in 1644, 1645, 1655, and 1664, and the English governors of New York in 1755 and 1760, appointed days of thanksgiving. During the Revolution, Thanks- giving Day was observed by the nation, be- ing annually recommended by Congress ; but there was no national appointment between the general thanksgiving for peace in 1784 and 1789, when President Washington recommend- ed a day of thanksgiving for the adoption of the Constitution. Since that time special days have been set apart both by Presidents and governors until 1864, when the present prac- tice was adopted of a national annual Thanks- giving. Custom has fixed the time for the last Thursday in November." THANKSGIVING SERMONS AND OUTLINE ADDRESSES. THE TABLE PREPARED IN PRES- ENCE OF FOES. BY HUGH MACMILLAN, D.D., LL.D. " Thou prepare st a table before me in the presence of mine enemies." — Psalm xxiii. 5. These words are generally supposed to al- lude to the seasonable hospitality which Bar- zillai and his friends gave to David during his flight before Absalom. Faint and full of sor- row, the king and his faithful companions reached the territory of Mahanaim, on the eastern side of the Jordan ; and the Gileadite chiefs supplied them immediately after their arrival with all that was needed to satisfy their hunger and thirst and refresh their weary bodies. So varied and profuse was the pro- vision made for the wants of the royal party, 11 12 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. in the native produce of the rich pastoral lands of Grilead, that the sacred historian, in his ac- count of the incident, enumerates each article separately. It was a most memorable occa- sion, and the feast was a striking example of the lavish liberality of Eastern princes in those early days. There were three things that em- phasized the allusion of David to it and made it exceedingly appropriate. There was, first, the great physical exhaustion to which the king and his followers were reduced. They had tasted no food since the early part of the previous day, when, having crossed the Jordan, they rested and partook of the slight refresh- ment of bread and dates and grapes which Ziba, the servant of Mephibosheth, had given them. Then there was the terrible danger to which David was exposed. A price had been set upon his head by his own unnatural son. Behind him were enemies thirsting for his blood ; be- fore him was a dark future of miserable per- plexities out of which there seemed no way of escape. Ahithophel, wisest of all the Israelite statesmen, had gone over to the side of the foe ; for he had, through the wrongs of his grand- daughter Bathsheba, the deepest personal rea- sons for revenge. Shimei, the fierce Benja- mite, had cursed the king and thrown dust and stones at him all the way from Jerusalem TABLE PKEPARED IN PKESENCE OF FOES. 13 to Jordan. The generous conduct of Barzillai, therefore, contrasted strongly with the cruel hatred of these enemies. And there was, fur- ther still, the fact that the Gileadite chief had been connected with the house of Saul, whose daughter Merab his son Adriel is supposed to have married. He might, therefore, have ex- ulted in David's overthrow and the prospect of bringing back the old dynasty, and have added his curses to those of Shimei ; but, for- getting all grounds of hatred, the Grileadite chief, in the most unstinted manner, hastened to place the best of his stores before the fallen king. And the hospitality of strangers upon whom he had no claim revived the heart that had been sorely stricken by the ingratitude of his own flesh and blood. Such was the table to which David re- fers, and such were the enemies in whose pres- ence it was prepared. It was so remarkable, so well timed, and so suitable in every respect, that the psalmist could not fail to recognize in it the direct interposition of Grod's own hand. It was a miracle of Divine Providence. He who had been the guide of his youth, who had prepared his way to the throne of Israel, had spread this table in the wilderness for him. David, while living the life of a fugitive from Saul's persecution, had been often supported 14 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. by the grateful contributions of the farmers, whose flocks and herds he had defended against marauders; and he had several times experi- enced the generous kindness of those who were aliens in race and religion. He had even been privileged, in his sore extremity, to satisfy his bodily hunger by the showbread of the taber- nacle, which it was unlawful for any but the priests of God to eat. But never, in his most desperate adventures and wonderful deliver- ances, had he felt the loving-kindness of the Lord so deeply as on this occasion. In Bar- zillai's generosity, which he did not deserve, because Barzillai belonged by right to the house of his enemy Saul, he recognized the wonderful mercy of God, which he did not de- serve because of his heinous transgressions. And as he had felt that the curse of Shimei was the curse of God because of his sin, and bore it patiently as if in it he was privileged to make expiation for his sin, so he felt that the feast of Barzillai was the feast of God, in which God had signified the forgiveness of his iniquity and the divine reconciliation and peace. We may take the words of the psalm- ist and apply them to our own circum- stances at the close of another harvest. There are three points of resemblance between the TABLE PREPAKED IN PRESENCE OF FOES. 15 provision made for David and the provision made for us. These are its divine preparation, its abundance and suitableness, and its being made in the presence of our enemies. We have seen who David's enemies were, and how the food which he needed came to him as a victorious feast to celebrate his conquest of his foes. And so our harvest is year after year prepared for us in the presence of many foes, with which, through all the summer months, it maintains a prolonged struggle, and over which in the end it obtains a hard- won triumph. 1. Let us consider first, then, the ene- mies in whose presence our table is pre- pared. In ancient Greek fable we are told about the harpies, monstrous creatures with the bodies and wings and long claws of birds and the faces of maidens pale with hunger. They were sent by the gods to torment the blind prophet Phineus, who had offended them by his misdeeds. Whenever a meal was placed before the unfortunate man the harpies darted down from the air and carried it off, and either devoured the food themselves or rendered it unfit to be eaten. It was with the utmost difficulty that he was delivered from these frightful enemies by the prowess of two of the Argonauts, who had come thither in search of 16 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. the Golden Fleece. Like all classic fables, this one has a profound moral. In this old-world story we see represented by the blind seer Phineus, who had incurred the anger of the gods, man as a tiller of the ground, upon whom the divine curse has been pronounced, because of his sins, that in the sweat of his face he should eat bread ; wise by insight and experi- ence in regard to the common operations of agriculture, but blind as to the issues and re- sults of these operations, ignorant what may be the increase of his sowing and the harvest of his toil, if any. In the harpies we see rep- resented the various enemies that are con- nected with the growth and supply of our food, that are constantly on the watch to pre- vent us reaping the fruit of our labors, or ren- dering it unprofitable or unpalatable when it is reaped. Since sin came into the world God has ordained that man should encounter in full force the unkindly elements of nature. He sees everywhere around him a bare, hard wilderness, whence not a morsel of bread can be wrung but by the most strenuous labor, snatched, as it were, in the pauses of the storm and during the gleams of sunshine. If seed- time and harvest shall never cease, that divine promise implies that the need of them shall never cease ; that the annual harvest of the TABLE PEEP ABED IN PKESENCE OF FOES. 17 world will only suffice for the world's annual food. The earth nowhere brings forth double harvests ; and therefore year after year man has to sow and reap his fields. And nothing is more precarious than the growth of the corn upon which we depend for our daily bread. It is surrounded continually by innumerable enemies. There is, first, unsuitable soil and cli- mate. It is within a comparatively small area of the earth's surface that we can grow our corn. Beyond that area it is too cold or too hot. And even within that area the conditions are not always favorable. It is not everywhere that our farmers can get the soil and climate that are most suitable. They have in many cases to sow and reap in sterile situations, where the seasons are late, late spring and early winter following hard upon each other, and thus necessitating ah unusual expenditure of toil and anxiety. And even in the most favorable circumstances of soil and climate the skies are often unpropitious. There are droughts in the early part of the summer, withering the stem and blade of the corn; there are long-continued rains, which develop the straw at the expense of the ear ; and at a critical period, when the corn is in flower and hangs out from its green head its slender, white, 18 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. threadlike filaments, whose pollen is carried from blossom to blossom by the agency of a light, gentle breeze, violent winds may blow for days, carrying this vital dust to too great a distance, and only a small part of it reaches the bloom of the corn; the consequence of which is that the ear, though formed, is half empty of nutritious material, and there is a great deficiency in the produce. Were these slender threads to fail in their all-important work, were they to shrivel up or be blighted by unfavorable weather — and it would seem as if a fiercer ray of sunshine or a ruder breath of wind or a heavier fall of rain than ordinary might do this — or were the wind to prove con- tinually boisterous at the critical time, and dis- perse the pollen so that it should be wasted, the whole produce of the fields would fail. This is the great risk to which every year our corn-crops are exposed; showing to us how literally man's life hangs upon a thread — upon a breath of wind. Then, as we approach the days of ripening and ingathering, how often is the weather so inclement that the corn is in danger of be- ing leveled to the ground, or its grains thrashed out of it by the beating of the winds ! How often does the stormy weather prevent the reaper from cutting down the dead ripe corn, TABLE PEEPAKED IN PRESENCE OF FOES. 19 or the belated stooks from drying sufficiently to be taken into the stack-yard, so that the straw rots in the field, and the grain sprouts with the noxious greenness of a second growth ! The design of nature is benevolent in sending these autumnal storms, for they are necessary to strip the trees of their decaying leaves and their ripe fruits, and to rot them in the soak- ing ground, that the imprisoned seeds may escape and find a suitable and naturally ma- nured soil in which to grow. But this wise provision of nature to facilitate the dispersion and growth of the ripened fruits and seeds of the earth often proves disastrous to our corn- crops when they are about to be gathered into the barn. We step between nature and her purpose, snatch the corn from its appointed destiny as the seed of a future crop, and con- vert it into human food ; and thus diverting a law of nature into a new and unnatural chan- nel, we cannot always expect that the weather which would be favorable to the natural pro- cess should be equally favorable to the artifi- cial. Our wheels and nature's wheels are thus often out of gear ; they frequently clash. Then, further, the growth of our corn has many enemies of the animal and vegetable world to encounter. It has to enter into the great struggle of life, in which every plant as 20 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. well as animal must fight for its footing, and the weakest goes to the wall. It has to con- tend with its own kind, for the law of nature is to spread every plant as widely as possible ; and therefore weeds, thorns, and thistles cum- ber the ground, and in their growth endeavor to choke and starve the corn and leave them solely in possession. These have to be rooted out with unremitting care, else the corn, which is a highly artificial plant, would speedily give way, become unfruitful, and perish utterly be- fore the increase of wild plants naturally far better adapted to the soil. There are birds that eat the seed as soon as it is sown in the field; there are caterpillars and insects that prey upon the tender blade ; and, worst of all, there are rusts and mildews that grow with its growth, and appear only when the full corn is in the ear, and turn the nutritious grain into black dust and ashes. Everywhere these in- sidious parasites, possessing the power of in- definite multiplication, lie in wait to frustrate the hopes of the farmer. Season after season, as regularly as the corn grows, so regularly do these baleful parasites appear. They have been at certain times epidemic, and have repeatedly caused famines in our own and in other coun- tries. They have been fearfully and wonder- fully made for their work. They possess va- TABLE PREPARED IN PRESENCE OP FOES. 21 rious modes of propagating themselves, so that when one method fails another may be developed in its place. Their seeds are pro- duced in incalculable myriads. The atmo- sphere is charged with them ; the soil of every field is thick with them. Almost every grain of corn is found, under the microscope, to have one or more seeds adhering to its husk. And in every black head of smut among the corn we see, as it were, "the hidings of God's power." We see how easily, if it so pleased him, he could let loose these destructive agen- cies to break the staff of bread and cover the land with desolation and woe. It is a remark- able fact that domesticated plants and animals, which man has cultivated artificially for his own use, are possessed of delicate constitu- tions, and are therefore more prone to the at- tacks of numerous enemies than plants and animals in a wild state. We have developed the potato, the sugar-cane, and the corn un- naturally, and the unnatural growth which is most useful for our purposes is from nature's point of view a diseased condition ; and, there- fore, she hastens with her insect and fungi scavengers to clear it off the face of the earth as speedily as possible. You see, therefore, that, in fighting with these insect and vege- table foes in growing our food, we have to con- 22 THANKSGIVING SEKM0KS. tend with the great law of nature itself, that the weak and diseased must perish. But the list of enemies in the presence of which our table is prepared is not yet ex- hausted. There are human enemies as well as natural. There are circumstances of human selfishness, wrong, and injustice that interfere sadly with the full joy of har- vest. There are competitions and rights which restrict the cultivation of the soil; there are commercial interests that cause unequal dis- tribution of its produce. The farmer's diffi- culties do not end with the gathering in of the crop ; he has to encounter the difficulties of the market. In Eastern lands, where the govern- ment is weak, the farmer has no security that he will reap the harvest he has sown. He sows in tears, because a stronger man than he may take the fruit of his labors. Thus we see that the harvest will not give us its blessings with- out a stern struggle with hostile elements ; and that man himself, in his grasping selfishness, places many obstacles in the way of nature pre- paring her table for us. And much as we may deplore the continual recurrence of this strug- gle, we cannot lose sight of the fact that it has a beneficial moral effect upon human char- acter. God meant it to be educative. G-od meant that the terms upon which individuals TABLE PBEPABED IN PBESENCE OF FOES. 23 and nations hold their lease of life should be unremitting labor from year to year. For much wickedness is thus prevented which idleness would be sure to produce, and much discipline is thus afforded for powers of body and mind which would otherwise rust in in- glorious ease or be destroyed by vice. Man earning and eating his bread in the sweat of his face raises himself in the scale of intelli- gence, and exalts and purifies his moral nature. And in having thus to grow his food amid a continual struggle with hostile forces, he is taught in the most impressive way the solemn lesson of his dependence upon Grod. 2. But I pass on to consider the table which is thus prepared before us. This table is wisely adapted to our necessities as human beings. Our food does not consist of roots, for these are too imperfectly organized to yield all the ingredients that man needs for his proper sustenance. Eoots cannot be stored or kept sufficiently long to last from year to year, and thus they do not afford a basis of food for the leisure and stability of circum- stances which man requires for the cultiva- tion of the higher arts of life. They cannot be transported long distances without waste and injury, and thus the necessities of one place be supplied by the abundance of another. 24 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. It was attempted to build up society in Ireland upon the cultivation of a single root, and it led to laziness, improvidence, and an ignoble con- tentment with the lowest form of human liv- ing, and ended — we cannot help thinking, by a merciful judgment of Heaven — in a famine that was most disastrous at the time, but out of which came, in the long run, rich and last- ing issues of good. Neither, on the other hand, does our food consist of fruits spontaneously produced by long-lived trees,. requiring no toil or care or forethought on the part of man. The natives of countries that depend for their subsistence upon any wild fruits they may find are afflicted with numerous special diseases in consequence, lead a low life of careless ease and indulgence, and continue children in body and mind all their lives. Not in roots or in fruits does God place the staple food of man, but on the highest part of an annual grass that grows and ripens and fades every year, and every season needs to be sown and reaped anew. For lessons of faith and trust have to be taught to man, and habits of industry have to be acquired by him, upon which the unfold- ing of his great destiny depends, and which nothing but the cultivation of the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, could enable him to learn. In TABLE PREPARED IN PRESENCE OF FOES. 25 the various corn-plants he finds all the best constituents of nourishment and vigor. They can be stored for a time of scarcity ; they can be transported without injury to the most dis- tant places. Some form or other of them can be cultivated in every part of the world ; and on the basis of security which they afford a stable society can be built up, by which the highest arts of life and the noblest forms of religion may be developed. This is the foun- dation of our complicated civilization. Grod has ordained that the scepter of the world should be a straw ; and were our corn-fields to fail throughout the world all the vast resources and revenues of the world would not avail to stay the terrible consequences. The rich and the poor would be overwhelmed with a com- mon ruin. All the other riches in the world, failing the riches of our golden harvest-fields, were as worthless as the flash-notes of the forger. And what a table is thus spread for us every year ! On the table of the wilderness is spread spontaneously a plentiful feast of grass, wild fruits, and herbs for the sustenance of the dumb, helpless creatures that can neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns. On the table of the cultivated haunts of man are spread, year after year, the golden corn-fields which 26 THANKSGIVING SEEM0NS. witness to human industry, prudence, and fore- sight. The influences of the sky and earth have conspired to produce these corn-fields; the work of man and the cooperation of God have led to this beneficial result. The stones of the waste have been slowly and gradually con- verted into bread. The many enemies that opposed the process have been successfully overcome. Beneath the patient heavens the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves has been slowly and gradually prepared over the long summer months. What sacred memories gather round the table thus so richly fur- nished ! They take us back to the days when the world was young, and all men labored in the harvest-field and counted its joys the typi- cal joy of life. They link the ages and gener- ations together ; and we feel that we are com- passed about with a great cloud of witnesses who have enjoyed the annual harvests of the earth, from the first ripe crop that grew above the grave of the old world — the surety of all harvests since. 3. And this leads me to notice, in the third place, who it is that has prepared this table for us. The harvest is the subject of a divine covenant engagement. Our corn-fields grow and ripen securely under the arch of the rainbow, which is God's signature in the hea- TABLE PREPARED IN PRESENCE OF FOES. 27 vens ratifying the covenant that seed-time and harvest shall never fail. Never once has the pledge given five thousand years ago been violated. Famines have occurred again and again in the history of the race, but never sim- ultaneously over the whole world; for when there was a dearth in Palestine there was corn in Egypt. Our table is thus prepared by God's own hand ; and the miracle of the multiplica- tion of the loaves by Jesus was wrought to show to us who it is that by the ordinary laws of nature, and the ordinary operations of hu- man toil and skill, procures for us our annual harvest. The common event hides from us the divine hand ; it is clothed in the garment of second causes; but the miracle is wrought to strip away this clothing of second causes, to make bare the Almighty arm and reveal to us its working and our dependence upon it. He who rained manna directly from heaven, he who fed the multitude at Capernaum, is the same who season after season raises the seed- corn into the waving harvest. It is his power that makes the corn germinate ; that preserves its growing and ripening from the storm and the drought, the blight and the insect, from the attack of all the numerous and formidable enemies that are leagued against it. The pe- tition in the Lord's Prayer implies this. We 28 THANKSGIVING SEKM0NS. ask our Father in heaven to give us our daily bread, as if it came direct from his hand, as if we ignored altogether the part we ourselves have to perform in producing and earning it. And in reality in every human operation man's part is utterly trifling compared with God's. Without his power and blessing the fields would yield no harvest, the benefi- cent operations of nature would be frustrated. Without his power and blessing the arrange- ments and conditions of human society would be so disordered that even if there were food, it would fail in many instances in reaching its proper destination. Without his power and blessing the bread itself would minister disease and weakness, and not health and strength, and the table of the unthankful prove a snare. And when we ask God to give us day by day our daily bread, we simply ask that God would enable us to live from hand to mouth during all our life. We cannot, as beggars living upon God's bounty, ask that our alms may be made sure by his giving us a store now out of which our daily bread may come independently of his own providence. We strive to make ourselves independent of circumstances. By the complicated industries and arrangements of civilized life we seek to secure a fortune or a competency. But the riches of the world, TABLE PREPARED IN PRESENCE OF FOES. 29 as I have said, are nothing without the neces- saries of life, and these necessaries are preca- rious, and are only given year by year and day by day. We cannot make ourselves indepen- dent, and no amount of wealth can raise us above the enjoyment of a single day's supply. You may accumulate property sufficient to sup- ply you with food all your life, but you cannot accumulate the ability to use that food. You must wait each day for the periodical demands of appetite, or if you attempt to overstep these, you destroy that appetite altogether, and then you are reduced to the same destitution as the very poorest. And though you may feel that you will have enough to eat all your life, how do you know that you will have health to en- joy your food? To this use of one day's sup- ply the laws of Providence restrict the rich and the poor alike. 4. Once more God has graciously crowned the year with his goodness, and has furnished a table for us, so that there is abundance of food for man and beast. And the mo- mentous question now is, How can we best use this precious gift of God ? We are first of all to partake of it with gratitude, acknowledging God's bounty and our own dependence. We are next to partake of it in faith. The Apostle Paul says that whatever is not of faith is sin, 30 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. and if we eat without faith we are condemned. Christ purchased by his own blood the neces- saries of life as well as the blessings of grace from the forfeiture of the fall, and bestows them upon all who believe as covenant bless- ings. The man who uses the necessaries of life simply as the fruit of his own industry or skill acts as the animals do; and having no recognition of Christ's work in them, they deepen his animality and worldliness. But he who receives and uses them in faith remembers how they were forfeited, and how they are re- stored. They are memorials of his sin and of his redemption ; and they come to him filtered and strained from all the evils of sin, and sweet- ened with the blessing that maketh truly rich, and with which no sorrow is added, and prove means of grace to his soul. 5. Then, further, the fruits of the harvest should be used in the work and for the glory of God. They came forth from Grod, and they "come to man, that through man and by man they might return to Grod again ; that the leisure, the health, the strength, the bless- ings, which they impart may be used in the cause of righteousness, and in preparing the way of the Lord upon the earth. What was meant by the dedication of the first-fruits of the harvest to God in the tabernacle and TABLE PREPARED IN PRESENCE OF FOES. 31 temple of old but just this : that as the first- fruits were thus hallowed, so the whole harvest should be hallowed, and should be used only for holy purposes ? They are presented to God in order to show that all the common neces- saries of life which they represent are to be sanctified by you in the daily common use you make of them ; that whether you eat or drink, or whatsoever you do, you may do all to the glory of God. And as they thus unite you to God, so let them also unite you more closely to one another. You are children of one family, sitting at one table provided by the same lov- ing Father ; why, then, should there be so much of selfish struggle and competition, so much of unnatural covetousness and unloving acquisi- tiveness, in the daily life of those who get day by day their daily bread from God's own hand ? Redeemed by the same Saviour from the same spiritual hunger and poverty and death, de- livered from the same enemies, should you not in carrying out your own prayer — not "give me? but " give its this day our daily bread " — seek to help one another in all things, to pro- mote the welfare of one another, that so the spirit of Jesus may be developed in you, and you may grow together into greater likeness to your Father in heaven ? THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD AND THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN. BY THE EEV. CHARLES NEIL, M.A. " He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." — Matthew v. 45. In the Bible frequent use is made of the realms of nature' for the purpose of furnishing bold and powerful illustrations, as well as for the enforcing of important religious doctrines. Such a method of instruction is in danger of being somewhat overlooked in days like our own, when the stream of human life is irresisti- bly discharging itself from the country into the city, and the sights and sounds of civilization have an increasingly strong tendency to draw off the mind from the devout contemplation of the glorious handiworks of God. This neglect is much to be deplored ; because for the com- plete education of man all the books of Grod — the Book of Nature no less than the Book of Revelation — require to be religiously studied. Everywhere and at all times we should possess 32 THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. 33 an observant eye and an adoring spirit. To all alike nature may in a very real sense be the chart of God, the mirror of the divine attri- butes, and a religious volume replete with les- sons for daily guidance : " In contemplation of created things, By steps we may ascend to God." Not only is the substitution of bricks and mortar for green fields and " the philosopher's garden" unfavorable conditions to that de- lightful art of meditation which makes truth always ready and present to us, but the study of the physical sciences, frequently conducted without due reverence, as well as the confusion of thought respecting the law of phenomena displayed both in common parlance and also in learned treatises, have prevented men from ris- ing easily from nature to nature's God. To-day it is no very easy task, even if we can aspiringly fix the mind upon created things, to scan them with the simple faith and childlike interest of our non-scientific but reverent forefathers. Around our generation a materialistic spirit hangs like a distorting atmosphere, and causes nature and God to appear almost' one and the same, and God to be regarded so absolutely everywhere, and so perfectly identified with everything, that he is really nowhere person- 34 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. ally present as the upholder of anything. Or else, if modern thought does not deify the ob- jects of nature, it practically does the laws of nature. As a preliminary step, then, to religious re- flection upon the works of God we must study to remove the haze created by the want of clearness of definition in modern thought. We need to reassert the old but forgotten truth that the primary and ultimate division of thought is found in the ideas of God and nature. What is not nature is God, the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ; what is not God is na- ture in some or other of its manifold kingdom. God may for purposes of worship be viewed as standing alone, dwelling in light which no man can approach unto ; while nature should ever and anon be regarded as the object of God's creative and sustaining energy : " Nature is but a name for an effect, Whose cause is God." The so-called laws of nature are not in nature, but in the mind of Him who has power over all nature. Sun, moon, and stars ; hail, rain, and vapor ; the known and unknown fructifying powers in the universe, exist because God exists and "feeds the secret fire by which the mighty process is main- THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. 35 tained." The death (if such a thought could be conceived) of the Creator would be the instant death of all ereaturehood and the absolute an- nihilation of everything. The worlds moving in their appointed courses, and the seasons re- turning in their regular succession and won- derful changes, are the result of the ever-as- serted will and ever-operative power of the Supreme Ruler of the universe. Every phe- nomena of nature at each stage of existence is the revelation of the Divine Mind, and pro- claims the constant outgoings of divine energy, albeit, in a world enveloped in mystery, in a world designed as a stage for man's mental and moral training, and in a world where only part — a very small part — of the divine purposes are discernible, there must necessarily be apparent contradictions to general principles. Xay, a partial and hasty observer might easily be led to draw faulty and positively false conclusions respecting the divine attributes. Still, despite volcanoes, wild tornadoes, pestilential marshes, poisoned vegetation around peopled cities, the blazing prairie, the desolating and dark forest into which the sunlight never penetrates, and despite the cries of pain from this Eden of ours, yet we can read in unmistakable characters the universal benevolence of God in the daily bless- ings showered down alike upon his thankful 36 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. or unthankful, his loving or rebellious off- spring. " He maketh his sun to shine on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." We have not hesitated to dwell thus upon the relation of God and nature. Correct views upon this subject, no less than upon the rela- tion of God to ourselves, are helpful for the forming of a true estimate of daily mercies. To use the sickle to the richly laden and golden ears of corn, to fill our garners with plenty, to partake of the varied fruits of the earth, to re- joice in the harvest, and to view all the pro- cesses of nature as due to the laws in nature and to the laws in the mind of God, and as the results of a self-adjusting instrument, and not of the working of an ever-living and ever-lov- ing Father, will as surely eat out the spirit of worship as if we substituted either the pan- theon of the cultured heathen or the fetish of the uncultured savage in place of our God and Saviour. God, who knows what is in those made by himself in his own image, does not pro- vide for our necessities by a vast and huge machine called nature, which continues to work by itself by a once-for-all imparted mo- tion. Either to identify God with his works, or to remove God so far from them that he is THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. 37 in no real sense a personal God, not only dis- honors him, but brings actual and definite loss to ourselves. If we suppose, for instance, that food is produced by an automatic, unlovable machine, why, men will eat it without giving of thanks, forfeit a large measure of enjoyment, and lack the highest incentives to right living and brotherly feeling. In every-day life no possessions are more valued by right-minded persons than those which are the tangible ex- pressions of the personal and affectionate re- gard of friends. Applying this principle to the gifts at harvest-tide, what rich stores of delight does a Christian, in contradistinction to the mere scientist, secure, in the fact that in pre- cious grain, welcome fruit, and autumnal rich tints he can trace for himself, his family and his friends, and the world at large, the loving care and personal forethought of his Heavenly Father, without whom there would have been no rain to soften the earth for the growth of the seed, and no sun year by year to ripen the harvest with its rejuvenating gladness ! This thought can be further pursued with profit. To connect the supply of our daily wants with the active and direct working of Grod for his children enables us to obtain proper views about our proprietary rights. We are not the irresponsible owners under a ma- oS THANKSGIVING SERMONS. terialistic sway, but the responsible recipients under the rule of a wise and beneficent Sover- eign ; we are the stewards and trustees rather than absolute possessors. True, we may use our blessings for ourselves, but we must not use them arbitrarily or capriciously, but with due regard to the will of God as faintly discerni- ble by the twilight of nature and clearly re- vealed in the written Word. "We must restrain our selfish and indulge our benevolent affec- tions. We must make some definite acknow- ledgment, by our gifts to others, for the gifts which God, not for our deserts, but in his good- ness, hath put into our hands. We must not permit the cares of life, the friendships of life, or the pleasures of sense to so absorb our time as to prevent the performance of kindly offices to our less favored neighbors. Nor must we make strict justice and distrustful calculations the arbiters of our charities. Freely we have received from the common Father of all, freely we must give to our brethren. Say what men may, " brotherhood," in any real sense of the term, is the creation and child of Christianity. No doubt the idea has become more familiar to men's minds by commercial treaties, the easy facility of in- tercourse afforded by means of rapid and cheap traveling, by the more definite assertion over THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. 39 all the civilized world of the rights of man as man. Nevertheless it is a snare and delusion to suppose that these national tokens would have existed in their present degree but for the influence of Christianity directly and in- directly exerted ; while for Christians it would be a sign of spiritual ignorance and want of faith to imagine that the brotherhood of man- kind can securely rest upon an accidental, util- itarian, or political basis. The Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, belief in Christ as the Elder Brother and the attainment of the highest possible hu- man culture, are pairs of truths indissolubly united and inseparably linked together. The Fatherhood of God, understood in its Christian and full significance, is the principle to secure steady, onward progress of the world, and the remedy for the constantly occurring practical evils which arise out of the altered and ever- altering phases of life in a restless age. It is the duty of the patriotic political economist, as well as of the practical preacher of the gos- pel, to proclaim far and wide that the Father- hood of God is the real point of contact be- tween religious and social movements, and between secular and Christian philanthropy. The teaching of Christianity, which was not really practical enough in its scope, accounts 40 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. in a great measure for the alienation of the sons of toil from existing religious establish- ments. The truer and more comprehensive idea of Christian life now gaining ground is one of the happy omens of our future welfare. There are points of contact between all de- partments of life, and each depends upon the other for complete and healthy development. The onward march of civilization is only pos- sible when progress is made simultaneously in all branches of knowledge and in all spheres of life. Hence natural prosperity depends upon quickened life in all directions. We stand in need of leaders of Christianity who will make it clear, beyond possibility of mistake, that when they bid men say, "Our Father which art in heaven," they are willing practi- cally and fully to give expression to the prin- ciple of brotherhood and sisterhood involved in this opening address of the Lord's Prayer. On the other hand, the leaders of social and political movements must learn not to fondly dream that the regeneration of the world can be effected without acknowledgment of a per- sonal God, and of the true principle of the Fatherhood of God, which receives its right interpretation alone in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, who is at once the all-sufficient sacrifice THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. 41 for our sins and the only perfect example for all sorts and conditions of men. To the words of our Lord let us, then, go for principles which should be the guide at once of the patriotic philanthropist, politician, sci- entist, and religionist. The text accentuates and emphasizes the comprehensive as well as the practical char- acter of our Heavenly Father's benevo- lence, and holds it up for the imitation of his sons. Inattention to this lesson in the past explains much of the church's failure. Atten- tion to it in the present is necessary if we de- sire future national blessing. Its neglect for- merly has been perilous ; its neglect now under the strained relationships of society would be well-nigh fatal. Until lately it was not a rec- ognized principle that it is the bounden duty of every church that assembles for worship, in accordance with the Master's direct and express orders, to do its part and duty in the fur- therance of mission efforts at home and abroad. Until lately it was the shame of the church of Christ that it allowed vast masses to congre- gate in poorer neighborhoods without ade- quate spiritual provision and brotherly and kindly instruction. Until lately, though God caused the sun to shine to gladden all hearts, 42 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. yet we, his children, did next to nothing to brighten the surroundings of those toilers for our necessities, and in many cases for our lux- uries, who passed monotonous and insufferably dull lives, not always through their own fault, but far oftener through strange misfortunes, unbrotherly exactions, and sometimes through unequal laws made in the interest of the fa- vored one at the expense of the forgotten ninety and nine. Until lately, in our appeals to our struggling brethren, we put forward the terrors of the law rather than the love of the gospel, and seemed to wonder that cold and often life- less presentations of saving truth and repul- sive caricatures of the divine character did not win them to Christ. Until lately we thought that authority rather than brotherly sympathy would enable the church to hold her own and gallantly speed her way. Things are now happily changing, but there is considerable room for improvement; and, be it remem- bered, our personal responsibility for better- ing them has greatly increased during the last few years, when enlightened and sounder ideas of Christian brotherhood are disseminated. Among the sociological " finds " of the cen- tury we might safely name the fact of the necessity of personal contact between soul and soul as the true secret of effecting the highest THE FATHEKHOOD OF GOD. 43 and noblest results for the social and spiritual regeneration of mankind. Stately churches, sumptuous services, and eloquent sermons exert a mighty influence; but in order to make the religion of Christ find its way through the intricacies of courts and alleys, from cellar to garret, to the nooks and corners of the hitherto spiritually uncared-for spots of our cities, there must be more brotherly and sisterly service. For the success of aggressive Christianity this is the one prime crying need. Without it Christianity cannot become the re- ligion of the masses; with it, if sufficiently Christ-like in character, there are no achieve- ments beyond the power of the church. In proportion as love is self-sacrificing and sym- pathy seen to be a thing not far off, but some- thing near at hand, in that proportion will the stoutest hearts be broken, the most degraded lives be reformed, and souls apparently lost beyond recovery be won to Christ. In all or- ganizations for political and social purposes, no less than for moral and religious, the lesson is being slowly but surely learned, that the material may affect the material, but that mind can alone affect mind, and personal contact and close intercourse are necessary for allegiance and loyalty to the cause which is advocated. No institution can now hope to survive as a 44 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. living and powerful factor among civilized na- tions by the might and majesty of the most perfect machinery, unless worked by living and devoted agents who are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices and to shirk none of their responsibilities. The truth, indeed, has at last gone forth in our churches, that the practical Christian who brings the power of a loving and warm heart to instruct the ignorant, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, make the widow's heart leap for joy, befriend the friendless, does more infinite good than the learned and selfish recluse, and the formal professor, boastful of his religious privilege, but forgetful of Lazarus at his door- step. The truth, however, has not yet gone sufficiently abroad, that all omitted expres- sions of the brotherhood of man as taught by the Fatherhood of God are, in the case of Christian people, as criminal and injurious to the world as breaches of the second table of the Decalogue. There is another idea in regard to the benev- olence of G-od which is in the text held up for our example : in our services of love we must not be fitful nor too rigidly fixed. There must be a variety of wisely directed, carefully planned, and well-sustained efforts. In business concerns the desire to succeed, THE FATHEKHOOD OF GOD. 45 when really powerfully operative, suggests, so to speak, by intuition the necessary and suc- cessive steps to be taken to crown efforts with complete success. So ought it to b6 in matters relating to the kingdom of God. Real love and intense zeal for souls ought to make us happy in the discovery of ideas for doing good, and fertile in resources for usefully carrying them out. Moreover, never let it be forgotten that in Christian understanding we have one im- mense advantage. The promise of the Father is ours as well as that of the apostles : the Holy Spirit is present in pentecostal fullness to guide us into all the necessary truths for the right dis- charge of our duties and responsibilities in the days we live. Vast and appalling may seem the problems before the church, viewed either in its individual or corporate aspect, but in the sphere of our influence let the sunshine and the rain descend in due proportions, and there will be a glorious ingathering into the harvest of the nineteenth century before this last decade finally closes. Simpler ways of preaching the truth, more catholicity of benevolence, fuller belief in the Fatherly love of God for all the race as evidenced in the gift of his Son, more tangible brotherly sympathy, and deeper striv- ing to bring back those outside the church, and, highest grace of all, to love our enemies — these 46 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. are some of the practical lessons suggested by the teaching of the text, and demanded imper- atively by these times, in which there are such wonderful facilities for brotherly and sisterly service, while at the same time such festering sores to be healed, such ill-will existing between various orders of society where good- will might long ago have reigned triumphantly. Too little, indeed, has been thought or spoken or written about the fact that amid all the glories of religion, true benevolence, ani- mated by Christian motive and directed by Christian ends, is the most resplendent ; in the power of all to be exercised ; perhaps the most crowning evidence to the world in favor of the religion of Christ ; and certain in no wise to go unrewarded. It is thus that we should prove ourselves to be true sons and daughters of our Father, whose glorious sun shines for all classes, and whose refreshing rain enriches all our lands. THE PARABLE OF HARVEST. BY THE REV. W. J. DAWSON. " Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in his season." — Job v. 26. The beauty of this text is greatly heightened by the more literal translation, " like as a shock of wheat that is lifted up." It is a perfect vis- ion of the closing days of harvest. The fields are reaped, the mountains rise blue and clear in the setting sun, the reapers bind the last sheaf, and it is lifted into the heavy wagons with shouts of joy and songs of harvest-home. It is the consummation of the year : the last triumphant act in a long drama of skill and patience. Many months before the sower fore- saw this hour, when he went out in the bleak winds to sow the seed, and ever since then God and man have been busy to produce the harvest. The heavens share the triumph, for they sent the rain ; and the sun, for it pierced the hidden seed with glowing arrows ; and the soil, for it held it warm as in a mother's hand ; in its quickening the earth conspired, and in 47 48 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. its ingathering the earth rejoices. Had one single actor in the drama failed, all had failed ; rain without sun would have bred corruption, and sun without rain would have ruined all, and all the forces of God without man's help would have been impotent and insufficient. The corn-field is the meeting-place of God and man ; they keep tryst among the golden sheaves as of old in the cool of Paradise. God depends upon man, for the corn, unlike other growths of nature, must be sown and watched and tended, if it would thrive ; it will not grow wild. And man depends upon God, for he watereth the hills from his chambers, and maketh the valleys green with the springing thereof, and from first to last shields and blesses the delicate life of the corn, in which is the life of man. Every harvest-field is a place of reconciliation between God and man ; it is the temple where his Fatherly presence may be felt ; it is the point of accord where nature meets her human tenant, and crowns him with the glory of her sunshine and the benediction of her peace, and thus bids him rejoice in the victory of order, of law, and of love. 1. The first parable of harvest, then, is that harvest is God's memorial and the parable of his love. THE PARABLE OF HARVEST. 49 His promise is that, while the bow is in the heaven, springtime and harvest shall not fail. No year comes when that bridge of trembling beauty is not thrown across the firmament, and when the rain and the light, who are the master architects and artists which produce it, do not bless the earth and make it fruitful. And God sets the bow for a sign, a bright watcher or minister, to declare his good- will toward us. This may seem a very old or a very obvious legend, but at all events it is a truth, and one which we do well to remember. I am not sur- prised if we who dw*ell in cities, or even the bulk of people in our villages, do not remem- ber it, and do not care to ponder it. We have long ceased to live upon the fruit of our own soil. A good harvest or a bad harvest makes really small difference to us : are not our ships scouring every sea, and does not the whole earth yield us tribute ? Our harvest is reaped in a hundred lands by men who never knew us and never heard of us. It makes scant difference to us that our corn-fields do not whiten fast enough and do not yield much : the weather of the whole world must conspire against us before men cry for bread in our streets. We have taken steam for our part- ner, and he puts out his giant hands and gath- 50 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. ers on a thousand hills what our lands may not give should harvests fail, and carries over leagues of foaming waste the world's harvest to our doors. It is well it should be so ; but great as steam is, there is still a God, and we are still dependent on him. It is well all this should be ; but because we do not watch over our wheat-fields with fear, let us not forget that we are still fed from the hand of the Most High. There is great danger among us both of the callousness of prosperity and the secu- rity of presumption. We are no longer brought close to God in the tilling of the soil as our fathers were, and therefore we are no longer made to feel that, work as we will, we must wait for him to loosen the bands of the clouds and open the windows of heaven : the uncer- tainties, the despondencies, the eagerness of hope and fear common to all tillers of the soil a hundred years ago, are gone for us. Yet we cannot altogether ignore God and be our own Providence ; the harvest is still his great me- morial, his high and sacred sign of Fatherly care. The wheat-harvests of the world are miracu- lous. In the East it is the one supreme event of the year. Take a picture which explains it. Look at that group of bronzed men standing by the river's bank. With what eagerness THE PARABLE OF HARVEST. 51 they watch the great stream as it flows along, and how intently they mark the scale of inches on the post which measures its depth ! What are they doing ? They stand beside the Nile, and are waiting for its rise. On that rise every- thing depends : the food, the comfort, the exis- tence of a people. Every inch registered on that Kilometer is bread for thousands, and the great flood bears with it from the far places of the Dark Continent healing for the nations. For many hundred years it has not failed, but not the less each year the banks are lined with anxious watchers, who wait and hope, for whom God pours out the floods in mountain depths a thousand leagues away, and whose meal will be thus prepared in due season. Or look again. The scene is western India. For months the land has lain under the fierce heat like a parched and panting thing. " All that was green upon its face of grass or herb- age or flowery shrub has withered to a yel- low, sickly hue. The trees droop with dusty branches and faded leaves. The rivers, which were the earth's veins, are dried up, and are seen no longer ; the sun rises in the morning like a globe of fire, and sets at evening like a blood-red furnace. The wells have given out, and the cattle that should work them moan with the heat under the thickest shade. The 52 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. soil of the fields is split up by the burning heat into wide fissures ; the birds are hushed, and the beasts of the forest and jungle cower round the few patches of water remaining in the woodland hollows." For many a week no cloud has broken the blinding wall of the blue sky, but now, look! at last one faint white cloudlet appears to seaward. "Another and another cloudlet appears near it, and the set- ting sun steeps them in flaming crimson, fall- ing itself behind a black bar edged with molten gold." The next day the sky is black, and strange wafts of wind blow. The next night faint lightning gleams in the west, and the low roll of distant thunder is heard. The air is full of sound, the earth seems troubled; strange thrills and tremors run through the bosom of the mighty mother, and then there falls a great silence. The silence is profound and solemn, and the Hindu says that the sea is coming to the help of the earth. Then, at last, in a single instant, the lightning has leaped like an un- sheathed sword from the blackness, the thun- der bursts, and then, joy ! one big, warm raindrop falls, then another, then the tender plash and patter, then the swift, sudden, over- whelming rush of loosened waters, and there is a sound of abundance of rain. It is the first time a drop of rain has fallen since the pre- THE PARABLE OF HARVEST. 53 vious autumn, and the news is flashed round the globe : " The monsoon has burst ! n And if you have no better explanation of this beneficent rainfall for which the land waits than the learned jangle of atmospheric science, you mistake the means for the source, for its source has been explained long ago when the psalmist said, " These all wait upon thee : thou openest thy hand, they are filled with good : thou hidest thy face, they are troubled : thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created." That is the first and chief lesson of the har- vest : we are God's pensioners, and he spreads the table in the wilderness. And so far from our independence of our own harvest render- ing us more independent of God, it renders us the more dependent. Is it not said that when the men of Bethshemesh were reaping their wheat-harvest they lifted up their eyes and saw the ark of God, and rejoiced to see it? They looked up — they, girded for toil and wet with the sweat of labor — and lo ! in the corn- field stood a holy thing, covered with the wings of the golden cherubim and holding the mys- tery of God, and they rejoiced. Even so the ark of God stands in our harvest-fields, more glorious than the autumn light, more golden than the autumn weather. If we lift up our eyes we too shall see it, and our thankfulness 54 THANKSGIVING SEKM0NS. will take the diviner tone of worship, while we rejoice with the joy of harvest. 2. Take another parable of harvest. Eliphaz speaks of a full old age, full of records, mem- ories, achievements ; and he illustrates it by the corn. Does he not teach in this that the order of the world is use first and beauty second ? There are many things more beau- tiful than corn. True, it has a certain humble grace of its own ; but it is the democratic grace of the worker, not the aristocratic grace of the idler. The corn is rough and simple ; it holds its handful of innocent grain aloft and says, " I have no scent, no beauty that you should desire me, neither the whiteness of the lily nor the odor of the rose, neither the grace of their form nor the exquisiteness of their workman- ship ; but I have what they have not, and what is worth far more than color or fragrance — I have bread for the toiler, and food for the hun- gry." We all acknowledge the force of that claim. You could live in a world without roses, but not in a world without corn ; you like to have perfume, but you must have bread. And if you will measure beauty by use, the corn might say, " Who is more beautiful than I, who kindle health in children's faces and put vigor into men's sinews ? I am better worth the love of men than the lily that withers in a THE PABABLE OF HARVEST. 55 ('ay, or the rose out of which is crushed the delicate perfume which at best adds a lux- ury to life and fills only the chambers of the wealthy with its fragrance." That is the claim of the corn. And have you noticed that that is Christ's claim too? He never illustrates himself by a superfluity. He is bread, he is water, he is light, he is life ; he never says that he is fragrance or color or luxury. He is something we all need, just as bread and light and water are the first necessaries of life. You may have confectionery and golden wine and lustrous lamps, but you cannot very well live without bread and water and sunshine. He says that he is not mere beauty, about which opinions differ, and which may be coveted or condemned: there is no beauty in him that men should desire him. But he is the divinest use, the bread of the heart, the water of the soul, the light of life. And that is the true test of any divine life. Are you of use ? Do you feed anybody ? Is your life the strength of other lives ? Are you necessary or a super- fluity ? Are you mere light froth upon the ocean of society, a mere frivolous inanity, a lounger, a butterfly, an idler ? Yours may be beauty of face or the beauty of genius, but the beauty of use is the only true unfading beauty. That alone goes on to its full tale of honored 56 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. years, growing reverend with age, angelic with sanctity, noble with service, till at length such a life comes to the grave, like a full shock of corn which is lifted up, amid grateful acclaim and divine rejoicing. 3. The harvest is the parahle of life it- self. How little spoils both! How irrevo- cable the tendencies of each ! A slight error spoils the year's husbandry, as slight errors often spoil a whole life. Throw your seed into the earth; it is then gone out of your power, and earth will not give it back again. She cannot give it back. She will silently re- ceive the impact of your good or evil, the gift of your wheat or tares, and she will reproduce them, so that when the sheaf is bound and lifted up in the light of the last day, both will be there. Youth is wedded to age as spring is wedded to summer and springtime to harvest, and that which a man sows in youth he likewise reaps in manhood. " We sow an act, we reap a habit ; we sow a habit, we reap a character ; we sow a character, we reap a destiny." Or look again, and see in the corn an illus- tration of the solidarity of life itself The corn travels the wide world over. It has no local limit, it is cosmopolitan. It is at home in the hands of the Arab eating the few parched ears in his rapid rush across the desert, or in the THE PARABLE OF HARVEST. 57 hands of the disciples as they pluck it on the Sabbath day, or on wharf or exchange two thousand years later. It has gone into the pyramid in the hand of the mummy, and has come out again, after ages of imprisonment in the lap of corruption, to grow green and strong in a fertile fallow. It enters the palace, and is welcome ; and the cottage, and is straight- way recognized as an inalienable friend. It has no personal life: its life is for the race. In every one of these respects is the parable of life revealed. You and I live in infinite re- lations beyond our relation to the soil we thrive in and the age we are said to live in. We sow ourselves as corn is sowed, and others reap, even as we before reaped what others sowed. We come into a world made ready for us, as the corn comes. The bed is warmed, the linen is woven, the house is built, the road is made, the seat is kept for us. It is thus that the corn comes into the fallow which others have plowed, and curls itself up in the moist earth and sleeps content. But does it rest there in- active ? Does it end there ? No ; it repays the toil and trust of man, and leaps up presently and cries, " I have had enough of sleep ; " and then the spring calls it, and the winds whisper to it, and the lark pipes to it, and a million hun- gry mouths cry, " We want you sorely ; " and 58 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. then it thrusts its little green blade through the soil, and cries, " I am here, and will repay in golden grain over a hundredfold all the care and patience you have lavished on me." And so it is with us, and it is ours to make the same response. We were expected, and we came. We fell into the place others had prepared for us. We have appropriated to ourselves the discoveries of science, the wealth of truth, the moral riches of the ages. We sail on ships which others have built, we read books which others wrote, we travel on roads which others have made. We are the heirs of all their labor, the residuary legatees of all their love. What then ? We must needs keep up the tradition and fulfil the obligation. We must go on toil- ing for others as others have toiled for us ; we must even be ready to die for others as men once died for us. We must push onward into the wastes of human society, and sow them with noble deeds, that that which others left undone because their feet were weary and life was short it may be ours to perfect and accom- plish. He who does not do this is a traitor to his race, a foul mildewed ear of corn, a thing which earth will not nourish and the very cattle will reject, a thing to be trodden under foot of men, as unfit for food or honor ; and he who does this shall come to his grave as a shock THE PABABLE OE HARVEST. 59 of corn, having served his generation by the will of God. 4. The harvest is, again, the parable of death. What is death ? "We know it only as decay, corruption, decomposition. We know that the earth is full of it, that it is one vast graveyard, walled in alone by the blue walls of heaven. We see birds and fruits and flow- ers all gliding down to its abyss ; and we too at last totter down its dark stairs into nothing- ness. We can safely hide ourselves from mal- ice there ; in a few years our worst enemy will not be able to find a trace of us ; we shall be mere bitter dust mingled with other dust — " Rolled round in earth's diurnal course, With rocks and stones and trees." But we know another thing — that decomposi- tion is recomposition. Nothing perishes, be- cause there is no waste in nature. She sweeps up every chard and fragment and uses them again, that nothing be lost. And therein is the parable of the corn : " Thou fool, it is not quickened, except it die." It lives to die; it dies to live. It dies to self: for if it could speak might it not protest against the sickle that severs its slender stalk, and the millstone that grinds it, and the dark earth that shuts it down in so stifling an embrace ? Might it not 60 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. cry aloud to drink the blithe air and wave in the sweet breeze and listen to the lark's carol a little longer ! But at the bidding of a higher wisdom it goes meekly down to its appointed place, and lo ! the months pass and it lives again. It is multiplied, it is carried afar, it relives in a hundred fields, and men bless it, and bind its golden tassels on their chariots, and pile its yellow stalks on the altars of the church when they praise God in his holy tem- ple. Even so death is the lifting up of the shock of corn into fuller usefulness and life. Going to the grave is ascension, not descen- sion; it is transfiguration, not annihilation. The man has reached a full age — it may be even in youth as we reckon life — for he is ripe and he is gathered, and his influence is con- summated and broadened from that hour, so that it is " forever and forever well with him." Here, then, we have the revelation both of the true purpose and the true triumph of life. The purpose of life is use. That is the great lesson of nature from first to last. Nothing walks with aimless feet : everything which God has made contributes directly to the great com- monwealth of his creation. The flower purges the air, the insect ministers to the flower ; the very earthworm, insignificant and repulsive as it appears, is the silent laborer who creates the THE PARABLE OF HARVEST. 61 soil of continents ; and thus the same law of use which lights the stars sets the lowest insect and vegetable its appointed task in the perpet- ual ministration of the universe. Nature is simply a vast hive, in which the pulse of labor is never stilled and the hum of toil never ceases. What then are you doing? What are you doing as a Christian ? Is any one the poorer or the happier for your presence in the world ? Do you minister to others or are you ministered unto ? The Lord Jesus in the same night that he was betrayed, in that hour when the shadow of his supreme sacrifice rested on him, said, " It is more blessed to give than to receive." Have you realized that in that hour Christ announced the supreme law of Chris- tianity itself? Have you realized that it is not what you think or wish or feel, not the delight you have in devout and holy worship, or even the spiritual unction you may feel in a service like this, that is the test of your re- ligion, but what you do — the degree of use you are to others in the great commonwealth of man ? And the difference between the service of nature and of man lies in this : that while the plant or insect cannot choose or shirk its service, you can. You can isolate yourself from the noble toils of love; you can refuse to stretch out a helping hand to the poor ; you 62 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. can turn aside from the great social and politi- cal questions of your time ; you can sleep while others labor, and enjoy while others suffer, and sit in the feast of folly while others are broken on the pillory of sorrow. "If Christianity were preached, taught, and understood in the spirit of its Founder," a great Frenchman has said, " there are many things in our social or- ganization which would not last a single day," and it is a true and faithful saying. For Chris- tianity is not the rapture of worship, but the healing of social wrongs, and if we cannot Christianize our socialism we can at least so- cialize our Christianity. That is the Chris- tianity of Christ — labor, use, service — the re- deeming of men at the price of sacrifice, the redemption of society by the power of love ; and he who fulfils these purposes is doing the will of G-od, and shall abide forever. And the true triumph of life is revealed here also. It is to be sacrificed. To be used is often to be sacrificed, even as the corn must be plucked and ground before it can become bread. But the sacrifice is the consummation of its life : it is its true triumph. We com- monly think with some commiseration of the martyrs, or at least we think rather of their physical deprivations than their moral great- ness; but if we measured things rightly we THE PARABLE OF HARVEST. 63 should understand that the man whose life is flung away for a cause or a truth has gained the very highest development of which life is capable, and is the noblest of victors. For when all this life is over for us all, will there be any true glory left for any of us, unless it be the glory of having been used of God, of having been of some true service to others ? Do you remember what the old prophet said, " The land mourns because the corn is wasted" ! And that is the great mourning and lamenta- tion which fills our land to-day — wasted pow- ers of thought, of feeling, of affection ; wasted enthusiasms and opportunities ; lives with the possibilities of greatness in them shrunk into shallow, trivial, worthless things; corn that might have gladdened earth with its harvest left to sterility or rottenness, or distilled to evil uses in the fierce alembic of the prince of this world. Let not your lives be the exposi- tions of such a parable as this. Let them rather be the expositions of that higher, no- bler parable of the corn which passes through all its stages of development to find a larger use with each change, and in all to be a source of gladness because a source of ceaseless good and service to the world. THE CHAIN OF BLESSING. BY J. MONRO GIBSON, D.D. " I will hear, saith the Lord, I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth ; and the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil ; and they shall hear Jezreel." — Hosea ii. 21, 22. The language of the text is poetical and highly figurative, but quite easy of compre- hension. The word Jezreel means "seed of God." It is the name used by this prophet to designate the people of God. We have here, then, as it were, a picture of the whole process by which God answers his people when they pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." There are, first, the people looking to the corn, and the wine, and the oil, i.e., the pro- ductions of the year, and pleading for their share ; and the corn, and the wine, and the oil hear, i.e., grant them what they need. Again, the corn, and the wine, and the oil are repre- sented as looking to the earth to produce them; earth hears and grants the request. 64 THE CHAIN OF BLESSING. 65 Earth in her turn looks up to heaven for the sunshine and the rain which she needs ; heaven hears and grants the blessing. Is this all? Does this terminate the process? Xo; we must rise a step farther before we reach the summit. There is One who sits above the heavens, to whom in their turn the heavens must address their prayer, a prayer which finds its answer, too, like aU the rest : u I will hear, saith the Lord, I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth : and the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil ; and they shall hear Jezreel." The passage is not only beautiful but sug- gestive. Its range is very wide. It leads us all along the chain of effect and cause from man through nature up to God. Beginning at the lower extremity we find ourselves first in the wide and busy domain of political econ- omy, with its two branches of production and distribution. " Earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil" (production): u they shall hear Jezreel" (distribution). Stepping upward we reach the sphere of natural science, and the highest raises us to the lofty regions of theology. In endeavoring to open up the passage a little, let us follow the chain in the other di- rection, beginning with the highest link, so to 66 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. speak, though we may find as we proceed that the theology of the passage is not by any means confined to the highest link, but ex- tends down through all the chain. Pursuing this order, the first truth we are taught is that however many links may seem to intervene in nature's chain, if followed up, it always leads to God at last. The bounteous harvest which lately waved in rich luxuriance in our plains and valleys, and now fills our granaries, is the gift of God. The sower sowed the seed; but whence came the seed? Do you tell me it came by some process of evolution ? That is no answer to the question whence it came. It only provokes another question, leading us to ask not only whence came the thing evolved ? but whence came the process of evolution ? Who started it ? Who superintended it ? Then, leaving the seed, whence came that power which made it spring and grow and multiply a hundredfold ? The rains of heaven watered it; but "hath the rain a father? and who hath begotten the drops of dew ? " " Are there any among the vanities of the Gentiles that can cause rain ? or can the heavens give showers? Art not thou he, O Lord our God? therefore we will wait upon thee: for thou hast made all these things." We may carry THE CHAIN OF BLESSING. 67 back the chain of second causes as far as we may, we shall always find the farthest link fastened to the throne of the Omnipotent. Such is the great truth conveyed in the lovely imagery of the text : " I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth ; and the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil ; and they shall hear Jezreel." But another important truth is suggested. There is first the promise given in its plain, prosaic, literal form : " I will hear, saith the Lord ;" and then the poetic unfolding in detail. The short statement covers all the ground of the longer one. When the heavens and the earth and the products of the earth are repre- sented as hearing the requests addressed to them, it is of course only a poetic figure, of which the literal truth is conveyed in the gen- eral promise, " I will hear, saith the Lord." It is God that hears, not only at the extremity of the chain, but through it all, between each separate link, however long it be. Thus it is that we carry our theology all the way. The second lesson, then, is, that not only is God the Great First Cause, but he is in all inter- mediate causes too. We speak of " laws," laws of nature : the law of gravitation, for example, according to which rain falls from heaven upon the expectant earth ; the law of production, in 68 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. accordance with which the earth brings forth her fruits ; the law of distribution, in accor- dance with which these productions reach those who are in want of them. But who made the laws? And if the attempt is made to evade the force of the question by saying that the laws were enacted long ago, a second question comes : Who enforces the laws ? There must be power to do this; where is it? The hea- vens have no power ; earth has no power ; rain has no power. Where is the power then? " God hath spoken once ; twice have I heard this; that power belongeth unto God." As, therefore, we follow down the chain, let us not forget that in all these lower links as well as in the highest we see the power of God. "The heavens shall hear the earth/' What wondrous power in these silent plead- ings of Mother Earth ; or rather what wondrous power in Him who hears them ! What vast machinery he sets in motion to grant the prayer of her petition ; yet how simple in its vastness ! The sun's rays fall upon the earth, and the light and heat they bring are food to the hungry soil. They fall upon the sea ; and from it rises a watery vapor, which, borne aloft and borne along, reaches its appointed place, and, distilling into raindrops, supplies drink to the thirsty ground. Thus it is that the hea- THE CHAIN OF BLESSING. 69 vens, or rather He who sitteth on the heavens, hears the earth when she cries to Him. " The earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil." "We might here again follow a line of thought somewhat like the preceding. We might speak, for example, of the strange history of the seed: buried, decay- ing, dying, reviving, springing, growing, flow- ering, bearing, " in some thirty, in some sixty, and in some an hundred fold." This would still keep us in the domain of natural science. But it is time now to look in another direction. Has it never struck you as a remarkable thing that there should be such a regular pro- portion between what is produced and what is needed for consumption in a given year ? This might not excite our wonder if there were some world-wide regulation setting apart so many of the human family for directly productive labor. But when we think that the whole thing is left to individual choice, is it not evident that there must be some power at work to preserve the necessary equilibrium ? There is, indeed, the law of demand and supply to regulate this. When the number of persons engaged in any particular business is too small, profits in that business rise, and thus others are attracted to it, until demand and supply are equalized, and profits reach the ordinary level. But, besides 70 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. that this law is not sufficient of itself to keep the equilibrium as constant as it is, we must remember that this law is just like other laws. It implies a lawgiver. It implies a power above ourselves. The law of demand and supply is not found, any more than is the law of gravita- tion, in any earthly statute-book. It is a law of God. And we have him to thank that we do not find ourselves, some of these winters, in our fine houses, with our rich furniture about us, libraries well supplied with books, walls with pictures, and mantelpieces with or- naments, and nothing to eat. There is such a calamity as famine, and we have to thank G-od that it has not come to our doors. After all, however, any famine we ever read of or wit- ness is only partial, and can be relieved by the transference of food from those places where it is in abundance. But what if there were a universal famine some year ? Let us glance now at the last link: "The corn, the wine, and the oil shall hear Jezreel." We have here a portion of the human family looking for their share of the year's products and getting it. A simple enough process surely ; yet not so simple as it seems. Food is produced where population is scanty ; it is wanted mainly where population is dense. Archbishop Whately, in his lectures THE CHAIN OF BLESSING. 71 on political economy, in showing what an ex- traordinary thing it is that a city like London should be so regularly and proportionately supplied even with the most perishable articles of consumption, acutely remarks that u man's foresight often gets the credit for what is due to God's wisdom." And if we think of it, we shall see that all foresight of man would ut- terly fail for a work so stupendous as this. Suppose that God's overruling providence in this matter were removed for a time, and it became necessary for the municipal authori- ties, or for some board appointed for the pur- pose, to see that a sufficient number of men were employed to bring a sufficient supply of food into the metropolis, how should we fare ! What board or council would undertake to cater for a million ! It is difficult to tell where the science of po- litical economy now stands ; many of the ac- cepted principles of twenty years ago are called in question in these days of the sifting of all things ; but it is our belief that in the end it will be found that the best economy of man is to follow the economy of God. It is God who manages the great household of the human family. It is he who hears not only the hea- vens when they call, but Jezreel and Xew York when they call. It is God who makes the sun 72 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. to shine and the rain to fall ; it is he who makes the earth to fructify and bear ; it is he who se- cures a sufficient production of the necessaries of life year by year ; and it is he who by the operation of the laws which regulate social life brings what we want to our very doors. All these things are done by intermediate agencies — by the powers of nature or the energy of man ? or both ; but the entire process is super- intended and controlled by the God of nature and of providence, who is indeed " God over all, blessed forever" — to whom, therefore, it is meet that we give thanks and praise for the goodness with which he has crowned another year. But besides the very obvious fact that agri- cultural prosperity is the foundation of all material welfare, and that to a very large ex- tent our manufacturers derive their raw ma- terial from the yearly products of the soil, it is important to remember that all we have said is just as applicable to manufactures as to agriculture. Many have the idea that the farmer is more dependent on the divine power than the artisan or the manufacturer. It is a great mistake. The chain along which we de- rive our manufactured goods from the Giver of all good may be longer than the other ; but it is just as true, not only that God is at the THE CHAIN OF BLESSING. 73 upper end of it, but in each intermediate link. This is an obvious enough thought, and yet it is overlooked by many who suppose that in the products of the field we see the results of the divine power, whereas in the products of the loom we see what man can do. Such over- look the fact that no machine can produce power ; it can only take some natural agent which is ready furnished to the mechanic, as the sunshine and the rain are to the farmer, and bring it to bear at the point and in the way necessary to secure the end. In this con- nection it is interesting to know, according to the recent teaching of science, that all the force which is used in all our factories is ultimately traceable to the sun. Are they driven by water-power ? It is the sun which has raised the water from the level of the ocean and given it a head. Are they driven by steam-power? It was the sun which millions of years ago poured its rays on the luxurious vegetation of the Carboniferous era, and filled it full of a latent force which, after the leaves and stems and roots containing it had been pressed and hardened and blackened underground, should be available to those who in future ages should dig it up as coal, and use it to heat their houses and drive their engines. It is fully allowed now by scientific men that force is as inde- 74 THANKSGIVING SEBMONS. structible as matter, that man can neither in- crease nor diminish it ; and after all is not this just a nineteenth-century way of putting the same old truth which Grod taught the psalmist three thousand years ago : " Grod hath spoken once; twice have I heard this; that power belongeth unto Grod"? In our manufactures as in agriculture, the raw material on the one hand and the power to work it up on the other, and all these qualities of the different metals and other substances which are made use of in the process — all these are of God, and of him only. There has been considerable stagnation in many branches of our manufacturing and com- mercial industries. But have we really wanted for anything? Have our comforts been much abridged ? Have we not all, or almost all, of us nearly everything that we could reasonably desire? Surely, then, we have no reason to complain of hard times, or to refrain from giv- ing unto Grod our heartiest thanks and praise on this Thanksgiving Day. There has been, indeed, and will be, no doubt, this winter, much suffering among the poor. Those who suffer, however, belong to one or other of two classes : first, that large class whose privations are di- rectly traceable to improvidence or intemper- ance, or both; and second, a much smaller THE CHAIN OF BLESSING. 75 class of deserving poor, for whom the Father of all cares as tenderly as he does for the rich, and even more tenderly, and who will one day find that their earthly poverty has been a bless- ing in disguise, first to themselves, and then to those who had the privilege of helping them in their time of need. We must indeed pro- vide for the undeserving as well as for the de- serving poor, for the greatest sin should never put a man or a woman beyond the reach of mercy and charity; but we must of course draw a very sharp line of distinction, using caution, strictness, even sternness when neces- sary, with the former, but dealing in all kind- ness and liberality with the latter. Our char- itable societies are doing noble work, for the most part wisely and well. Still they cannot do the whole. We ought all to do our share, not certainly by giving thoughtlessly to im- portunate beggars, but by seeking out for our- selves some needy ones whom we can help. Let us seek out as the objects of our special charity those who are so sensitive and so in- dependent that they will suffer want rather than let their wants be known. This will be far better evidence of our gratitude than any amount of devotion on a Thanksgiving Day. We had intended to have spoken of many other things ; but it is vain to try to cover the 76 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. ground of God's mercies — " If we should count them, they are more in number than the sand." Let us all try to think of as many as we can : our personal mercies, our family mercies, our social mercies, our national mercies ; the prev- alence of peace, the absence of pestilence, the stability of our institutions, the restraint of evil, the furtherance of good — these and such as these will afford food for meditation and fuel for the fires of gratitude and love which surely ought to burn in every heart. "THE DEW UNTO ISRAEL." BY THE REV. J. ROBINSON GREGORY. " I will be as the dew unto Israel." — Hosea xiv. 5. The prophecies of Hosea cover so long a period — some sixty years — that it is clear that we possess only specimens of the addresses he was accustomed to deliver. The last chapter forms a sort of summary of his appeals and exhortations. The words, " I will be as the dew unto Israel," follow immediately the healing of the backslid- ing and the proclamation of God's free love. In them and in the next four verses the over- flowing love of God, his quenchless generosity, find vent. The style is mainly metaphorical, the comparisons being drawn from Nature as she appears in Palestine. It is thus nearly impossible for us who live on another conti- nent, under very different physical conditions, to appreciate their full force. The general idea, however, we can catch. 77 78 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. "I will be as the dew unto Israel." "With us the dew is little noticed. We look to the clouds to supply all that grows upon the earth with sufficient moisture. Our poets sing of it — how it glistens in the sunlight; how, gemlike, it ornaments every flower, every grass-blade, in the early morning. Our men of science ponder it, and are only partially satisfied as to its cause. But we do not rate highly its substantial benefit. In Judea great heat and little rain make the dew as important as it is beautiful. But for it the fields of Israel would speedily become a mass of dry, withered herbage. Three circumstances render the dew a pecu- liarly appropriate symbol of God's sustaining care for his people, his constant grace. First, the dew falls regularly, in summer as in winter, in autumn as in spring. Showers descend at indefinite intervals — the dew is a continual daily blessing. Second, it conies quietly, not like the rushing thunder-storm nor in the broad sunshine, but in the night, when no one perceives its advent. Thirdly, there is mys- tery connected with it — at any rate, in popular thought. Thus Israel is promised daily bene- diction, refreshment shed forth without in- termission and without disturbance. Their peaceful happiness shall be unalloyed by fe- "THE DEW UNTO ISRAEL." 79 verish anxiety for fresh supplies. While they rest God shall work for them. He shall be to them a ceaseless, soft, still influence for good. Thus, too, does he communicate grace to his believing children. He is as the dew unto his spiritual Israel. How gently, how continu- ously, he blesses us! Often we feel sweet peace when we are half unconscious of its source. Our soul's life would languish, would fail suddenly, were it not for the secret sup- port vouchsafed to us by Grod. Thus watered from on high, Israel "shall grow (or blossom) as the lily." We may not be able to decide to what partic- ular species of " lily " the prophet refers, but there can be no doubt that he has in his thought the beauty of the flower, the rapidity of its growth, and its amazing productiveness. With the lily is associated also the idea of purity. The Christian does not grow accord- ing to one rigid rule, is not fashioned after one invariable pattern. There are freedom and spontaneity about his development. The results of the divine blessing appear quickly. The tall lily, elegant in shape, gorgeous in coloring, prolific in growth, sending forth leaves and flowers freely, forms a choice em- blem of Christian beauty and fertility. But the lily is extremely fragile, and it is 80 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. short-lived. It can last but a single season ; it may endure for a much shorter period. A child's hand may pinch a flower and then throw it away to wither. The hoof of passing cattle may trample it into the mire. Another com- parison must exhibit Israel's strength and stability. He shall "cast forth his roots as Lebanon," i.e., as the cedar of Lebanon. What type drawn from the vegetable world can bet- ter set forth firmness than the cedar of Leba- non ? It retains its vigor for centuries. Pos- sibly there are cedars still living which heard the ax of Solomon's workmen as they cut down trees for the cedar-work of the temple. Win- ter storms have served only to tighten the hold of the roots, winter snows to give a more graceful curve to the branches. The roots clasp themselves around the rock, and there- fore the tree stands unshaken. So the Chris- tian is strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Rested in the Rock of Ages, he bids defiance to the world, the flesh, and the devil. Tribulation and temptation increase his strength and hasten his growth. " His branches shall spread." The flour- ishing tree sends out new suckers continually, which take root and themselves grow into trees, to repeat the process again and again. Israel multiplies as well as grows. The one U THE DEW UNTO ISRAEL." 81 tree becomes many trees. The application attaches rather to the church than to the indi- vidual Christian, though the figure was used generally of strength and progress. Still, through his efforts to lead others to Christ, the Christian may be said to multiply himself. " His beauty shall be as the olive-tree." To an Oriental eye the olive-tree is actually beautiful. But we fairly may employ the olive as a type of usefulness. The Christian pos- sesses the beauty of holiness, but it is not a mere personal adornment and delight. It leads to earnest service on behalf of the bodies and souls of men. The very character of the true Christian renders him useful. Whether un- obtrusively in the home or in more public philanthropy, he is ever ready to render to all men kindly service and help. " And his smell as Lebanon." Travelers tell us that the fragrance of Lebanon extends to a considerable distance from its mountains and valleys, owing partly to its cedars, and partly to various sweet-smelling plants which are produced profusely. The " smell " results from the emission of invisible particles which impinge upon the olfactory nerves. The per- fume is exhaled continuously and without effort. The metaphor may illustrate the in- fluence exerted by the Christian ceaselessly 82 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. and often unconsciously. How often have men been compelled to acknowledge the truth and power of Christianity, have even been brought to experience and embrace them, through the quiet but potent influence of a faithful Christian life ! "They that dwell under his shadow shall return." The figure represents Israel as a wide-spreading, umbrageous tree. It is not quite easy, however, to fix the precise meaning of the prophet's words. If we trans- late, or rather paraphrase, " They shall return and dwell under his shadow," we have a meta- phor expressing the protection of the church over those who do not actually belong to her. Many who are not real Christians are glad to live in Christian countries, and to be governed by Christian laws. Or we may render, " They that dwell under his shadow shall grow wise," and the words will allude to the teaching and instructing power of the ^church and of the private Christian. " They shall revive as the corn." Even prosperous Israel may have his seasons of de- pression and apparent feebleness. The green stalk has forced itself through the ground, and encounters the fierce heat of the Eastern sun. Soon it lies seemingly lifeless upon the parched earth, stricken by the sun. But the night mists "the DEW UNTO ISRAEL." 83 and the morning dew enwrap it, so that it drinks in the blessed moisture, and once more it erects its head and recovers its greenness. Often is the struggling blade compelled to lie prostrate, but as often it revives, until it can endure the hot sunshine, and in its season brings forth thirty, sixty, an hundred fold. Sometimes a kind of wireworm will gnaw the root, and worse damage ensues than is wrought by the heat. But even then the dew enables the corn to triumph over its foe, to reach per- fection in spite of it. Thus tribulation or per- secution, or the assaults of insidious sin, may render the Christian feeble, may cause him to fail. But the dew of divine grace descends upon him. He who restoreth the soul vouch- safes his Holy Spirit to him, and again he rises strong in humility and trust. Few truths are more consolatory to the earnest follower of Christ, cognizant of his own weakness and of his danger through the onsets and devices of the evil one, than that he can be lifted up from his fall, supported under care and trouble and sorrow, cleansed from and strengthened against his sin. "And grow (or blossom) as the vine." Perhaps Hosea's thought was concerned main- ly with the fertility of the vine and the beauty and richness of its clusters. We may, how- 84 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. ever, legitimately ascribe another signification to the figure. All the preceding metaphors imply power to stand alone, without extrane- ous support. The stately cedar, the delicate lily, the thin corn-stalk, rear themselves erect. But the vine is not intended to stand upright by its own power. It must lean on some- thing else. It must be fastened to the wall, or trained over poles or trellis-work. And the Christian must ever rely on a strength be- yond his own. He leans upon the Beloved. Some species of dwarf vines can flourish with- out props. Every attempt of the believer to stand alone, every moment's forgetfulness of his dependence, tends to dwarf his spiritual stature and to diminish his fruitfulness. Let us remember gladly, gratefully, constantly, that we may and must rest on as well as in God. " The scent thereof shall he as the wine of Lebanon." For " scent " the margin gives " memorial," an alternative rendering that sug- gests the interpretation. Travelers speak en- thusiastically of its bouquet, of the length of time during which the pleasant taste remains on the palate after the other effects have passed away. This is its " scent," which abides when the wine itself is no more. Can a more appropriate illustration be con- "THE DEW UNTO ISRAEL." 85 ceived of the abiding influence of a Christian's life, example, work, after he has left this world? His memory is an inspiration. His good deeds live after him. The church pos- sesses enormous treasure in the biographies of the saints. But no good man's influence dies with himself : it extends at least to the third or fourth generation. Their memorial is as the wine of Lebanon. Thus Israel, the Christian church, the indi- vidual believer, is blessed with the freedom and beauty of the lily; the strength, expan- sion, and self -propagation of the cedar; the usefulness of the olive ; the recuperative power of the corn ; the fertility and tender clinging- ness of the vine ; the abiding memory of the wine of Lebanon. In him the most opposite and mutually exclusive properties inhere and harmonize. Nature is strained to do him homage and to express his excellences. The ninth verse presents some difficulties of interpretation, even for purely practical pur- poses. "We may accept the question, " What have I to do with idols?" as the speech of Ephraim, and as expressing the utmost abhor- rence of idolatry, and his wonder that he could ever have preferred the cult of the idol to the service of Jehovah. " I have heard him, and will regard him," is certainly Jehovah's reply. 86 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. (Compare Jer. viii. 6 ; Ps. xxxii. 8, B. V.) But who is it that says, "I am like a green fir- tree " ? It is quite possible to understand it of Ephraim. In that case Ephraim declares his astonishment that he, who had been so fickle and faithless, should be preserved continually in vigorous health. Or we may ascribe the words to Jehovah, who, after comparing his people to trees and plants, condescends to em- ploy similar imagery concerning himself. In- dubitably the words, " From me is thy fruit found," proceed from God. If the previous clause belongs to Ephraim, the words remind him that he owes his rejuvenescence and pro- ductiveness solely to the Lord. The objection that the fir-tree does not bear any fruit is by no means fatal. The inference would be that no symbol taken from the vegetable world could exhibit the divine perfection; that the contradiction was designed to show how great- ly the Almighty transcends any comparison that may be used regarding him. " From me is thy fruit found." One is re- minded of our Lord's parable of the vine and its branches (John xv. 4, 5). Prosper and flourish as the Christian may, let him ever keep in mind that his goodness, beauty, and happiness are all derived from God, and that by continual communication. " All my foun- UNTO ISRAEL." 87 tains are in thee." God is the continuous source of all our perfection and joy. From him come mercies " new every morning." Here is the remedy for the weariness and monotony of life — the freshness of each successive gift of God. THE PLOWMAN TAUGHT OF GOD. BY THE REV. FRANCIS STANDFAST. "For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him." — Isa. xxviii. 26. " For his God doth instruct him aright, and doth teach him." — Revised Version. Nature has many striking contrasts — the oasis, with its feathery palm and sweet water in the desert : the vineyard, with its purple clusters and luxuriant verdure untouched, sur- rounded by the fiery scoria and lava which the mighty volcano has vomited; the ships safely anchored within the breakwater, while a trium- phant sea hurls itself on the rocks, or engulfs the ships beyond. Even so this chapter has for us a glad surprise. The heaviest and dark- est judgments have been denounced against the Jews : but in the midst of this we catch gentler tones: " Give ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech." This solemn invocation is given that we may listen to a pleasing parable or allegory. Under the fig- 88 THE PLOWMAN TAUGHT OF GOD. 89 ure of the husbandman dealing with the soil, we have portrayed God's method of dealing with his people. Some people prize things because they are ancient, and would even justify their own sins because of the original sin of Adam. Agricul- ture is the most ancient of all pursuits, for Adam was a gardener, Cain a farmer, Abel a herdsman; and Cain did not go to live in a city or attempt to build one until after he had committed his great crime. It is not only the most ancient, but also the most necessary, and all other pursuits could be more readily spared than this. The most careless observer who walks through an agricultural show must be forcibly struck with the great importance of agriculture. How foolish and sinful it is for those who possess wealth acquired by the toil of others, and who are designated independent, to despise or oppress those on whose humble toil they are indeed most dependent ! What would be the value of the broad acres if left without culture? It is the toil of the peas- ant which makes them productive, and which wrings from the soil those ample revenues that sustain the proprietor in luxurious ease. Of what benefit would be those pieces of sil- ver, gold, or paper which we call cash, without indefatigable industry producing the necessa- 90 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. ries and comfort which money brings ? Would coin satisfy the cravings of hunger ? No more than molten gold could assuage thirst. The painter must lay down his brush and palette, the poet his pen, the philosopher suspend his experiments, and the voice of the orator be dumb, the jeweled crown become a worthless bauble, the most stately palace become a re- gion of desolation, but for the labor of the ag- riculturist and fisherman. » Labor is the foundation on which the mighty fabric of human society rests, and none but the vain, proud, and foolish will overlook their obligation to the toilers. Acknowledged reci- procity of advantage should bind all classes to- gether in one strong, common bond of mutual support ; for if the man of leisure is dependent on those sons of toil for the very necessity of existence, it is equally certain that to such the toilers are indebted for the social order which preserves liberty and life, for the books which inspire to intellectual elevation, and for the sciences which indefinitely expand the com- pass of our being. If the arch be indebted to the foundation-stone for its very existence, it could not retain its graceful sweep or strength one moment without its keystone. Let us contemplate the method of the divine teaching. THE PLOWMAN TAUGHT OF GOD. 91 1. The plowman teaches us a lesson of preparation. " Doth the plowman plow all day to sow ? cloth he open and break the clods of his ground?" Yes. Here is painstaking, honorable toil. If an end be good, then it is wise and honorable to strive to secure it. The plowman aims at the harvest : the plowing is a necessary preparation. God prepared much for man before he introduced him into Eden. God would not bring his favorite creature man into a dreary, cheerless world, but into one glowing with beauty, impressive in magnifi- cence, overflowing with goodness. What a home was Paradise ! nothing spared, nothing overlooked, nothing grudged. No cradle for an emperor's child was ever prepared with such magnificence as the world has been for man. Earth, God's cradle for the human race, is in- deed curiously carved and decorated, flower- strewn and gossamer-curtained, and man is only working together with God when he strives to do his part in making this earth yield its wealth and increase in harmony with the divine appointment. For this the plow- man is ready to plow all day, and to open and break the clods. 2. A lesson of activity. The plowman has passed the time of deliberation ; he has decided, and decision has led to action. The irresolute 92 THA2T£SGrvrS-G S£P,MONS. spend much time in deliberation — it maybe a lifetime — and do nothing. The: truth in Bacon's complain:, that "some i insult too long, adventure iittle, repent :oo soon, an". Beldam drive business ;_;: ne." This aphorism applies, alas ! the world and the church. But i sheer necessity need from it : they drive business home in a most prac- 1 mann-: : yet plowing if : — - is nc at recompense. The long chilly winter, the shy retiring q ring the om- nipotent Bummer, must :heir force with- out abatement \ rest is won. All ist be ] repaired for; the- fisest who spend more rim ig for high office than in dame it. A few d I: is more Hum [ ssibk thai ab fa Phid- isr PnodJ ;iried in the mmuli of Athens; bnt men ought ~ bemoi stat- in the temple of Provide 1 1 -ooneror r find their proper niches, contributing I e, adornment, and finish of the world. I: you acquire aD the fitness for high place, and do not reach it, the world an d D] be the k sen ; will only have lost much wony ami But ae whose THE PLOWMAN TAUGHT OF GOD. 93 place you take, and the world, with all coming generations, may be the losers. "High sta- tions," says D'Alembert, " are like the top of a pyramid, accessible only to an eagle or to a creeping thing." I will not assume that you are creeping things — some, alas ! have not per- severance enough to achieve that high rank — I will assume that you are eaglets. Be wary, then, and do not try to soar to the loftiest mountain crags, where the ice-king reigns, and the thunder stores its magazine and forges its bolts, before you have tried your wings in lower regions. One of the strongest proofs of a sound religion is to be thankful for any heights which it is possible to scale, and to be as thankful for the continuous valley in which human duty is best discharged. Present hap- piness, at least, depends more upon plowing in the valley than dreaming on the top of the mountain. Preparation should be earnest, constant, exhaustive, painstaking, in propor- tion to the good sought to be attained. There is one occupation which is ever green, its leaf never fades, of which we need never be weary, which is good for all seasons, beautiful at all times, a source of unwearying delight, which comes nearest to the divine, and that is — do- ing good. This is almost the only pleasure which increases as life goes on; almost the 94 THANKSGIVING SEKM0NS. only investment which is absolutely safe at all times. While we may absolve young people to a large extent from great philanthropic ac- tivity, yet we do not absolve them from pre- paring themselves for it as earnestly as plow- man prepares the soil, or the student prepares himself for his examination for his degree. Man is the great spendthrift of the moral uni- verse; he knows more about the saving of money than the conservation of energy. As- tronomers tell us of worlds fusing and passing away in vapor. Man creates many such. It may be that the majority outside the Christian church " spend money for that which is not bread, and labor for that which satisfieth not." Ulysses could not discover a happier method of making his foes believe in his insanity than by plowing up the sand by the sea-shore. How much quick-witted invention degenerates to the same folly ! Often within the church, where heavenly wisdom ought to shine, mat- ters are not much improved. How many are at ease in Zion ! How many shirk the plow- ing altogether ! How many let noxious weeds grow apace! How many miss the time of open-handed sowing, and yet expect to wake up when the song of harvest-home fills the air, and to gather their own golden sheaves ! The world has never witnessed miracles of this kind. THE PLOWMAN TAUGHT OF GOD. 95 There is still a sense in which the children of the world are wiser than the children of light. Many of these count years not wasted to ac- quire proficiency in mere vanities and triviali- ties over which angels well may weep. Dugald Stewart tells of one who spent fifteen years of his life in acquiring mathematical precision in balancing a pole on his chin. A Chinese jug- gler has to practise many hours a day from early infancy in order to acquire that supple- ness of joint, firmness of muscle, quickness and precision of movement, which shall en- able him to revolve four balls simultaneously through their mimic orbits. " You charge me fifty sequins," said a Venetian nobleman to a sculptor, " for a bust that cost you only ten days of labor." " You forget," replied the ar- tist, " that I have been thirty years learning to make that bust in ten days." The plowman, sculptor, painter, even the juggler and mounte- bank, reprove countless millions for the little preparation they make to labor for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life. 3. A lesson of prudence. " Grod giveth him discretion." All toil that is honest is honorable, but that is the most honorable which employs the greatest variety of our powers. The measure of physical power de- fines not the degree of honor ; if so, any one of 96 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. the insensate, unyielding, potent laws of na- ture would surpass man's supremest work. The lowliest of the laborers in the Carrara quarries may put forth more strength in ex- cavating the block of marble than Michael Angelo in sculpturing his Moses, most ma- jestic and impressive of all works of art. The mere physical strength which cannot rival brute force, the mechanical skill which the in- stinctive precision of the ant or bee or beaver can excel, cannot hope to rival the higher faculties of reason and judgment. All labor, up to a certain point, strengthens the powers exercised ; development of the good is not, and cannot be, anything but honorable ; therefore, in proportion as the higher and nobler powers are brought into exercise, there is high and ennobling toil. Many call the toiler in the field a clodhopper, as though he had no spark of celestial reason, as if the toil were as purely mechanical as the work of the steam-plow. But this is insulting to the Lord of the vine- yard, for his God doth instruct him to discre- tion, and doth teach him. He has a modified kind of inspiration. He uses his brains as well as his hands, his common sense as well as his eyes, his understanding as well as his feet. Oh, how much of the service offered to pomp, pride, vanity, and fashion lacks discre- THE PLOWMAN TAUGHT OF GOD. 97 tion! Does not all the faithful service ren- dered to Satan by his devotees lack all traces of discretion ? Are not sin and folly synony- mous? Is not that man who in his worldly greed and prudence " pulled down his barns and built greater " called in Holy Writ a "fool " ? The world often makes display without taste, ostentation without reason, great plans with- out wisdom. It glories more in appearance than in reality ; it often goes into life's battle- field without preparation, early in the day falls into an ambush, ere noon casts vilely aside its shield, and ere evening is a dishonor- able captive and slave. Yet Grod giveth wis- dom liberally, and upbraideth not him that asketh for it. Bonaparte once remarked of one of his marshals that " he is as brave as his sword, but he wants judgment and re- sources, and is not to be trusted with a great command." Many things come by experience — even the sportsman's dog can be taught to si- lently crouch in the heather, and the cat can be broken of its pilfering — but experience can- not give judgment, though it may develop it. It is like taste, genius — a direct gift of God. You cannot find it in the diamond-bed or in the secret stores of the everlasting hills ; not in the majestic river, the umbrageous woods ; not in any of the halls or corridors or state- 98 THANKSGIVING SEBMONS. rooms of nature's palace. No principle of de- velopment can account for this kingly faculty — so important is it deemed that a revealed will stoops to illumine it. It gives God's Word a throne to sit on ; it makes faith become its handmaid to tell it of the substance of things not seen. This faculty of discretion men are called upon to exercise daily. The plowman plows to sow ; he wastes not his labor ; he breaks the sod that there may be a bed for the seed and a storehouse for the sun's warmth and reservoir for genial shower and fertilizing dew. Pru- dence or discretion is a good commander-in- chief : it has won battles over the stubborn- ness of the soil, the inclemency of the climate, the stormy elements. With prudence as a guide we need scarcely any other in ordinary matters. If we thoughtfully and prayerfully take care of our own actions, God will take care of the results. All the loving forces of nature, with the mighty armies which they can bring into the field, will rally at our side, and the " Captain of that host is God." Pru- dence considers the end, whether it be worthy ; the means, whether they are righteous; the manner, whether it is comely. We have no right to tempt providence in any part of its wide domains. Try it in the honest field by THE PLOWMAN TAUGHT OF GOD. 99 indolence or imprudence or lack of foresight, and ruin is certain. Try it in ordinary secu- lar matters, and bankruptcy or disappointment is the lot of our inheritance. Try it in the realms of the soul by neglecting spiritual cul- ture, and eternal winter petrifies. He who walks in dangerous ways will perish in them, even as Josiah — favorite of God though he was — was wounded unto death because he pressed farther against his enemies than the words of God permitted. It has been said that "the virtue most necessary to perfection is prudence ; for the most virtuous actions of men, unless governed and described by pru- dence, are neither pleasing to God nor service- able to others nor profitable to ourselves." This prudence, when sanctified, becomes that religion which makes us wise unto salvation. 4. A lesson of order. The discreet hus- bandman plows in the proper season in order that the Lord's plow, the frost, may pulverize the soil a thousand times finer than any human implement. He considers the time to plow. That grain which takes the longer to germi- nate, develop, and mature shall have the longer season, like architect or builder demanding time according to the magnitude of the house, palace, or temple to be reared. And is not order one of the greatest of heaven's appointed 100 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. laws? Infidels may say all things come by chance, but chance alone could never produce an infidel. Order is seen in nature; in the stars, those pure and beauteous orbs of light that come and go as "circling months fulfil their high behest," " for one star differeth from another star in glory." It is seen in each snow- capped mountain, and throughout all climes, beneath all varying skies. It governs alike the far-off star and the smallest flower that blooms. All nature observes degree, priority, and place. Its line of order is unbroken. All arts and sciences, before they can be learned, must be reduced into order and method. A camp well disciplined is a perfect pattern of good order. The church itself is to be an army with banners, to consist of governors and gov- erned, some to tend, some to serve, some to hear. Order is seen among the spirits of the just made perfect, for " they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament ; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars forever and ever." Order is seen in the angels, with their respective thrones, domin- ions, and principalities. If you set all things in their proper place order will crown the whole with beauty. The world arose orderly, not chaos-like, crushed, and bruised. What but this universal order THE PLOWMAN TAUGHT OF GOD. 101 tempted Darwin to classify ? He who inverts the law of order sins against the Great Eternal Cause. Let us order our souls aright by first knowing ourselves, and the existing state of things, as far as they are marred or mendable ; let us not be afraid of disagreeable facts ; let us spend our moral heroism in striving by God's help to remedy our ills, that moral order in all its beauty of holiness may halo the soul. Evolve your heaven in due order, out of holy desires, pure affection, spiritual principle, full consecration. Let it be choice, not chance; steady growth, not impulse. Regulate the soul by God's order of letting its happiness be within its " holy of holies " rather than in its "outer courts," more or less profane; let it depend on being rather than on seeming to be — there is no divine order whereby counter- feits can be utilized. Glory in the redeeming scheme, which is the divine order of mending, healing, satisfying, and beautifying the soul. Thus, by bowing down to this great law, we shall discover that order means the health of the body, the sanity of the mind, the peace of the city, the security of the state, the universal victory of Christ's kingdom. As is the key- stone to an arch, love to the heavenly world, so is order to all things. THE VOICE OF THANKSGIVING. BY THE REV. O. D. SHERMAN. "But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanks- giving." — Jonah ii. 9. Not from court of king, not from council- chamber of state, not from ecclesiastical tri- bunal, not from the heavens above, nor the earth beneath, but from the waters under the earth, from the caverns of the mighty deep, our author published his thanksgiving call. His name was Jonah, the son of Amittai. He was a prophet of the Lord, and had been com- missioned to go to Nineveh with a protest against their great wickedness. The mission he did not like, and sought to avoid it by going down to Joppa and taking a ship for Tarshish. It was of no avail. The troubled waters raised their warning cry. The surging billows were God's messengers. The stern king shouted in wrath after God's recreant prophet. Jonah awoke from his slumber to face an affrighted crew and an accusing con- 102 THE VOICE OF THANKSGIVING. 103 science. At his suggestion the sailors cast him overboard, and a great fish the Lord had prepared swallowed him up. Adversity lias its uses. Trouble may be, often is, a dispensation of mercy. The gold is only purified but in the furnace-fire, and only shines but by the hard and constant rubbing of the burnishing-tool. The soul cut off from what is but seeming good is often led to seek the only real good. Short-sighted, foolish, and wicked as Jonah had been, now he does a sen- sible thing. He prays ; he seeks deliverance of that Being whose fingers fashioned the fountains of the sea, and who is Lord of life and Master of death. In the second chapter of Jonah we have the prayer, and it ends with the declaration to which we have alluded, and which forms our text on this bright Thanks- giving Day (Jonah ii. 9) : " But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving." To be grateful for benefits conferred is so just an instinct of our common hu- manity that it is universally commended in word, however much it may be belied in deed. As believers in the Bible as the revelation of the mind and will of the Divine, we can but note how fully its teachings harmonize with this deeply implanted instinct of the human 104 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS. family. From the first unto the last, from Eden's garden to Patmos's island, this golden thread of heaven is woven into both the warp and woof of man's development and the pro- gressive unfolding of God's all-embracing plan. The question often arises, not so much the- oretically as practically, at what point in the descending scale of benefits received does the duty of giving thanks cease ! " What have I to be thankful for ? n or its equivalent, " I do not know that I have anything to be thankful for," are expressions very often heard. If we take the precepts of God's "Word as sampled by these words, " Giving thanks always for all things unto God," and very many others like unto it, we would find it difficult to sound a depth so low, even in the deepest sea of trouble, when its tide would not turn toward the Source of blessings. The example connected with our text is an extreme one, and if one can conceive of a mortal in a sadder plight and in a seem- ingly more helpless and hopeless condition than poor Jonah was when he uttered it, his imagination must be vivid indeed. In the first place, he was sent upon an errand he did not like. He had rather go to any other place than Nineveh. It is hard to be thankful for unwelcome duties. In the second place, his sea-voyage had met a most disastrous termi- THE VOICE OF THANKSGIVING. 105 nation. Men have been cast upon desolate isl- ands, upon rocky headlands, and upon desert sands, and thanked Glod for life ; but here was poor Jonah, swallowed by a great fish, borne beneath the dark flood whose billows lay above him like mountains — a helpless prisoner in the darkness of a rayless night. We here make our first practical proposition, that it is the duty of every one of God's children to be thankful, and to offer daily the sacrifice of thanksgiving. And, by the way, a few words in regard to the word duty. An impression is apt to be made that duty implies always something that is unpleasant ; a bar that forever lies right across the nat- ural channel of enjoyment. G-ood and pre- cious saints are striving to attain unto the heights of "being willing to do every duty." And sometimes the impression is unwittingly made that to really be happy in this life is a sin; that a clouded life, a burdened heart, a painful, weary waiting, is the proper internal frame; and a long face, a disfigured counte- nance, and groans and lamentations the proper external manifestation. That this is so, and much of it of necessity so, is true. But it is only so because man, in his short-sighted way- wardness, has dug artificial channels for the outflowing of his activities. Duty's laws, if 106 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. rightly understood, are the natural harmonious working and expression of every God-given power of being and doing, of receiving and giving ; and in that way of living there is the highest enjoyment, and in giving heed to these laws not only is " thy servant warned," but " in keeping of them there is great reward." In Jonah's case he thought that the way of duty was hard, and he sought another way, and found to his cost that his way led down to the gates of death, and afterward that duty's way was the path of safety, honor, and praise. Therefore, when we say that it is the duty of every one of God's children to offer the sacri- fice of thanksgiving, we are not prescribing that which is hard, but, on the contrary, that which is life, and an increasing life ; and there is a universal law in the development of this idea which is manifest in every department of human life. It was wise, it was prudent in Jonah when about to make a new start in life to commence on the solid platform of thanks- giving. Thankful for what ? If we can give a sat- isfactory answer why Jonah should be thank- ful, and, in his peculiar circumstances, should sacrifice with the voice of thanksgiving, we think that it will be sufficient argument why every one should offer such a sacrifice. There THE VOICE OF THANKSGIVING. 107 were two things that Jonah could be thankful for, and these two things lie at the foundation of all things in the heavens above and in the earth and water beneath. First, he had his life. Life ! boon inestimable ! Grift direct from G-od — part of his own being. "And the Lord Grod formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a living soul." " In him was life ; and the life was the light of men." Everything in the universe has value because there is life. The sun shines but to give life. Light and heat mean life. The mists go up from the ocean, the clouds give their treasures, the morning sheds her dew- drops, but to give life ; and crowning all is the immortal life, the God-inbreathed life, the gift of gifts — a life whose possibilities for the un- folding in all harmony and beauty, for pro- gressing in all knowledge and attaining all heights of goodness and virtue, are unlimited. Intelligent, progressive life in this world ever grows in the appreciation and enjoyment of the beautiful. As it beholds the sun in the morning coming out of his royal chamber, ar- rayed as a bridegroom for the wedding, and rejoicing as a strong man to run a race, it too rejoices: but what will it be when that life, in its promised unfolding, shall behold the 108 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. land that needs no sun, " for the glory of the Lord shall lighten it " ? The eye that is cul- tured in the harmonies of color continually grows in the enjoyment of the sense of the beautiful of which each passing year makes a new revelation — in the fresh brightness of the spring, in the richness of summer and the ripened glory of the autumn : what will it be, then, when the eye, unclouded, shall open in the Paradise of Grod? Our skies here at times are wondrous fair; the concave above us is ever a wonderland of delight : what will it be, then, to a mind enlarged not simply by accumulating years, with all of earth's infirmi- ties, but a disenthralled mind, growing in im- mortal youth, when beneath the overarching skies of the upper kingdom it shall behold ce- lestial beauties for evermore ? Now life means all of this. All is within its scope, all possible even to every human soul that will seek it in God's appointed way. Jonah had this life, and he knew it. It was intact even in the narrow confines of the in- side state-room he occupied on this submarine voyage. How extended or expanded his view of this life was we may not know ; but suffi- cient that he knew something of its worth- enough, at least, for a ground of a thanksgiv- ing service. THE VOICE OF THANKSGIVING. 109 The other thing that Jonah had, and that he had a realizing sense of, was his God, and that he had not forsaken him. He had faith enough to call upon him. So these two things, God and life, Jonah had, and he was sensible of their value. Upon these two grand facts he raised his song. With these two stones he built his altar and offered his sacrifice. Jonah has been most unmercifully criticized. He has been called a coward, a traitor, a churl. Doubtless much of this censure is merited ; but in this case Jonah has covered himself with everlasting honor, and left a lesson and exam- ple as a rich legacy to all generations. A man who can offer the prayer of faith and the sacri- fice of thanksgiving under such circumstances will assuredly come up triumphant out of every tribulation. Having thus by example and precept, we trust, shown that there is abundant cause of thanksgiving on the part of every individual of God's creation, we think that in our par- ticular cases abundant cause for thanks- giving yet more abounds. To us the year has given its rich treasures. The seed-time failed not. The early and the latter rain was not withheld. The harvest hour brought the ripened grain and heavy-laden sheaf. The hillsides have been covered with corn, and the 110 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. valleys have given pasture for the flocks. The floods have not overwhelmed us, the winds have passed us unharmed, and the lightnings unscathed. Famine hath not wasted, nor pes- tilence devoured. No right of life, liberty, or property has been denied us; no dictate of conscience or religious conviction infringed upon. Surely all this is ground for thanks- giving. The Lord our Grod has given us a goodly heritage, a peerless domain rich in every ma- terial resource. We greet our sun as he rises from the waters of the Atlantic, and bid him good-night as he sinks beneath the waves of the Pacific. Our finger-tips are up amid the everlasting snows of Arctic Alaska, and our feet are bathed amid the coral reefs of the Mexican Gulf. To us have come institutions of civil government that have stood the test of time, the shock of arms, and have proved worthy and enduring. For such a country we can and should be very thankful. Well is it, around this altar, to offer sacrifice with the voice of thanksgiving. Well, say some, is not all this wonderful in- crease in numbers, of wealth, of extension of territory, of power, after all but an added dan- ger, a source of alarm and cause of lamenta- tion, rather than of thanksgiving ? That there THE VOICE OF THANKSGIVING. Ill is danger in these things it is not wise to ignore or deny. The inflow from the teeming debased millions of the Old World, the accumulation of wealth in a few hands, with a corresponding increase of pauperism, the enormous produc- tion of intoxicating liquors, and increasing consumption with its entailment of poverty and crime — all these, and perhaps many other things, raise warning voices. So, then, we would be thankful to-day that those who seek to and do poison our body poli- tic do utter their warning signals, and that every such warning is a call to repentance. And we are thankful that there are antidotes for these ills, and that Christian courage and wisdom are so zealously working by God's help to make these antidotes effectual. Every immigrant that lands at Ellis Isl- and is supplied by agents of the Bible Union with a Bible in his own language. The Meth- odist Episcopal Church Extension Society is building at the rate of two churches for each day in the year, South and West. I know that schools and colleges are being multiplied; I know that over half a million women, the best and purest of our land, are earnestly working and praying to put down the demon of the still, and that wise and brave men second all these efforts. Yes, thank God! rattlesnakes 112 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. must rattle, and each warning note, however defiant, and each pang from the poisoned fang, will lead the nation to cry for and seek the means of deliverance. Let us thank God and take courage, and on this memorial day bury all the bitterness of the past, and cultivate that charity whose sweet- ness " beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." The Grod of our fathers, who watched the course of the "Mayflower" over the stormy sea, who guarded the planting of the nation, whose care has ever been about us as a wall of defense, and whose presence, like as it was to Israel of old, by pillar of cloud by day and glowing fire by night, has led the march of our empire westward, will not desert us now, for his goodness endureth unto all generations. Thanking Grod for past and present bless- ings, let us move along the way of his own appointing, and spend not alone this day, but all the days that shall be given us, in songs of praise, in loving words and loving deeds ; then shall we ever offer an acceptable sacrifice from a heart attuned and a life conformed to the divine life, even with the voice of thanks- giving. THE FEAST OF TABEENACLES. BY THE REV. RALPH WILLIAMS. " Thou shalt observe the Feast of Tabernacles seven days, after that thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine." — Dent. xvi. 13. On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, in the autumn of the year, when all the chief fruits of the ground — the corn and the oil and the wine — were gathered in, this " Feast of the Ingathering" was to be kept. It was the "harvest-home" of the house of Israel. One of the special peculiarities of the feast was that during the seven days it lasted the people were commanded to dwell in booths or huts formed of the boughs of trees. When the feast was kept in Jerusalem these were constructed in the courts and on the roofs of the houses, in the court of the temple, in the street of the water-gate, and in the street of the gate of Ephraim. They used the boughs of the olive, the palm, the pine, the myrtle, and other trees with thick foliage. 113 114 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS. All the Hebrew feasts were seasons of re- joicing, but this was the gladdest and bright- est of them all. The free life in the open air in a beautiful clime, the meeting of old friends parted by long distances at other times, the huts all over the city, the fruits and palms carried by them all, must have made the streets gay and bright by day ; and at night the lamps, torches, and music, together with the joyful gatherings in the courts of the temple, gave a festive character to the whole scene. This joyful feast was kept year by year by the whole people by the special command of Glod himself. We see, therefore, that in set- ting apart a day for the thankful remembrance of the ingathering of the fruits of the earth we are strictly within the lines of Scripture teach- ing. The Saviour himself joined in it during his earthly ministry. We ought most heartily to keep such a feast, not only because it was divinely appointed under the old covenant, but also because the reasons for such a com- memoration hold good for us as well as for them. 1. The feast was an annual remem- brance of their past history. It pointed back to the great deliverance from Egypt, when the fetters of Pharaoh were broken, and they stood a free people on the THE FEAST OF TABEKNACLES. 115 shore of that sea which had overwhelmed their oppressors. The little leafy booths in which they dwelt, which filled the streets of Jeru- salem, were a remembrance of the huts and tents in which their fathers had dwelt during the wilderness life. And then there was Jeru- salem, which they possessed, their hill-girt city, the joy of the whole earth, with its glorious temple of snowy marble and yellow gold glit- tering in that bright Syrian sunlight upon the summit of Zion. The city was the center and the representative of that national life which was so free, so strong, and so prosperous. Who had delivered their fathers from the bondage? Who had guided and sustained them through the long desert march? Who had enabled them to triumph over the hea- then nations and conquer the land? Who preserved them from the great alien empires and made them prosperous from age to age ? This feast taught them year by year to go down to the roots of it all; to see what the national life was resting upon, what was the source of their continued strength. In the feast they were taught to look not to the hu- man but to the divine side of the problem. They saw that their prosperity rested not on the wisdom of statesmen, the might of their arms, or the natural advantages or material 116 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. resources of the land. It was not the sword of David or the wisdom of Solomon or the fertility of the soil which made their country the glory of all lands: it was the grace and goodness of their God. This was one of the great lessons of the feast. May not we try to learn it? How many and how great are our national blessings ! I know no nation possessing greater ones. Our civili- zation, our resources, and our freedom ; and, above all, our religious privileges — the pure form of the Christian faith handed down to us, to which every man may conform his life without fear. What are the sources of our prosperity ? Our coal ? Our iron ? The wis- dom of our public men? The indomitable courage of our race? These are all impor- tant, but these combined could not alone make our country great. Where do these come from ? The ultimate source of it all is to be found in the providential mercy and benevo- lence of God. One element, therefore, in our harvest festival should be a remembrance of all our personal and national mercies, and this should lead to a real thanksgiving to God for all his goodness to us. 2. The feast of tabernacles was a feast of thankfulness for the annual Increase of the earth. THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 117 The fruits of the earth were once more gath- ered in. Wind and storm, blight and mildew, locust and cankerworm had done their worst, and had failed to break God's ancient promise. The vintage was ended. The corn and the wine were safely housed in the garners and stores of Israel. They knew the importance of this. A na- tion's life not only wants to be founded, it must be maintained. While many things may be needed for sustaining the fabric of an em- pire, these elementary things, the common fruits of the earth, are the most necessary of all. A nation may do without great states- men or great warriors; it may survive with no poets, no painters, no musicians; it may do without great wealth or high culture, but it cannot do without plowboys. The harvest makes yearly provision for the common es- sential need of all life; without this nations must perish and man would die off from the face of the earth. The Jewish people had no doubt as to the source from whence these most essential gifts came to them. They believed in a personal God. They celebrated the Feast of the Ingath- ering with the old psalm : " Thou crownest the year with thy goodness ; and thy paths drop fatness." Their national life was founded by God. Every harvest was a fresh act of his 118 THANKSGIVING SEBMONS. loving bounty ; it told them that the God who cared for their fathers was caring for them in providing for their wants and sustaining the social and religious system which he had es- tablished. Hence the lofty praise which runs through so many of their psalms. And is not this a special reason why we should keep this Thanksgiving? It helps us to meet one of the great and pressing dangers of our day. Men have discovered so many precious truths about nature, they see so much more clearly the perfection of its mechanism and its laws, that the tendency is to admire the laws and forget the Lawgiver. They as- cribe the wonderful works about us to some intangible force, and ignore or deny a personal God. Our annual Thanksgiving is the expression before all men of our personal faith, not in nature, but in the Lord of nature. It says that we look upon the annual produce of the earth — the corn and fruit and flowers — not as the result of the working of blind material laws, but as the loving and bounteous gifts of God. Such a service as this enters our pro- test against the theories which dishonor God and banish him from the throne of his own universe. We declare in it that we cannot ac- cept the pantheism which looks upon every- thing as equally divine ; nor can we receive the THE FEAST OF TABEBNACLES. 119 theory of evolution, with its Protean handmaid, natural selection, as sufficient in themselves to account for the origin of all things. We can accept no theory about the origin of nature which banishes a will and wisdom and love from it. When we look at the vast and com- plex problem of the universe, and think also of the mystery of man, we can find no sure foundation for our faith but the old one : " In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." This is what we mean by our Thanksgiving. We look at the earth with its abounding pro- duce and believe we see there the power, the goodness, the benevolence of Grod. We come to thank him for the unceasing mercy with which, knowing our wants, he sustains and blesses our lives. 3. The Feast of Tabernacles also bore witness to a common brotherhood. Philo saw in this feast a testimony to the original equality of the whole race. During the week, rich and poor, priest, prince, and peasant, lived in the booths, which were con- structed of the most ordinary materials. What- ever differences there might be between them, there was for the time being a community of living. And this met one of the dangers of their day. Divided into different tribes, sepa- rate and selfish interests might easily spring 120 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. up among them. One tribe or family might grow rich, and another might grow poor. Such might soon become separated from each other by an ever-widening gulf. Such a separation would give rise to jealousy, discord, strife; then weakness, disintegration, ruin, would speedily follow. In the history of how many states have we witness to this ! But the feast brought home to them the great fact that they were all essentially one. While there were differences of tribes, ages, and conditions, they were all brethren, descendants of a common ancestor, holding a common faith, and sharing in common spiritual mercies. The rich were thus taught to be generous to the poor, and the poor not to be envious of the rich. The parting sections of society were drawn together into a closer and more loving union. This was part of the annual work of their joyful feast. Even so has Thanksgiving Day its lesson for us. It calls us all back to first principles. We may have more or we may have less than others; but however much or however little we have, we are all dependent upon God's common yearly gifts in nature. The harvest tells us that, while we may see many differ- ences, yet at the bottom we are all brethren, children of a common Father, recipients of common bounties, partakers of a common re- THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES. 121 demption, and pilgrims journeying to a com- mon home. These are among the main lessons of this day. They are so great and so manifest that some may be inclined to say : " Is there any need for a special feast to keep them before us? Do we need reminding? Will not our hearts be always filled with thankfulness for such mercies?" Are we always thankful? Are there not large numbers who never think about such things, who take all God's great gifts as mere matters of course, without any thanks at all ? And with the very best of us is it not the tendency to think much more of present wants than of past mercies ? We need commemoration days. As Old Mortality went round from time to time and recut and fresh- ened up the wearing inscriptions on the tombs of the Covenanters, so we need festival days to cause us to keep great truths in remem- brance and to lead us to meditate on God's commonest gifts. May our Thanksgiving service do this for us all. May it help us to see God in the mercies of life. May it draw us nearer to him than we have ever been before. May it teach us, also, our brotherhood. May it draw us nearer to each other, and lead us to care for and help each other. Then God's gracious purposes in the gifts of nature will be fulfilled in us. ALL GIFTS GOD'S GIFTS. BY THE REV. RALPH WILLIAMS. " Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and eometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." — James i. 17. And how these gifts abound ! They abound not in one, but in every department of life. Look at these flowers with which the taste and kindness of so many have beautified the church ; see how perfect they are in form, how beautiful they are with their delicate and glowing tints of coloring, how rich and sweet is their perfume! They spangle the mea- dows, they adorn our gardens, they brighten our homes, they deck our persons ; they help to refine our lives and make them happier. Whence come they? " Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above." They come from God. Such beauty and such abundance char- acterize all the material world on which we dwell. The whole earth is full of what is 122 ALL GIFTS GOD'S GIFTS. 123 beautiful and what is useful. As we i to explore its mountains and valleys, row down its sparkling rivers, or sail across its restless s, what marvelous pictu es it set be- fore us ! To see the beauty of them is a source of mental inspiration to us. Then there is the vast produce which goes on year after year with unfailing regularity : the food which is brought forth out of the earth, the corn — u the bread which strengthened man's heart " — and the other fruits of the earth by which man s life is sustained. "Whence come they ? " Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above." They come from God. We in list not limit the truth to the earth on which we dwell. Look upward at the sky. See the multitudes of stars which glitter in the midnight heavens, scattered, as Herschel says, like gold-dust through the Milky Way : great central suns, each of them probably anied by his train of subject worlds. How vast and how bright are these orbs wt fill the immensity of space! "Whence ec they • They. too. are the work of the ss Almighty Being : he is u the Father of lights." In facing the many subtle and perplexing problems which the world presents to v.s. i the clash of arms with which society rings. raised bv those who are zealous for conflicting 124 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. theories, the Christian takes his stand upon a text like this as expressing the faith with which he regards the mystery and the bound- less good of life. Good gifts and perfect gifts all come from God. Let us look at our subject a little more in detail. Take another aspect of it. Go into some one of our great churches or cathedrals; see the grandeur and beauty of their design, the noble outline of their arches, the lengthened aisles, the rich coloring with which the delicate tracery of their windows is filled, the artistic carving in oak and stone. As you try to take in the many-sided beauty of the picture before you, think how strong and how real must have been the sense of beauty in the mind of the man who conceived and planned it all. How won- derfully skilful, too, were the trained eyes and hands which gave it its outward form ! What a gifted architect ! what gifted craftsmen ! we say, as we look at the whole or as we study the details of the great work. Gifted! By ivhom f Whence came their intellectual power and their manual skill ? Trace them to their ultimate source and you can only say of them that they were God's gifts. " Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above." Or again : ALL GIFTS GOD'S GIFTS. 125 Take up some well-known classic from the ancient world or of our own day: read Ho- mer's great poems, with their freshness, their quaint simplicity, their abounding illustra- tions; or read those plays which unveil the breadth and the ample resources of Shake- speare's master mind ; or study the imagina- tion and the gorgeous word-painting in Mil- ton's stately lines. Think of the triumphs of mind in grappling with the problems of na- ture : how it has weighed the planets, measured the distances of far-off suns, and analyzed the light which has journeyed over such vast soli- tudes of space, and thereby learned some of the mystery of the substances of which those stu- pendous worlds are composed. "What insight thinkers have gained as to the meaning of the universe and the nature of man ! How great and precious the possessions accumulated by their labors, which we, " the heirs of all the ages," have within our reach to enrich our own mental life ! They have kindled the torch of truth, and it shall shine for all time. With what noble gifts were they dowered! Gifts from whom? What had Plato or Dante or Shakespeare or Newton that they had not re- ceived ? The light which burned so brightly within them came from the great central foun- tain of all light and all truth. It was God's 126 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. gift. It is the inspiration of the Almighty which giveth understanding. Then, further, let us think not only of man's intellectual gifts, hut of his moral qualities. How wonderful it is to see a sense of right, and unflinching devotion to it, as the highest thing in life ! What power this wields when will and conscience, hand in hand, govern the passions and appetites of the fleshly nature ! A man has some lofty ideal of truth and duty ; it beckons him to walk in a bare and flinty pathway, but in spite of this he follows it with unflinching devotion to the very end. Even in the old heathen life we have abundant illus- trations of this. Look at Eegulus, the cap- tive, sent home on an embassy to the Roman senate to persuade them to make peace with Carthage. On reaching Rome, with patriotic feeling he counseled his countrymen to con- tinue the war with their enemies (foreseeing the triumph which soon would crown the Ro- man arms), and then calmly went back to Carthage to his cruel doom. He had prom- ised his captors that he would return if his embassy failed. How unselfish and how true was his loyalty to his country! How un- shrinking was his fidelity to a spoken word ! Then, as the sunlight comes to the Alpine ALL GIFTS GOD'S GIFTS. 127 peak and bathes its white, stainless snow with a glorious golden radiance, so Christianity comes to man to strengthen, .enlarge, and re- fine all in him of good, bestowing the grace by which natural virtue is raised up to the nobler level of Christian holiness. See St. John, whose whole nature was filled with divine love. See St. Paul, with his clear grasp of truth and his burning zeal to plant the banner of the cross in all lands. What noble ideals of virtue and what large measures of self-sac- rificing love filled the souls of such men ! But the grace given is not confined to them. It runs, like a vein of gold, through every suc- ceeding age of the world's history. Nor has the fearless devotion failed. Every century can tell its story of the many who have gone out from home and kindred to carry the torch of the truth into the dark places of the earth. They have given up all the comforts and en- dearments of home life that they might teach the ignorant and save the outcasts through the power of a Saviour's love. Thank God for such men ! They counted not their lives dear unto them. They give abiding witness to a selfish world that life may have higher aims than wealth or position, that it may be nobler to be smitten down by the poisoned arrow or the war-club of the savage, or to fall in some 128 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. fever-stricken morass amid the squalor and barbarism of a heathen land, than to have a body clothed in purple and gold while the soul withal is enervated by indulgence and by evil. What a chapter about man and the universe opens out before us as we ruminate on such thoughts! What moral and spiritual great- ness is unveiled in the lives of the saints ! Whence comes it? It is God's gift of grace working in them . " Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above." God gives — and with what boundless exuberance and love ! How largely and how unceasingly, from that far-back eternity when first the worlds were formed, right on from age to age, has he showered down his good and perfect gifts! How lavish is the produce of nature ! See the flowers that spangle the meadows — in what multitudes do they grow ! How thick the valleys stand with corn ! See the trees in the orchard, how they are laden with fruit, every branch bending to the earth with its precious burden ! Brooks quaintly illustrates this self-evident fact. He says : " I have heard of the Spanish ambassa- dor that, coming to see the treasury of St. Mark's, Venice, that is so much cried up, he fell groping at the bottom of the chests and trunks, to see whether they had any bottom. ALL GIFTS GOD'S GIFTS. 129 Being asked the reason why he did so, he an- swered, 'My master's treasure differs from yours and excels yours.' He was alluding to the mines in Mexieo, Peru, and western India. All men's mints, bags, purses, and coffers may be quickly exhausted and drawn dry; but God is such an inexhaustible portion that he can never be drawn dry. All God's treasures are bottomless; all his mints are bottomless; all his bags are bottomless. Millions of thousands in heaven and earth feed every day upon him, and yet he feels it not. He is still a-giving, and yet his purse is never empty ; he is still a-filling all the courts of heaven and all the creatures on earth, and yet he is a fountain that still overflows." Here is the great fact the text declares ; what duties flow from it ? 1. Worship. A tribute of praise is due from the creature to the Creator. Here in this our Thanksgiving we come to offer it. Let us unite in blessing him with all our hearts for all his good and perfect gifts. 2. Reverence. " The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof." It is not man's world in which you live and move ; it is God's world. " Put off thy shoes from off thy feet ; for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." 130 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. Reverence yourselves: "It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves." Use not the powers of life as instruments of evil. Defile not that which Grod's wisdom and love have planned. Eeverence the bodies and souls you possess. Here may we find the true dignity of human life : we are created by Grod in his own image; we are redeemed, by the cross of his dear Son, and so may become his children by adoption and grace. 3. Unselfish use of the gifts of life. All things are gifts to us. They are not our own ; we are but stewards of what has been intrusted to us by Grod. " A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from Heaven." " What hast thou that thou didst not receive ? " Then the duty follows as St. Peter teaches it : " As every man hath received the gift, even so min- ister the same one to another, as good stew- ards of the manifold grace of God." Harvest Thanksgiving is a recognition of this in act. If these things are not true, then our special services,, our decorations, our an- thems, make up but a meaningless ceremony. If we can trace the produce of the earth no farther than the field acted upon by human toil, if we see nothing beyond the farmer, what do we thank Grod for ? But if we believe the teaching of the text, then in our Thanks- ALL GIFTS GOD'S GIFTS. 131 giving we should act upon it by making some gift to God as an acknowledgment of the debt due to him. The gift should be large, because of the largeness of his goodness and love to us. The law of Christian giving should be like the law of Christian love. We should give with bounty, with hearty good-will, as God has given to us. I fear we are not always ready to do this. Some, of course, may deny the assertion of our text as a theory of the origin of all things. They are but few when compared with the vast multitude who accept the theory as a theory, but deny it in their daily life. Such acknowledge that every good gift comes from God, but when their turn comes to give they shrink back from the practical duty the theory involves. As a Puritan writer points out: "God gives us the best. "We give God the worst. We call out the bad sheep for his tithe, the sleepiest hours for his prayers, the clippings of our wealth for his poor, a corner of the heart for his ark when Dagon sits up- permost in his temple. ... He has bowels of brass and a heart of iron that cannot mourn at this our requital." * Is it to be so with us on this festal day ? Is there one in his temple who will make no offer- * Adams. 132 THANKSGIVING SEEM0NS. ing to G-od at all ? Will any one give the small- est coin and make an offering which costs no self-denial and has no love in it ? Let such beware. Loveless acts petrify the heart and make it incapable of receiving the blessing of God. Oh, may a better spirit come to dwell in us ! Let all the acts of life, even those un- seen hy others, have a divine nobleness stamped upon them. In some of the old sacred buildings we find every part finished with the utmost care ; not only the parts al- ways seen, but even those which could only be reached by toilsome climbing were wrought with equal care and skill. And why ? Because the whole carving and execution were consid- ered as an act of solemn worship and adora- tion, in which both artist and workman offered up their best work to the praise of the Creator. Alas, how different the modern spirit with its haste and its scamping ! its aim being gaudy show and quick profits, and not the high qual- ity of the work it undertakes. May the nobler motive run through our lives and influence all, even our simplest, acts. Let it penetrate our speech and our trading, and come to its full flower in the worship and gifts which we offer to God. All gifts are God's gifts. The scholar's ALL GIFTS GOD'S GIFTS. 133 wisdom, the soldier's courage, the statesman's insight, the artist's genius, the mechanic's skill; everything we have — our health, our minds, our means, our taste, our faith, our goodness — they all come from God. God gives them to bless us with personal happiness and with lasting good. We should use these gifts of life reverently and thankfully and within the limits imposed by his divine will. We must remember, too, that God gives these good and perfect gifts to us that through us others may receive his blessings also. They are not for our selfish, exclusive use, but for the good of all. The truth we learn, the means we acquire, the powers we cultivate, are so many opportunities of making our lives use- ful. The true Christian man is as a channel through which the gifts of God may flow to bless a dark and evil world. Is it not so ? Do we not see through all nature an unceasing receiving and giving ? The clouds borrow water from the ocean, but they pour it forth again in showers upon the thirsty earth. The planets borrow light from the sun, and forthwith they scatter it, on every side, in the dark regions of space through which they roll. The tree receives moisture and nutriment from the soil in which it is rooted and from the air in which its 134 THANKSGIVING SEKM0NS. branches wave, but it gives it all back in its shadowing leaves and in its golden fruit in the abundant autumn days. How grand a day it will be for the church of God when all who profess to believe this great truth learn to be- lieve it with sincere conviction, and to act upon it, day by day, in their words and deeds ! When we can give of thought and sympathy and substance, as God has given to us, the work of God will soon be accomplished, and the kingdom of God will come. At this festival let us try to begin, if we have never done so before. Let us strive to realize the divine side of our life. Let us face the fact that all gifts are God's gifts, and not flinch from any of its consequences. Offer, with bended knee and humble heart, a true wor- ship. Offer, of what has been given to you, a loving, a Christian gift to the treasury of God. THE HAEVEST AND ITS LESSONS. BY THE REV. J. S. PAWLYN. " Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understand- ing : . . . Will ye not tremble at my presence, which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree ? . . . He reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest."— Jer. v. 21-24. The primary truth to which our attention is directed by our text is God's government in nature; the existence of an ever-present, all- gracious, and omnipotent Providence. The first proof of God's government in nature to which the prophet points vis is the subjection of the sea. " Fear ye not me," etc. (verse 22). God " hath shut up the sea with doors " ; " He hath . compassed the waters with bounds, until the day and night come to an end " ; " He holdeth the waters in the hollow of his hand." Once, in human form, the Creator walked upon the sea's deliri- ous waters, and by his mandate hushed their madness into sleep; and it is that same un- failing power which still controls the ocean. 135 136 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." (Job xxxviii. 11.) The next proof of God's government in nature to which the prophet points us is the fall of the rain. " The Lord our God giveth rain," etc. (verse 24). Rain, whether it comes down at regular intervals, as in Eastern lands, or irregularly, as in our more changeful clime, is ever the gracious gift of God : " He giveth rain upon the earth, and sendeth waters upon the fields." With a recognition of the hand of God in the operations of nature which rebukes modern materialism, the pro- phet points the faithless people to the rainfall as a crowning proof of the power of Jehovah in contrast to the powerlessness of the heathen idols : " Are there any among the vanities of the heathen that can cause rain? or can the heavens give showers? Art not thou he, Lord our God? therefore we will wait upon thee: for thou hast made all these things" (xiv. 22). The clouds, how light, fleecy, aerial they look! Yes; but science says that the dynamic force needed to lift the clouds is two hundred thousand times greater than the united strength of all the peoples of the earth. How suggestive this of the omnipotence of God ! A drop of rain, how small and feeble it THE HARVEST AND ITS LESSONS. 137 appears ! Yes ; but Maury, in his " Physical Geography of the Sea," says that a fall of rain one inch deep over one fifth of the Atlantic — a depth that might fall in a day or even in an hour — weighs no less than three hundred and sixty thousand millions of tons. How immense those reservoirs which God hath fixed above the firmament! All the moun- tain springs, all the babbling brooks, all the inland lakes, all the slowly rolling rivers — rivers like the Mississippi and Amazon, whose vast volume of water is immeasurable — de- scend from the clouds of heaven ; and ere they descend, remember, all ascend — ascend, as it were, in a glorified condition, leaving ocean's salt and earth's impurity behind ; ascend gen- tly as the aroma of summer roses, silently as the upward beating of a heaven-bound angel's wing. A third proof of God's government in na- ture to which the prophet directs us — and this we shall consider more at length — is the re- turn, year by year, of "the appointed weeks of harvest." Had we been present with the multitude who, eighteen hundred years ago, saw the loaves so marvelously mul- tiply in the hands of Christ ; had we shared in that evening meal near the shores of the Sea of Galilee, what wonder we should have felt, 138 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. with what reverence we should have said, "Verily, this is wrought by the power of a present God"! O my brethren, by slower processes, but with incalculably more magnifi- cent results, that miracle, in the recurrence of the harvest, is repeated year by year. God opens his hand and fills the granaries of the world with bread. The ancient pagan nations regarded corn — using the word in its generic sense as includ- ing wheat, barley, oats, maize, and rice — as the special gift of the gods to the sons and daugh- ters of men. The Egyptians ascribed the gift to Isis ; hence they represented her as holding the earth in one hand and an urn of corn in the other. The Romans traced it to Ceres, and from this old-world idea we derive the word cereal, by which commercially we desig- nate all forms of corn. We assume that corn has not and cannot be evolved — an assumption borne out by the fact that a corn-field left to itself will become less and less in its annual yield, until it ceases to yield at all, but the corn thereof will never, like other plants, re- turn to an original type, it will never degener- ate into grainless grasses. The most advanced agricultural science can never make corn any- thing different from what it is. The corn of to-day is identical in nature with the corn THE HARVEST AND ITS LESSONS. 139 which the disciples when hungry rubbed in their hands and ate, which Euth gleaned in the fields of Boaz, which Gideon thrashed by the wine-press of Ophrah, which Joseph stored in the cities of Pharaoh — yea, which God him- self gave to Adam when he sent him forth from Eden to plow and sow and reap the virgin soil. I hold in my hand an ear of wheat. It has been said that every blade of grass is a ser- mon; then, surely, this ear is an oration — an oration on the wisdom, power, and benevo- lence of God. How graceful is its form ! How carefully infolded its precious grains! How mysterious was its growth ! A seed fell from the sower's hand. Ere long in the dark- ness of the earth, in the very heart of that seemingly dead and decomposing seed, there were the stirrings of a resurrection life. Two tiny fibers sprouted, and with no hand near but the unseen hand of God the seed so turned and adjusted itself to its environment that one fiber shot downward to form the root, and one upward toward the daylight to form the stalk and ear. It grew — grew according to a fixed, unalterable pattern — grew by attracting to itself suitable elements of the atmosphere and earth, changing them into its own nature, and appropriating them to its several parts. The blade appeared above the earth, it drank the 140 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. sunshine and the shower, it opened its leafy sheath, and lo ! the unfilled ear. The grains formed, the ear hardened, the field was ripe for the harvest — behold, the wondrous work was done ! Such was the history of a single ear ; and could we fully grasp the marvelous mystery of its growth, could we have watched witft a powerful microscope the various pro- cesses through which it passed, from its in- cipient life in the dark damp soil to the hour of its ingathering, we should have seen there- in chemical and mechanical triumphs equal to, nay, vastly superior to, the loftiest labors ever wrought by man. And let us not forget that this ear whose history we have traced is but one among countless millions which have just carpeted the earth with a cloth of gold. Oh, how good is our Heavenly Father, how bountiful his hand ! The land has yielded her increase, the valleys have been covered with corn, the old store hath not been eaten ere the new store hath been poured at our feet ; there is abundance of bread for all. But remember our crops might have failed in the furrows, our fields might have yielded no food, wailing might have been heard in our streets, while gaunt famine approached apace. Oh, God is Governor over all, and did he so will could as easily blast the produce of all the earth as the THE HARVEST AND ITS LESSONS. 141 produce of a single field. Well has it been said that as we approach the season of harvest we are within a month or two of absolute starva- tion. The barrel of meal is nearly exhausted, and no new supply can be obtained except from the fields that are slowly ripening under the smiling heavens. Were the winds per- mitted to thrash these fields, or the mildew to blight them, or the caterpillar to devour them, or the drought or the rain to prevent the ear from filling and ripening, not all the industry of the poor, and not all the riches of the rich, would avail to avert the most terrible catas- trophe. But God has been ever mindful of his covenant. Save in limited areas, sometimes in our own, sometimes in other lands, the har- vest has never failed, and the harvest never shall, for Gk>d hath spoken it: "And Noah builded an altar : and the Lord smelled a sweet savor ; and the Lord said, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake. . . . While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." (Gren. viii. 21, 22.) This great truth of God's government in nature is often unrecognized or im- piously denied. "Hear now this, O fool- ish people, and without understanding; who 142 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. have eyes, and see not; who have ears, and hear not : fear ye not me f " etc. Such was the solemn charge brought against God's ancient people Israel. Sin had morally blinded them ; unfaithfulness to their high re- ligious privileges had made them indifferent alike to the mightiest and most merciful man- ifestations of the Divine Maker in their midst. Once as they walked through their ripening corn-fields they had chanted David's grand harvest canticle: "Thou crownest the year with thy goodness. The pastures are clothed with flocks ; the valleys are covered with corn ;" now they could lead forth their harvesters and ingather the golden grain without one song of praise, one votive gift upon God's high altar laid. And this was but one of many sadden- ing proofs of how completely they had become estranged from heaven, how entirely enthralled by Satan and by sin. Very sad, very humiliat- ing, is the revelation made in the chapter now before us of Israel's moral delinquencies as well as religious unfaithfulness. In all the streets of Jerusalem, under the most careful scrutiny, could not be found a man — a man according to the divine ideal, a man who sought truth and executed righteousness and delighted himself in God. Can we wonder at the divine denunciation : " Shall I not visit for THE HABVEST AND ITS LESSONS. 143 these things ? saith the Lord : and shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?" Can we wonder that the mandate went forth to the invading Babylonians : " Go ye up upon her walls, and destroy : take away her battle- ments ; for they are not the Lord's " ? ( Jer. v. 9, 10.) We would not be numbered among those who are ever uttering Cassandra-like lamenta- tions over our own beloved land. For fidelity to God and truth ours is second to no great nation under heaven. And yet we cannot contemplate, on the one hand, our peerless privileges, and, on the other, the moral and religious condition of our country, without humbly acknowledging how closely we have followed in ancient Israel's steps. Material- ism abounds; God's existence is denied, and blind unconscious forces exalted to his throne. Flowers and fruits and laughing harvests of golden grain are looked upon as the inevitable outcome of the " order of nature " — an order which had no beginning and shall have no end. If the existence of a personal God is allowed he is considered too remotely centered to exert any influence on the material universe or to hear his creatures cry. Praise to the weather ; praise to deep draining and subsoil plowing and artificial manures; praise to patent ma- 144 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. chines for plowing and tilling and reaping and binding and threshing — these, when the crops are plentiful, are the cries of the farm and the market-place, rather than " Praise God, from whom all blessings flow." We are not, of course, insensible to the need and importance of secondary means; we hail the wonderful advancement made of late in agricultural sci- ence and mechanical appliances ; but we should see in this as well as in fruitful seasons the hand of God. And are we, my brethren, free from those grosser evils which the prophet here de- nounces? Is not worldliness paramount in our midst ? Is not honor in the market-place often held dirt-cheap? Is not drunkenness our country's curse ? Vice — have we not had public revelations enough to crimson our cheeks and sink us into the lowest depths of shame ? God has given to us a bountiful har- vest because his mercy endureth forever. But had not his goodness been limitless, had he not remembered his covenant, had he not taken into account the faithful ones who wrestle for their ruined race, he might justly have said of our nation, as he said of olden Israel: "Be- cause thou hast forgotten the God of thy sal- vation, and hast not been mindful of the Rock of thy strength, the harvest shall be a heap in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow." THE HARVEST AND ITS LESSONS. 145 Brethren, we have met to honor God. We have assembled to express our gratitude for the gracious bounties of God's providence. We have not, I trust, come empty-handed. The Jews, before they grew alienated in heart and life, brought, with songs of joy, the first- fruits of the earth ; they heaped their choicest at the altar-foot. The poor untutored heathen, too, hasten to lay their gifts of gratitude before their idol gods. Let us see to it that by their example we do not stand rebuked. But I ask not only for your offering, but with louder, more persuasive plea I ask for yoa. No offer- ing can be accepted as an equivalent for per- sonal consecration. When one who had been at variance with Caesar sent him a crown of gold, Caesar returned it, saying, "I cannot accept his present until he gives to me his heart." So says Jesus, the King of kings, to all who would give him gold and silver and outward service, but refuse to give themselves. Look upon that devotee of the early world. See, he builds an altar; he dresses it with graceful foliage and with fragrant flowers, and upon that altar lays the finest and fairest of the first-fruits of the earth. And now, prostrated before it, he uplifts his earnest prayer: "O Infinite Creator, God of my father Adam, I adore thee! I worship thee! I bless thee for thy bounties ! Accept my grateful gifts," 146 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS. And what was the result ? Was high Heaven well pleased with his worship ? Listen : " Unto Cain and to his offering Grod had not respect." And why ? Because Grod saw in Cain's heart cherished, unrepented sin ; because Grod recog- nized in his offering and in his prayer no be- lief in, no setting forth of, the promised Sacri- fice, Jesus the Saviour of the world. Breth- ren, I pray you let the goodness of the Lord in sending us rain and sunshine and fruitful seasons lead you to repentance. Let the fact, so present to us to-day, that the Creator has once more filled the earth with bread for the supply of man's lower needs, lead onward to the realization that " man cannot live by bread alone " ; that he has a " hungry soul " to satisfy ; and that the soul's satisfaction must be sought and found at the cross of Calvary. Jesus said, " I am the bread of life : he that cometh to me shall never hunger ; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst." (John vi. 35.) " Lord, evermore give us this bread ! " " We thank thee, then, O Father, For all things bright and good, The seed-time and the harvest, Our life, our health, our food. Accept the gifts we offer For all thy love imparts, And, what thou most desirest, Our humble, thankful hearts." THE WITNESS OF THE HARVEST. BY THE REV. G. A. BENNETTS, B.A. " Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful sea- sons, filling our hearts with food and gladness." — Acts xiv. 17. Nothing is more worthy of note in St. Paul's methods than the care which he always took to adapt himself to the varying conditions and characters of those among whom he labored. He had but one gospel to preach — the gospel of Christ crucified ; but he preached that gos- pel with an ever- varying accent and with great manifoldness of expression. He did not ab- ruptly obtrude the doctrine of the cross upon them ; but, beginning at some point where he and his hearers were at one, in a chain of argu- ment and appeal he gradually and almost im- perceptibly led them up to the doctrine of Jesus and the resurrection. At Athens he found his text, not in Jewish lore, but in the altars of their gods, and in that literature of which every Greek was lawfully proud. And here at Lystra, among the barbarians of Lyc- 147 148 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. aonia, he speaks from that revelation of God whose " line is gone out through all the earth, and its words to the end of the world." Let us not suppose, however, that the wit- ness of God's works, to which the Apostle ap- peals in my text, is of importance only to such people as those of Lystra. There is, perhaps, a danger of our thinking that the teachings of natural religion have been superseded by those of revelation. This is a great mistake. The Bible always speaks of itself as being the sup- plement to that revelation of himself which God has made in his works. Natural theology is the base of the ladder which rests upon the earth, while the top of it is in heaven ; and the ladder cannot stand without its base. The truths of natural religion are the pediments of the glorious columns of the temple of our wor- ship, columns the marvelously carved capitals of which are in revelation ; and those columns can never afford to dispense with those pedi- ments. Let a man once get a firm hold of the fundamental truths revealed in nature, and let him follow up with his hands the column of truth which he thus touches at its base, and he will find, when he enters the region of reve- lation, that there is no break in the column ; that he cannot even feel the line of junction, but that revealed truth is in absolute conti- THE WITNESS OF THE HARVEST. 149 nuity with that of nature ; that, in fact, there are not two systems of truth, but one, the base of which is in nature and the summit of which is in grace. Nowhere is this more distinctly set forth than in the teaching of our blessed Master himself. He directs our attention to the lilies, the mustard-seed, the tares, and the harvest, as being divinely ordained preachers of the truths of religion. Indeed, never was there any teacher who lived in such intimate com- munion with nature as Jesus of Nazareth. He holds the key of the secret chambers in which the profoundest mysteries of the uni- verse are hidden, and those chambers he has unlocked for us, teaching us to find the sub- limest lessons of his kingdom in the common- est objects of nature, every one of which is stamped with the sign manual of our Hea- venly Father. Our text is one sample of the way in which this great master of the art of adaptation, the Apostle Paul, appealed to men, upon the foun- dation of the truths which are graven by the finger of God upon those common works of nature which lie open to every man's vision. Let us, under his guidance, listen to the har- vest witness concerning some of the funda- mental truths of religion. 150 THANKSGIVING SERMONS, 1. Observe that the operations of na- ture through which God provides for the creatures bear witness to his existence, and to his continual presence and activ- ity in the midst of his works. (1) I know that it is fashionable to sneer at the design argument for the being of God. But sneering is a very common device resorted to by men who have no argument with which to sustain their cause. I will not say that the design argument has always been wisely pre- sented, and that the method of its presentation has not sometimes laid it open to the ridicule which talks about its representation of God as a great Machinist constructing the universe as in a mechanic's workshop. But these are de- fects in the presentation of the argument, and not flaws in the argument itself. In spite of all the sneers of our critics we are prepared to maintain that the argument is irrefragable; that the universe exhibits thought, and that thought implies a Thinker ; that the universe exhibits uniformity of thought, and that this uniformity of thought implies that there is but one Thinker, whose wisdom has laid the plans of this marvelous world in which we dwell. All clear thinking is forever at an end if the wondrous and complicated adaptations of na- ture are to be supposed to have come into THE WITNESS OF THE HAEVEST. 15i existence without an Adapter ; if endless har- monies, existing in the midst of an almost in- finite complication of circumstances, in which current crosses current and force crosses force to a degree passing conception, are maintained with a uniformity which enables the astron- omer to predict his eclipses with the minutest accuracy, and the farmer to anticipate his har- vests with tolerable certainty, without there being a Harmonizer to produce the harmony. Let a man stand in the midst of the whirl of forces around him, and let him listen to the perfect harmony of their music ; and then let him say if this wonderful symphony of many- toned instruments could have been produced unless a Divine Composer had set the piece which they so gloriously perform. No, the man is without excuse who can look at this masterpiece of thought and say, " There is no Thinker behind it all." (2) For a moment let us single out from the midst of the manifold operations of nature those to which the Apostle particularly refers in my text; that is to say, those connected with the supply of food for the creatures. When we consider that the seasons of our climate, with all their manifold effects, are produced by an inclination of the axis of the earth at an angle of 23J° to the plane of its 152 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. orbit, and when we consider what would fol- low if there were no such inclination or were that inclination varied through ever so small an angle, we cannot but feel that there must have been a Designer who gave the earth the exact tilt necessary to the production of its harvests. When we consider that, in the pro- duction of every blade of corn and of every apple upon the tree, there is a nice mathemati- cal balancing of the forces of gravitation and life, in order that the vital force may be able to overcome the force of gravitation and shoot forth the corn-stalk or the tree to the proper height necessary for its fruit-bearing, we can- not but believe that there must have been a great Mathematician who made these delicate adjustments. When we look at the marvelous machinery by which all this vegetable life takes up and appropriates to itself the fructifying properties of the soil beneath it, of the air around it, of the clouds above it, and of the sun which is millions of miles away from it, we are bound to confess that this machinery must have had a Constructor to make it. The Apostle mentions rain, and well he may, for the laboratory in which God prepares his rain is well worthy of our inspection. Consider the mighty force which the sun exerts as he lifts the waters up into the clouds; see how THE WITNESS OF THE HAEVEST. 153 by the air-currents God carries the fruit-bear- ing showers from one region to another ; look into the processes of rarefaction and conden- sation by which he prepares the golden drops to distil fatness upon the earth, and then an- swer the question which God put to Job: "Hath the rain a father? or who hath begot- ten the drops of dew ? Out of whose womb came the ice ? and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it ? " (Job xxxviii. 28, 29.) (3) "Ah, but," says the modern objector, " this is all done in obedience to law ! " Ex- actly ; that is our point. It is all done in obe- dience to law. And law means order. And order means thought. And thought means a Thinker. Alas that men should so cheat them- selves with words ! They say, " It is law," and think they have got rid of God ; whereas to clear thinking law is the evidence of God's pres- ence, and not the negation of it. The fact that the whole world is under the sway of law is a proof that it has been created by a De- signer and is not the evolution of chance. (4) " Well, but," says the objector again, " it may be that God must have been there to give the laws, but when he had given them he left the universe to their sway, and now it is vain to seek for God in a world which he has given over to the control of law." Again we ask, 154 thanksgiving sermons. " What is the use of laws without an execu- tor to administer them?" He who made the worlds upholds them by the word of his power. He himself administers the laws which he has given. God not only was in nature, he is in it. The man who seeks for miracles to de- monstrate the presence of God will find them, if he will but look, in every blade of grass and in every grain of corn. Our heaping granaries speak the praises of Jehovah, and proclaim that he who transformed the water into wine at Cana, and who multiplied the scanty meal into a feast for a multitude, is still at work in the manifold operations of nature. (5) In our stupidity, when the stupendous is often repeated before our eyes we forget its wondrousness, and the very regularity and profusion with which God's mercies are be- stowed seem to deaden our sense of obliga- tion. We shall be, indeed, without excuse if we fail to learn the lessons of Nature, for the age in which we live is one in which her secrets are being learned^as never before. . The reve- lations of the spectroscope, microscope, and telescope only increase the wondrousness of God's universe, and he who regards science as the foe of religion does not know what science is. I wish I could awaken, especially in the hearts of the young here, a passion for the THE WITNESS OF THE HARVEST. 155 devout study of God's works. Let me beg you to endeavor to ascertain as much as you can about that wonderful revelation of God which modern science has unveiled in the world about you. Avoid the theories of athe- istic scientists, but receive with gratitude every new discovery of a fact or principle, and you will find in nature the best aid to devotion and the best expositor of the Bible. 2. Our text bids us see in the fruitful seasons a proof of God's goodness toward men. In spite of all the sorrow and discord of hu- man life, the Apostle declares that, even apart from revelation, there is in the bounteous pro- vision of God's providence abundant proof of his goodness toward men. Notwithstanding men's wickedness, he makes, age after age, provision for their wants. Our Lord has bid- den us learn the lesson of mercy from the ex- ample of our Heavenly Father, who makes "his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." (Matt. v. 45.) Nothing shows the hardness of men's hearts much more than the way in which they partake of the bounties of God's provi- dence, without any grateful recognition of the Giver. In the last analysis we shall find that all our wealth depends upon the land, and 156 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. that every man's livelihood really rests upon the products of the soil. We ought, therefore, to bestir ourselves to return thanks to God for his great goodness to us during the present year. Paul declares in my text that an unen- lightened heathen ought to hear the harvest witness to God's goodness. How much more, then, ought we, who have the light of revela- tion, to acknowledge his hand in the bounty of his gifts ! How careful should we be not to squander these blessings in the service of our lusts ! The Bible reveals to us the fact that God has again and again sent famine upon nations because in times of plenty they have forgotten him. Let us, then, now that he has smiled upon us, not abuse his gifts, but let us show our gratitude by endeavoring to please our Father, who has filled our garners and made our fields to teem with plenty. These gifts of God proclaim how lovingly he provides for our happiness. He might have made our food unpleasant and insipid. In- stead of that he has associated much pleasure even with the lowest actions of our life, to be a symbol to us of his good- will respecting us in all things. We condemn the ingratitude of those who disregard the kindness of an earthly benefactor. How much baser is our conduct if we do not offer praise to him from whom THE WITNESS OF THE HARVEST. 157 cometh down every good and perfect gift! Ungodly man, let God's mercies awaken thee to a sense of thy guilt, and let gratitude to him, because he has not visited thee with the ruin due to thy sins, constrain thee to offer the only harvest thanksgiving which God will accept : forsake thy sins, and show praise to him by turning to his Christ, that through his Spirit thou mayest find strength for that holi- ness without which all praise is as mockery in his sight ! 3. The harvest witness, though valu- able, Is, after all, very imperfect. Though the Apostle is ready to acknowledge the value of natural theology, and declares that it is inexcusable for men not to learn much about God from its teachings, nevertheless he notes with a strong emphasis its imperfect- ness, and speaks of the period during which the greater part of the world was shut up to its teachings as " the times of this ignorance." We have reason to bless God that we have a fuller revelation, by means of which we are led out of the dim twilight of natural religion into the meridian splendor of gospel day.. This revelation in which we rejoice has not only disclosed to us new truth, but has thrown a new light upon the old truths. The witness of God's works is clearer and more blessed to 158 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. the man who has received the witness of his Son. To such a man the glory of creation is the glory of the Eternal Word by whom " all things were made," and without whom " was not anything made that was made." To the eyes of faith the daily bread is the symbol of him who is the true bread which came down from heaven ; and the goodness which is dis- played in a bountiful harvest is a gracious provision of a loving Father who did not spare even his own Son that he might bless " his favorite creature, man." The doctrines of revealed religion are not only based upon those of natural theology, but they reflect a new glory back upon them. May we be so taught to un- derstand the earthly witness as to see in it the dawn of that manifestation of God which is clearly made in the triune witness of the Father, Son, and Holy Grhost, to whom, as the Three-One Redeemer of men, the Bounti- ful Donor not only of the bread of our bodies but of the bread of eternal life, we ascribe all honor and glory, world without end. Amen. UNTO GOD THANKSGIVING. BY THE REV. J. H. C. McKINNEY. " Offer unto God thanksgiving." — Ps. xxx. 14. It has occurred to me that it would not be inappropriate on this Thanksgiving occasion to present for our meditation a few things for which we, as American citizens, should be thankful : 1. The faith of Columbus. To this child of Providence "faith was the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen." By faith he went out seeking a country, not knowing whither he went. It was the mainspring which inspired all his movements, enabling him to surmount the obstacles at home and the difficulties arising in his voyage in his search of the hoped-for New World. Doubtless this faith was inspired by the same great Spirit who moved Abraham to seek a country. Looking at our America to-day, crowned with the blessings which have come to us 159 160 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. since that day, our hearts swell with gratitude to our Heavenly Father for that faith which brought Columbus to these shores. 2. The care of the Indians. The benefi- cent attention which our government is be- stowing upon the original inhabitants of this continent is a cause for thanksgiving. A su- perficial view might impress one with a seem- ing injustice in assuming possession of the lands occupied by the aborigines ; but when we investigate the subject more thoroughly we can see the hand of Providence in it. The Indians would — perhaps could — never have made of this fair land what the Anglo-Ameri- cans have. The spirit of Christianity so in- fluences our government that it not only pays them for the lands used by our people, but furnishes them with many of the necessaries of life on their reservations, besides establish- ing and maintaining schools for their educa- tion and opening the way for churches to supply them with the gospel. Had not this continent been discovered by Columbus or some other person, and regenerated by the energies of Christian civilization, what would be its condition to-day ? 3. Benevolent institutions. We should thank God for the establishment and mainte- nance of homes for our own unfortunate citi- UNTO GOD THANKSGIVING. 161 zens. The orphan homes, the country homes, the homes for the blind, the insane, and the deaf and dumb, are fruits of Christianity. In- stead of a blush of shame coming to the face of those who attend these homes, and instead of attaching in our thoughts or words a taint of disgrace to any such, these institutions should be regarded as public benefactions, and a necessary stay in them as an honorable privilege. Many a good man is overtaken in life's pil- grimage by misfortune, and in old age has no home and no loved ones able to furnish him one. It certainly is a source of thankfulness to God, who has provided so many comfort- able homes by the operation of his providence through the machinery of human government for all such. 4. Our free schools. Every loyal Amer- ican heart beats in harmony with the tributes of praise ascending to Grod for the network of our free-school system, by which all our children can be educated. It is a sad reflec- tion that through the neglect of parents and guardians many children fail to receive the educational advantages provided for them by the state. A compulsory law which would re- quire the attendance of children at school would be as reasonable and just as the one 162 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. which compels citizens to pay taxes to sup- port the schools. " Knowledge is power n — for evil as well as good. An educated man with a vicious heart can do more harm than if he were ignorant. It is therefore essential that the moral and spiritual nature be purified and disciplined as well as the intellectual. Herein is a good reason for the introduction of the Holy Bible into our public schools. It causes emotions of gratitude to arise to the Giver of every good and perfect gift to know that he has provided a way whereby our people may be regenerated and thus brought into a new life which will fit them for good citizenship in America and in heaven as well. Never will our schools attain to what they should be until arrangements are made for the proper training of the physical and spiritual as well as the mental nature of our children. 5. Religious liberty. "We are thankful that all our people can worship God accord- ing to the dictates of their own conscience, none daring to molest or make them afraid. The devil of persecution and disturbance is bound by the strong chain of the law. All congregations, large or small, assembled for worship, are protected by our laws against disturbers. We are also glad that our laws, which protect true worshipers, likewise pro- UNTO GOD THANKSGIVING. 163 vide for the punishment of those who, in the name of religion, transgress the laws of both God and man. Every true lover of the home, which is one of the safeguards of our nation, rejoices that the two-edged sword of the law has cut the carbuncle of Mormonism from the American body. Closely connected with religious liberty is the American Sabbath. A blow at this is a stroke at that. Those who from other nations become American citizens should remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, and not be allowed to introduce among our people their loose ideas and customs respecting this sacred day. God's plan of one day of rest after six of work is a wise one. Man needs it physi- cally, mentally, and spiritually. It would be much to the advantage of our people every way if all individuals and corporations would strictly observe this reasonable arrangement of God and man. It is to be regretted that some among us desecrate the holy Sabbath by transacting business and indulging in worldly pleasures on the Lord's day. For this day of rest and recuperation we devoutly thank God. 6. Civil liberty. We are thankful to-day for the privilege of suffrage enjoyed by our male citizens ; but the ardor of this gratitude is dampened by the injustice which excludes 164 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. from the franchise our female citizens, many of whom could vote just as intelligently as we, and in some cases much more judiciously. We are glad that the wings of the American eagle are outstretched to welcome to our shores those who will become good and loyal citizens ; but the time is at hand when our emigration laws should be so amended as to exclude the vicious classes from other countries. I quote the following from one of our metropolitan dailies : " It is an anomaly in our system, if not a disgrace, that persons of foreign birth can vote here four years before they are citizens. A foreigner cannot become a naturalized citizen of the country until he has resided in the United States five years, but he may vote after being in the country one year and hav- ing taken out his first papers." This is a grossly unjust discrimination against native- born American citizens. A person born in the country, brought up in an American at- mosphere, and acquainted from boyhood with our Constitution and laws, must be in the country twenty-one years before he can vote, while a foreigner, coming here without any knowledge whatever of our laws or language, and thoroughly indoctrinated with anti-Amer- ican ideas, can vote after being here one year. UNTO GOD THANKSGIVING. 165 This makes the right of suffrage much too cheap in the case of foreigners. No person, whether native or foreign born, should be allowed to vote until he is a citizen. A na- tive American cannot vote until he reaches his majority and becomes a full fledged citi- zen under the law, and a foreigner should not be allowed to vote until he has completed his right to become a naturalized citizen by residing in the country the full term of five years. In our America the voters are the rulers, by the will of a majority of whom we consent to be governed. Hence among us the ballot- box is sacred. It is the ark of our covenant, in which each voter puts his testimony in re- gard to what he wishes the policies of the nation to be. Above this is the mercy-seat, where the Christian voter leaves his prayer for the blessing of God on the principles sym- bolized in the ballot which he deposits in the box. It is of the most vital importance that we ascertain the real majority. The only loyal and honorable way to do this is by a free ballot and a fair count. No voter should be allowed to be influenced by strong drink, bribery, bet- ting, bulldozing, or in any other unlawful way. The nation's strong arm should be outstretched for the protection of every legal voter in the 166 THANKSGIVING SEKM0NS. free exercise of suffrage in all sections of this great country. There is a slavery fastening itself upon our people most odious. It is the liquor slavery. It enslaves the white, red, and black man. It enslaves both body and soul, both in time and eternity. It exists not only by its consent, but is licensed by the government and most of the States of the Union, thus not only authorizing it, but protecting the vile traffic. We are filled with mortification at the alarm- ing fact that protection is afforded to this boa-constrictor while it is crushing the life out of our nation. The liquor league is an alarming menace to our own civil liberty. The saloon is not only sapping the financial, physical, mental, and spiritual life of many of our people, but is using its enormous power in vigorous efforts to control the destinies of our nation. This is a deplorable condition of things, which must be corrected or we are doomed to the disgraceful grave of a drunken nation in the not distant future. In conclusion, I may say that our glad hearts and cheerful voices unite on this happy day with the multitudes of our American people in " offering unto God thanksgiving " for the bounties of his providence by which we are fed, clothed, housed, and warmed. He has UNTO GOD THANKSGIVING. 167 stayed the pestilence at our door, he has blessed our schools, and is bringing forward a patriotic and God-fearing generation to exe- cute his great and benevolent design for our country. He has given us a great increase in material wealth and a wide diffusion of con- tentment and comfort in the homes of our people; he has given his grace to the sor- rowing. THE JOY IN HARVEST. BY THE REV. ARTHUR E. GREGORY. "The joy in harvest/' — Isa. ix. 3. The analogies between natural and spiritual growth are so many and so striking that few illustrations are more apt than that which represents teaching as the sowing of seed, the reception of teaching as the development of seed. What seed is to bread and bread to physical life, that word is to thought and thought to spiritual life. The seed cast into the ground lies hidden there, and goes through many wonderful pro- cesses before the seed-corn multiplies into the golden harvest which falls before the reaper's sickle; so a word spoken in life's seed-time may remain in the mind unnoticed for years, yet at the last develop into the influence which shall make or mar a man's life. In the verse from which our text is taken the prophet describes the gladness with which men will welcome the Prince-Messiah as par- taking of the character both of the joy which 168 THE JOY IN HARVEST. 169 men feel in the peaceful triumphs of the har- vest-time, and of the victor's joy when he di- vides the spoil of his vanquished enemy : They joy before thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. "The joy in harvest" is the joy of the re- ward, the joy of victory. 1. The reward of labor. God gives us comparatively few things ready for use. The world is much more like a manufactory than a storehouse of ready-made goods. God gives us the raw material, but we must work it up into the manifold forms in which we require it for the purposes of life. God does not give us bread, but the possibility of bread. He gives us "the grain by which a man may live v ; but we must plow and sow, must reap and grind and bake, before the bare grain be- comes the bread of the family board and the sacramental table. Even so God gives his Word, not as life, but as the possibility of life. Man lives by bread, but not by bread alone. As there is a life which bread sustains, so there is a life which truth sustains. Every man is a sower, and every man in due season shall be a reaper. Whatsoever a man soiveth, that shall he also reap. The idler, the sensual, the fool, as well as the wise, the dili- gent, the godly, shall each have his harvest. 170 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. Is not this the solemn lesson of the harvest- time, that he who would reap hereafter must sow now; that he who would rest hereafter must work now ? The fast-falling leaves, the shortening days, remind us that we all do fade as a leaf ; that life's little day is hastening to its close ; that the night cometh, when no man can work. The thought of what is and of what has been is sad enough ; but oh, the infinite sadness of the thought of what might have been ! How different is the lot of those who have labored diligently and faithfully ! Such earnest souls the voice from heaven pronounces blessed. For they rest from their labors; and their works do follow them. 2. The reward of patience. If the earth- ly husbandman has need of long patience, how much more and how much longer patience does he need who seeks a spiritual harvest! The corn of wheat grows slowly, but God's truth grows more slowly still. Grod's servant may sow his seed early and diligently, but often he may wait in vain through all his life for the joy of the harvest. Yet if he will let patience have her perfect work he shall have no need to complain of his harvest. He who sowed in tears shall reap in joy. He who in the morn- ing sowed his seed, and in the evening with- THE JOY IN HARVEST. 171 held not his hand, shall find at last that one or the other has prospered. Both shall not dis- appoint his hopes ; perhaps, to his surprise and infinite joy, both shall be alike good. 3. The reward of faith. Faith and pa- tience always go together. The man who believes can wait. When a child puts seed into the ground, he does so without any of that strong conviction of its vital power which experience has given to his father, and so, from want of faith in the seed, he appeals to sight, and digs it up to see how it is getting on. There are many older children who make a similar mistake as to spiritual sowing. The truth they speak does not bear fruit at once, and, not having any strong conviction of the value of the seed apart from the skill of the sower, they plow up the field and sow fresh seed for another crop, until they learn by ex- perience that, while ill weeds grow apace, he who would gather wheat into his garner must wait until it has ripened. Now the gospel sower must have faith in his seed. The curse of the Christian church has been men who preached the gospel without really believing it. The secret of the apostles' success was that they could say, We believe, and therefore speak.. We cannot feel too strongly the truth that the power lies in the seed, not 172 THANKSGIVING SEKM0NS. in the sower. This is as true in the church as it is in the corn-field. Our earthly harvests are not sown or reaped by men of science able to tell us all that has yet been learned of the mysteries of life and growth, save in rare in- stances, but often by unlettered laborers who can scarcely sign their names or read their Bibles. And many of the most precious sheaves gathered into the garner of God have been the fruit of the labors of unlearned and ignorant men. One of the most dangerous practical heresies of our time results from this want of faith in the seed of the kingdom. Men lose faith in the power and attractiveness of the gospel plainly preached, clearly expounded, and earnestly en- forced. They substitute for it, or at any rate rest their hopes of success upon, oratory, archi- tecture, music, political harangues, or some of the other devices for attracting congregations with which the columns of religious news- papers make us familiar. But if Christ's la- borer loses faith in his seed he had better give up sowing altogether, lest at last he be counted as an enemy who sowed tares among the wheat. If any man cannot trust God's truth to live and grow and bring fruit to perfection, though he have all gifts of earthly wisdom and know- THE JOY IN HAKVEST. 173 ledge, though he may win wide popularity, he will never have any harvest such as angel- reapers gather into God's garner. But if he will only take care to fill his seed-basket from the storehouse of God's truth, he may be as unlearned as the first apostles were, yet in the day of Christ he shall joy before God accord- ing to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. This, then, is the true joy of the harvest- time, that in it hard work, long patience, stead- fast faith find their great reward. Of that fullness of blessing we know little yet, but we do know that it will be a joy unspeakable and full of glory. It is a joy set before us at pres- ent, but one of such infinite blessedness that we may well endure with patience and cheer- fulness the toil and sweat and weariness of the brief day of earthly labor. The promises of God, the character of Christ, assure us that our labor is not in vain in the Lord. There- fore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, tin- movable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. THE WIDOW'S CRUSE. " And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord, which he spake by Elijah."— 1 Kings xvii. 16. We have in this chapter an account of the commencement of the ministry of Elijah — a ministry which was full of greatness and ro- mantic interest. His sudden and brief appear- ances, his undaunted courage before kings and multitudes alike, his fiery zeal, his unflinching self-sacrifice, the glory of his departure from the earth, the calm beauty of his reappearance on the mount of transfiguration — these, to- gether, make up the startling story of an al- most unrivaled life. As we think over that story we see that the keynote of his life, and the secret source of all his power, was his faith in Grod. There was a vivid reality in his grasp of the unseen. His communion with Grod was close and continuous. He felt that he stood ever in the presence of a living God (verse 1). 174 THE widow's ckuse. 175 In this chapter we have a page of his history, one of the steps in his spiritual education, a part of the training by which Grod fitted him for his high work. It is not difficult for us to picture the scene. The famine was in the land. He was commanded to go to Zarephath, where he was to be sustained during the long and trying days. To whom in Zarephath was he sent ? Who would be able to supply his wants in such needy days? A widow woman! A widow woman? Yes, but perchance one who was possessed of abounding wealth ; who had a lux- urious home, with costly equipage and trains of servants ; one who could clothe herself in purple and fine linen and fare sumptuously every day ? The prophet reached the gates of Zarephath, hot, worn, and dusty with his jour- ney. The widow woman was there ; what did he see? Were there signs which spoke at once of wealth and social importance ? Nay. He saw a thin, haggard woman, with sunken eyes, with the deep lines on her face which anxiety and want and suffering always plow there. She, in her worn and faded attire, was groping about with tottering steps, to gather a few stray sticks, that with them she might prepare what she thought would be the last meal for herself and her child. She was poor, 176 THANKSGIVING SEKM0NS. she was nearly starved, and there was famine in the land. In such dark and dreadful days the prophet was sent to this poor widow, who was to sustain him. He finds her sharing all the common want — hungry, despairing, nigh to death. Yet, in spite of this, he asked her to fetch him a little water to drink ; and as she, with the courtesy and hospitality which have always graced Eastern life, was going to bring it he asked for a little food also. In reply she told him the sad story of her own want and despair. She and her child had come to their last handful. They were about to eat that and die. In answer to this, Elijah proclaimed God's great promise: "The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth." She went in awe at the great promise and obeyed Elijah's word, because she believed it to be the word of the Lord. 1. This history illustrates the great fact that God provides for man, God's promise encouraged them to hope for a continuous supply in their barrel and cruse, and the promise never failed. It was clearly and manifestly God's provision for them. This is made clear by the poverty of the people, and also by the searching famine which covered the whole land. We have abounding illustrations THE widow's cruse. 177 of the same fact. During the wilderness wan- derings of the children of Israel the manna fell day by day and never failed until they were entering upon their inheritance and began to eat the old corn of the land. So, more than once during his ministry, we see Christ feeding the multitudes and also turning the water into wine, thus giving other instances of the same truth. Here, then, is the meaning of our harvest festival. In the various developments in na- ture — in the growth of leaves and grass, of corn and fruits and flowers, in rain and drought, in fruitful and unfruitful seasons, in production and reproduction year by year and age after age — we see, not only the outcome of material forces, not only human culture and its reward, but the bounteous gifts of God. We see God caring for and supplying man's need. This history is but a fragment and illustration of the whole history of the world. It is the echo of that older and wider promise which God has always remembered and always faithfully kept: " While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." Do we think of the great lesson of this ? What must have been uppermost in the minds of these three as they sat down to their 178 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. humble fare day by day ? They were living, consciously, by the bounty of God. They had not purchased that food for money ; it had not been produced as the fruit of their toil. Every fragment of it was distinctly and solely God's gift to them. It was the bread of heaven. They were eating " angels 7 food." What awe and reverence must have filled their souls! Every meal was as a sacramental act: they were in the very presence, consuming the very gifts, of God ! Should it not be so also with us ? We, alas ! too often take things for granted without ask- ing any questions about them. We look upon our daily bread, and the abundant supply for the needs of life, but as the fruit of the earth and the produce of our labor. And yet, if we only go beyond the screen of appearance, we must sooner or later come to this — that all these things have their source and their con- tinued vitality from God. Life ought to be a holier thing. The thought of God's nearness ought to fill our souls and penetrate through all, even the very commonest, acts of life. God, who provided for the forlorn widow and the needy prophet, is still doing his bounteous work and is making large and loving provision for us. 2. We are led also to see the way God provides. THE WIDOW'S ceuse. 179 No large store was suddenly given to the widow ; even the barrel of meal and the cruse of oil were not filled up by unseen hands, but as they used a little a little yet remained to them; there was never much, but yet the handful for their present need was never wanting. God gave them their food during those days of famine, but he gave them no large store. Little by little, day by day — this was the law in accordance with which his bounty was supplied. It was not only so in this particular in- stance ; it is the general law of Grod's dealings with man. He gives sufficient for the present use, but no more. There was no storing up supplies of the manna in the wilderness: it was given day by day. The same law applies to the gift for which, to-day, we render thanks to Grod. Corn is an annual plant. The yearly harvest only suffices for the yearly food. In ordinary circumstances we cannot store it up from year to year, but must sow and reap every year. So is it, also, with our means. What we are to have and consume in life is not given to us at once, in one great store, but it comes to us from time to time, from week to week, or from year to year. We do not like this. We often wish we could have it otherwise. We are often anxious because we want the much and only have the little. We IS 1 . 1 THANKSGIVING- SHIMON'S. think to ourselves. I: our position were more terns rent. aV :u: w rk m :™irm slaok. or about health giving way. now dimeren: life be! But no. it is not 'b^n -:h~: of lealm^ a us. Er :Ioes not bestow one great sole gift, but small mimaous gifts. As in the history he gave, day Vy day. yast a few handfuls in the barrel and a little oil in the muse, so w T lay. and are to expeot only sum: hem : "s need. 3. And this is to teach us the principle on which we should always seek to live — faith in God : faith day by day. If the other order had' been followed— if us — now many ot : to put our trust in Our store maybe small, like this barrel and to-morrow or next year. We do u-t See Are we not ted to-ciav • Are we not CiOtne i THE WIDOW'S GBTJSE. 181 to-day ? By whom I Surely what we have has come to us by the loving care and bounty of God. We must trust that he will be equally mindful of us and as gracious to us on the morrow. TTe are always dependent upon him. Day by day, therefore, we should feel our need and trust him for the necessary supply. This is evidently the law for the Christian life, be- cause the great pattern prayer teaches us to ask for daily bread: u Give us this day our daily bread." We are not taught to pray for the larger gift for which the heart too often craves, but for the supply of the day's wants. Christians are to pray daily for daily bread. Here is a lesson of faith which we should all strive to learn. How blessed a season is the annual harvest- home ! Amid all the strife and doubt and care of our daily life the produce of the earth is given from year to year with almost unvary- ing regularity. Our God feeds the birds and beasts which cry to him. He spangles the earth and sky with an ever-varying beauty. Nature sings her anthems to his power and goodness. Revelation unfolds his love. Let us trust him with a larger faith. Let us trust him ever. The barrel of meal shall not waste, the cruse of oil shall not fail : our bread shall be given to us, our waters shall be sure. " I 182 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. have been young, and now am old ; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread." Such was the psalmist's ex- perience, and all later ages bear unfaltering witness to the truth of his words. One beautiful thought remains : We are to give, and our store increases in the giving. The poor widow woman, although on the very verge of starvation, was ready to share her last morsel with another in greater need. She made the little cake for the prophet, believing his word to be the word of God. Did loss result from her giving? Nay, not loss, but increase ! Giving is a consequence of re- ceiving. Giving is also a condition of receiv- ing more. "We need faith in God. A vivid sense of God's presence, God's goodness, God's ability and willingness to bless us, is an essential part of every true and noble life. " Give, and it shall be given unto you ; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom." Whose words are these ? Do we really believe them ? Are they divine words to us ? Are we prepared to accept and act on the principle they teach? If so, we shall make a large and liberal offer- ing at our Thanksgiving festival in thankful recognition of all God's manifold bounty. ME widow's CRUSE. 183 Oh for an act of faith and love to-day which will help the soul to burst the fetters of sel- fishness — those fetters which have bound the better part of us so long and so fast ! Oh for a gift to Ood which will help the whole man to rise up to a purer and higher state of be- ing ! The generous gift will be an act of self- emancipation : you shall no longer be the slave of self, but Ood's child, Christ's freeman. Fear not to offer the material gift ; it will come back a hundredfold in spiritual power. THE SOWER. BY THE REV. GORDON CALTHROP. "Behold, a sower went forth to sow." — Matt. xiii. 3. The Saviour, gazing earnestly and tenderly on a vast gathering before him, spoke the first of his parables — the parable of the sower. We find three topics to discuss : (1) the seed ; (2) the sower; (3) the success. Let us con- sider them in order. 1. The seed. The Saviour himself tells us that the seed is the " Word of God " ; and we understand by the expression " Word of God," not, of course, the entire Scripture, but the divine message of God's love to man, however concise and concentrated may be the language in which it is contained. For instance, in the well-known and beautiful passage in St. John's Gospel (chap. iii. 16), we have only a few more than twenty words, and those of the very sim- plest character ; but what a treasure of living thought is packed into them ! So in the last part of 1 John i. 7, there are just a dozen 184 THE SOWER. 185 words ; yet they speak, not indistinctly, of the lost estate of man, who needs cleansing from his sin ; of the means whereby that cleansing is effected — the shedding of the blood of a person, and that person no other than the Son of God ; of the completeness of the cleansing ; and they lead us to infer the wonder of the love of the Father which could devise such a plan as this. Let a man take into his heart sincerely the thoughts here or elsewhere sug- gested, and the statement will become to him the beginning and the cause of a perfectly new career — he will be a changed man. Or to phrase it differently : the statement is a " seed n with life in it, and it will germinate and spring up and bear fruit to the glory of God. 2. The sower. Who is this ? First of all, the Lord Jesus Christ himself, who — as the Son in whom and by whom the Father hath spoken to us (Heb. i. 2) — supplies us with the seed of heavenly teaching. And let us note that his word is the last word, that there is no one to come after him. Next, the ministers of the gospel and missionaries. Next, all who by speech or writing, or both, undertake to in- struct their fellow-men in the ways of the Lord; and among these are visitors of the poor, Sunday-school teachers, and those who speak of Jesus to their friends and acquain- 186 THANKSGIVING SEBMONS. tances ; and last, but not least, mothers who gather their children round their knee and tell them the sweet story of old, and what Jesus said and did when he lived among men. These all, if they have received their own teaching from the Lord Jesus through his Spirit, may be said to be " sowers n of the "Word. 3. The success. This is only partial. Our Lord speaks in the parable of four different kinds of hearers of the gospel, and compares them to four different kinds of soil. There is (a) the hard-beaten path, trodden down by the hoofs of horses or bullocks and the feet of men ; (&) the shallow soil, spread over the surface of an impenetrable rock ; (c) the field, from which the thorns and briers and thistles and other weeds have not been cleared away ; and (d) the good ground, which yields a crop more or less abundant, and in which alone out of the four is there any real recompense of the cultivator's labor and care. As to these four classes of hearers : In (a) we have the uninterested and inattentive people — their hearts hardened by contact with the world — who listen to the message but do not heed it. They may be pleased with the way in which it is put, by the manner of the speaker or writer, but the message itself is nothing to them. They do not recognize that they have THE S0WEK. 187 any personal concern in the matter. These people are not to be regarded as hopeless. Affliction or some other divine destiny may come and plow up the hardened soil and pre- pare it for the reception of the seed. In (6) we have a more hopeless class — not absolutely hopeless, but more hopeless. They are the emotional people, who receive the message of salvation with joy, who enter with alacrity and pleasure upon the Christian race, but presently grow weary of it. Their religion, they find, costs them something. They have to sacrifice ease or interest or reputation to it ; and then they back out by degrees, and return to the world. They remind one of an uncoupled train on a railway. Look at it ! It goes fast at first, but its pace is continually decreas- ing ; and at last it comes to a standstill. And why ? Because it is detached from the motive power. The third class (c) is characterized by a still greater degree of spiritual hopelessness. These are they who attempt to combine the service of God with the service of the world. And what is the result? That, with abun- dance of the leaves of profession, there are no fruits of righteousness : " They bring no fruit to perfection." Now, before we go further and speak about the fourth class of hearers, let us endeavor to 188 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. secure ourselves against possible misapprehen- sion. It is not meant that we are born into one of these three classes, and that there we must remain ; but rather that we have each of us, in a greater or less degree, impulses, ten- dencies, to be heedless or to be shallow-hearted or to be worldly ; that if these tendencies be resisted and overcome by the help of the Divine Spirit all will be well ; but if they are yielded to, and so gain the upper hand, we gravitate toward one of the three classes — toward that to which our character most inclines us — and become fixed in it. In the last place, let us consider the class of those whom our Lord has in his mind when he speaks of the good ground, which " brought forth fruit, some a hundredfold, some sixty- fold, some thirtyfold." We will turn to the account which St. Luke gives of the parable (see chap. viii. 15), and take his version in con- junction with that of his brother evangelist. The profitable hearer is one who receives the divine message — the seed of the Word — into the soil of "an honest and good heart" — a heart made such, of course, by the power of the Holy Spirit (see Acts xvi. 14). He hears it, then, as all do ; but he takes the next step of " understanding " it, i.e., of recognizing its practical application to himself. More than THE SOWER. 189 this, he retains his hold upon it, in spite of adverse influences from within and without. " This message is for me " is the firm and per- sistent conviction of his heart. "God has spoken to me, and I believe him." More still, the reception of the message produces an effect, a visible effect, upon his character and conduct. God, the great husbandman (John xv. 1), looks for fruit from the trees he has planted. And then, he perseveres to the end. He does not begin and leave off. " He brings forth fruit with patience," i.e., with endurance, for in all work of God there is a principle of permanence. What more need we say ? Each can easily apply the lessons and warnings of the parable to himself. But this we may say, briefly : the first step is the right reception of the divine message, and the next is the firm and resolute retention of it. APAET FROM THE VINE. BY THE REV. GORDON CALTHROP. " Without me ye can do nothing." — John xv. 5. These words are the words of our Lord him- self about himself, and they belong to what we sometimes call " the parable of the vine and its branches." They might be more accurately translated thus: "Apart from Me ye can do nothing " — the idea being not merely that the help of Jesus is required in order that we may have spiritual life and bear "fruit" to the praise and glory of God, but that we cannot even possess spiritual life at all unless we are united to him as the branch is united to the tree. Have you ever seen a man " budding " roses? He has a number of strong, stout "briers" rooted in the earth. To them he comes with a bundle of grafts in his hand, and, taking one of the grafts, makes an inci- sion on the stem of the brier ; puts the graft into the opening, wraps a mass of clay round the stem of the graft in order to exclude wind 190 APART FROM THE VINE. 191 and rain and such like things, and then leaves this brier and goes on to another, repeating the same process. In due time he examines his work, and probably finds that with some successes there have been also some failures. In the case of the failures the graft and the stem have only been brought into juxtaposi- tion and contact. In the case of the successes the graft and the brier-stem have become united, and the life, i.e., the sap of the stem, flows into the graft, and he has a crop of buds and flowers. This is a simple illustration, but it will help us to understand how we can only have spiritual vitality when Christ is one with us and we one with Christ. But let us expand the thoughts. "We will take three points for consideration : (1) There can be no fruit without life ; (2) there can be no life without union with the Lord Jesus Christ; (3) there can be no union with the Lord Jesus Christ without faith. 1. Xo fruit wjthout life. In the natural world we see this at once. You have a dead tree in your garden, and you know perfectly well that no amount of careful pruning, no application of water or of manure to its roots, will enable it to bear fruit. What it wants is life, and that the Creator alone can give. So with the human being. The Scripture com- 192 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. pares him to a plant, and as a plant lie must be alive before you can expect to get anything from him that Grod will be pleased with and will consent to accept. What can come from a soul "dead in trespasses and sins"? 2. There can he no life apart from Christ. Perhaps this statement requires a little explanation. We are not speaking here about the life of the body or of the mind and feelings — life which all persons, good and bad, possess — but of a special thing — a thing by which we become acquainted with God, and know and love and serve him. This particu- lar kind of life is a divine gift, and it is the beginning or germ of " life eternal " ; and in order to be possessed of it we must be pos- sessed of Christ himself. See 1 John v. 12 : "He that hath the Son" hath Christ as an inward treasure, as an inmate dwelling in the secret recesses of the soul ; hath Christ as his Prophet, to teach him; his Priest, to atone for and to bless him; his King, to rule and direct him ; hath Christ as his " portion " (Ps. cxix. 57) — he and he alone hath the life which is " life indeed." Such a one is united with Christ, and by virtue of this union obtains the blessing we speak of. 3. No union with Christ without faith. This fact is abundantly testified to in Holy APAKT FROM THE VINE. 193 Scripture, especially in the Gospel of St. John. There everything is represented as hanging upon faith. Without faith the human soul stands aloof from Christ. By faith it comes into contact With him, and receives out of his fullness. The treasure-chamber, with all its untold wealth, is before us, but it is necessary for us to open the door and cross the threshold and enter in. Faith does this for us — the faith which is the work of the Spirit in our souls. By faith we become possessed of Christ and he becomes possessed of us; and there is a living union established between him and his disciple. This faith must be a habit of the soul, sustained in us by the power of the Holy Spirit. So much for our three points. Now let me suggest two thoughts before we conclude : (a) It is said, " People may be very good and excellent without this union with Christ and this spiritual life of which you have been speaking. They may be honorable and con- scientious and upright and kind and benevo- lent and free from vice, and may do their duty thoroughly well in their own stations. What more do you want ? " Let me tell you a little story. Once I was in a thunder-storm, and a flash of lightning struck a tree — an oak, I think — broke down a huge bough from it, and flung it across the road, which I passed over a few 194 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. minutes after. It was in the summer-time, when the trees were in full leaf. Day by day I passed that bough ; it had not been removed — only pushed up under the hedge. The first day the leaves were as fresh and* green as be- fore the storm ; the second day they were the same ; so on the third day. And you might have said, " Well, the bough is independent of the tree. It has lost none of its vitality by being broken off." But on the fourth day a change began to appear — the leaves seemed to be withering up, and so they were ; and before long the bough had lost its beauty and its life, and was a poor, shrunken, miserable thing, fit only to be cast into the fire and burned. There you have the man who has only what nature has done for him to depend upon. His good- ness is an evanescent, fleeting thing. It is like the prophet's " morning cloud and early dew/' Apart from Christ, severed from Christ, we can do nothing. (6) The subject teaches us that it is wise to begin at the beginning. Fruit does not grow on a dead tree. And we shall do well not to expect to get life by doing good works. The life comes first, and the life is the gift of Grod ; and where the life is the good works are sure to appear. GOD THE GIVER OF INCREASE. "I have planted. Apollos watered; but God gave the in- crease." — 1 Cor. iii. 6. Let us look a little at the principle the Apostle lays down : God gives the increase. 1. We naturally and rightly look for increase. We want fruit as the product of our toil. We all work with a distinct aim. "Who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof ? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock ! n The fact of increase is at once one of the greatest in- ducements to labor and one of the greatest re- wards of it. We should soon grow weary of sowing our fields if we reaped no harvests, and of keeping open our shops if we made no prof- it. Who would continue to work if the work proved altogether barren and resultless ? We should look for increase, also, in higher things. There is the church with its work. We should desire to see it grow under our fostering care, its services more largely at- 195 196 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. tended, its communicants ever increasing, its members growing more active and earnest in all good works. There are the schools, under the shadow of the church, really in its charge. They should be lovingly cared for and liberally sustained. We should look for growing num- bers and increasing usefulness. We should be anxious to see the children growing up into church-membership, claiming their privileges and realizing their responsibilities. So the church of Grod should be a growing power for good, both at home and abroad, in the slums of great cities and in the waste places of heathen lands. We should look for increase, also, in the personal soul. What is our Christianity ? Not a creed only, not a theology only, not a piece of social organization only, but a life. It is a new and higher life planted in the soul. " Dead in trespasses and sins." " Born again." " Quickened." A vital force takes possession of the dead life. " Because I live, ye shall live also." We are to "grow in grace." Growth is a characteristic of life. We should look for it, therefore, in the soul. The apostles could say to many of the Christians of their age, " Your faith groweth," " Your love groweth." Can it be said of us? Is our Christian life standing still ? or is it, as it ought to be, a liv- GOD THE GIVER OF INCREASE. 197 ing, growing thing ! As the years pass by can we see more faith, more prayer, more grace? Is the life consciously nearer God ? If we ask such questions with any earnestness they lead us to a second thought : 2. If we want the increase, we iiinst take the proper nieans. This is true, not only of the great matters of which the Apostle is speaking, but also of the commonest things of daily life. It is one of the great lessons of the harvest. Men must clear the soil ; they must plow and break up the fallow ground; they must sow the good seed. and take all known means to help its growth. So is it in business. Sedulous care is one of the secrets of success. As the old proverb puts it, " Keep your shop and your shop will keep you. ? ' So is it in education. There is no royal road to learning for any man. Lan- guages and sciences will not come to us by some sudden inspiration, but only as the fruit of hard and dreary toil ; and if you want the fruit you must do the work. In every domain of life God blesses human forethought and toil and faith. It is true in the spiritual as well as in the natural and mental sphere. God had given the increase in the church of Corinth. Their growth in the Christian faith had been rapid, nay, even marvelous. But how earnest 198 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. had been the labor of which this growth was the reward ! St. Paul had planted with all his zeal. His fiery enthusiasm had caught and inflamed duller souls than his own. Apollos, with his renowned eloquence, had labored too. These were the antecedent conditions on the human side to which that growth was to be ascribed. Have we any anxiety of this kind ? Do we wish our church, in the midst of its large pop- ulation, to be what the ministry of the apostles was to heathen, licentious Corinth ! Is it shed- ding the light of God's truth upon the world's sin ? Are we conscious of a mission to train up the young, to reclaim the erring, to strengthen the weak, to ennoble the base? We look for increase. "We even long for it. We complain at times unless we see a large measure of it — for the critic's office is always easy. But are we taking the right means! Are we striving to plant and water? Are we by prayer and work, by offerings of our time and substance as gifts to the Lord, taking the right means to secure it ? So, too, as to our own souls — have we any anxiety about these? Is there any daily thought, any daily effort to grow in grace? Are we really trying to be better — really try- ingf We know we must give thought and GOD THE GIVEB OF INCREASE. 199 take trouble in other things if they are to prosper. No reasonable man would neglect his business and expect it to flourish. Are we to expect the soul to grow more pure and more true in some miraculous way, apart al- together from human means? Do we think as much about soul prosperity as we do about the success of our business, the comfort of our homes, and the general prosperity and pleasure of our lives ? Alas, how seldom is it so ! And yet all the analogy of nature teaches us we must not expect increase in any region of hu- man life apart from our own earnest efforts. Yet when we have insisted on this in the fullest way the great truth of the text remains : that the ultimate source of all increase is to be found in God. 3. Paul may plant, Apollos may water ; but God giveth the Increase. This is so even in the commonest things of daily life. Take the ordinary annual produce of the earth : man must plow, sow, and take all the ordinary means which experience teaches him to be necessary. Yet all human toil is but digging the channel through which the stream runs to his own door. He does not produce the life-giving water. The ultimate causes of productiveness are altogether beyond our power to reach. Life, both in its origin and 200 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. its continuance, is full of mystery to us. We toil, and generally our toil is crowned with abundant growth. But sometimes the blight, the mildew, and the failure which mock our efforts bring sharply home to us the fact that life and increase are from God. So is it in business life. Two men start together; the conditions which promise success — such as neighborhood, the conduct and industry of the men, and so on — seem precisely equal. Yet, while one man prospers in largest mea- sure, the other goes his way to poverty and forgetfulness through the bankruptcy court. So it is, also, in the rampant speculation of our day : a few men accumulate great wealth, the many are involved in loss which brings them face to face with ruin. It is, of course, true, as Shakespeare says : " There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune ; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows, and in miseries." But this only states the fact without explain- ing it. The question at the root of the matter is, What is it that determines a man's action at the critical moment in his history ? What gives the insight and the courage which en- able him to grasp the happy chance ? What GOD THE GIVER OF INCREASE. 201 sends him bounding on the flood to fortune ? Or what makes another hesitate and falter in seizing the opportunity, so that he is swept back by the receding tide into the shallows of difficulty and want? May not this be God, the ruler of all, who " doeth according to his will," who setteth up one and putteth down another? Even in the commonest things do we not see that promotion cometh neither from the east nor from the west nor from the south ? There is no certain and unfailing way in which we can grasp success. Toil is ours, but in- crease is in the hands of God. God does give the increase in all the many regions of human life. God blesses all honest, humble toil. He crowns the plowing and the sowing with the golden harvest. Study is re- warded with growth both in our stores of knowledge and also in our mental power to grasp the truth. So, also, all real spiritual work is largely blessed by God. The apos- tolic church was but as a grain of mustard- seed in the estimation of men. A few peas- ants and fishermen worked in quiet, humble, obscure ways, preaching the cross and the resurrection. We may make mistakes about this. Imagination weaves a fairy-like spell over the past ; it becomes a golden age to us. Painters and poets alike conspire to give us 202 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. an ideal picture of it. A St. Peter and St. Paul are represented with a halo round the head, as though they went about their daily work with some visible mark of divine favor to distinguish them from their fellow-men. But it was not so. They did what they could in the by-ways of life. They preached to a few listeners in a private house; to a few women by the river-side ; they disputed with a few argumentative souls in the school of this philosopher or that ; but God owned their labor. As they planted and watered, God gave the increase. God is ever near. God labors with us. May we ever bear it in mind in all our work ! When we teach little children, when we say a few halting words by the sick-bed, it is not the human which touches the soul and builds up a living faith ; it is God who energizes the human and does his own work through our instrumentality. God crowns our work with his all-sufficient blessing. It is true in all ways. In the personal soul our religious acts, in public worship and in sacraments, as well as in private devotion, are planting and watering ; but faithfully used, a richer divine life will possess us, for God will give the increase and there will be a sure growth in righteousness. In the church at A LAND OF PLENTY. 203 home let us work, and, God helping us, men shall be brought out of darkness into his mar- velous light. Let us pray and give to the church abroad ; so strength will come for the high warfare. The shadows of debased hea- thenism will give way before the unsullied light of the truth. Men who have lived but an ani- mal life will learn to realize the meaning and dignity of their manhood. Christ will be known, followed, loved. How great a lesson is here ! May we all seek to learn it, and so shape our personal life and our church work that Grod's increase may spring up in us and around us, in high, abid- ing gifts, forever to enrich and bless us ! A LAND FLOWING WITH MILK AND HONEY. BY THE REV. GORDON CALTHROP. "And they told him, and said, We came unto the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it noweth with milk and honey ; and this is the fruit of it." — Num. xiii. 27. The Israelites were now on the border of the Promised Land. They had now the prize be- fore them — almost, as it seemed, within their grasp — but they had to fight for it. 204 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. At this juncture the Lord directed Moses to select twelve suitable men — one out of each tribe, men of standing, " rulers " — and to send them to explore the land. Moses did so, and the men were dispatched on the perilous er- rand, having received special injunctions to bring back with them "of the fruit of the land." After the lapse of forty days they returned to make their report. The search had been thorough and exhaustive, and the report was favorable, as far as the beauty of the scenery and the bounty of the soil were concerned; but from another point of view unfavorable, for ten out of the twelve men unhesitatingly declared that the conquest of the country was simply impossible for them. What murmur- ing their declaration led to, and what sad con- sequences followed, you will, of course, remem- ber. But with this part of the narrative we are not concerned. We fix our attention on the fact that those who had visited the land brought back with them specimens, so to speak, of the produce — evidences of its mar- velous fertility. The idea thus suggested is that the true disciples of the Lord Jesus are expected to show to the world some illustration of the nature of the heavenly country to which they are jour- A LAND OF PLENTY. 205 neying. In a sense they have been there and have come back. But in what sense ? 1. The idea with many persons is that the future condition of man is so completely different from this .that it is out of the ques- tion to attempt to form a conception of it. Heaven, they think, is absolutely unlike earth. It may be .well " to go to heaven," as the phrase is, when we die. But they feel themselves very much in the dark as to its enjoyments and oc- cupations, .and half suspect that there will be not very much that is attractive about it for an ordinary human being. Now it is true, St. Paul tells us that " eye hath jiot seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." But it is also true, as the Apostle goes on to say, that " God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit." Some people, then, are in a position to understand what the heavenly kingdom is like. They have ideas, true ideas, about it — foretastes, anticipations. In fact, " heaven " is really the expansion and development of a life begun here below. "He that hath the Son hath life." 2. What, then, has the true disciple to show as specimens of the produce of this unseen and unknown country? Briefly, 206 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. the character of Christ reproduced in him by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is faintly, imperfectly reproduced ; still it is reproduced. (See 2 Cor. L 21 : " Hath anointed us.") There is the strength which overcometh the world, the peace which passetb understanding, the blessedness of communion .with .Cod, the soul- thirst for God ever renewed and ever satisfied. In these things, and in such as these, the hap- piness of the future state consists. And the world can partly understand holiness, even when it does not sympathize with it. Said one, speaking of a Christian over whom the waves and billows of a great trouble were breaking, but who bore himself bravely and calmly under all: "That man has a secret: I wonder what it is. He has an unknown power in him ; I wish I possessed it." Ah ! the more Christ-like we are the more truly shall we bear in our hands the " fruit " of the better land. The Christ-like character is the evidence of heaven's existence and the guarantee of our own complete possession of it in the future. 3. It is by the presentation of these fruits of the land that souls are won. No doubt there are some persons in the world to whom Christ and everything belonging to Christ are only repulsive ; and these will scru- tinize the disciple with an unfriendly eye, and A LAND OF PLENTY. 207 rejoice if ever they find, or fancy they find, any inconsistency in his conduct. But there are also many others of a different temper. They are halting between two opinions. They are well disposed, but unsettled ; and they look at you, and almost envy you for the happiness and the spiritual power which you seem to them to possess, though you in your own heart are so unsatisfied with yourself. They say, not of course in words, but by their feel- ings and manner, " Be Christ to us ; let us see in you and through you what the Divine Mas- ter is, and how he will treat us if we venture to apply to him ; " or, to express it differently, " Show us the fruits of the heavenly land of which you think so much and speak so much. You are among us as a citizen of the heavenly city." (Phil. iii. 20.) " Enable us to gather from your conduct what are the characteristics of that noble land, of that bright and glorious companionship." And lastly, what is the practical conclusion to be drawn from the whole subject thus dis- cussed ? Surely it is this : that we, who pro- fess to serve and follow the Lord Jesus Christ, should be careful to recognize the responsibil- ity laid upon us to give a good report, like Caleb and Joshua, and not a bad report, like the ten other spies, of the unseen land. We shall give 208 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. a bad report if our lives are not attractive and are not consistent; or if we say, as the ten did, " Well, it is true enough that the land is glorious and magnificent, but the difficulties to be overcome are so many, the foes that stand in the way of occupation so powerful, that it is useless to attempt to fight your way into it." We shall give a good report if our characters glow, even feebly, with the inner light of the life of Christ ; and if, by deed as well as by word, we cry, " The conflict may be a formidable one, but it is not too formid- able ; " and if we trust, as we should do and may do, that we shall be more than conquerors through Him that loved us. THE BREAD OF LIFE. "I am that bread of life."— John vi. 48. We will consider : 1. The demand made by God of every- body to whom the message of salvation comes : " This is the work of God, that ye be- lieve on him whom ho hath sent" (verse 29). 2. The result of compliance with the demand : Christ becomes to us " the bread of life" (verse 51). OUR DAILY BREAD. 209 3. The world's rejection of the de- mand : " This is a hard saying ; who can hear it? r (verse 60). Granted that there are, as indeed there must be, difficulties in the Christian religion — things hard to be understood, problems for which we shall find no solution, at least not in this world — what shall we gain by leaving Christ ! Christ can do for us what no one else can. Xo one else has — scarcely any one pretends to have — "the words of eternal life." Had we not better stay where we are ! The Apostle Peter obviously thought so. He was puz- zled like the rest — perplexed, perhaps ; for the moment even unsettled. But what did he say? "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we be- lieve and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God." Shall we not he moved with gratitude that the bread of life is so freely offered? OUR DAILY BREAD. "Give us this day our daily bread." — Matt. vi. 2. From the time of the fathers there has been diversity of opinion as to the precise meaning of this fourth petition of the Lord's Prayer. 210 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. The discussion has turned chiefly upon the significance of the word bread. Some have contended that by it we are to understand spiritual sustenance. Some, adopting another shade of this interpretation, have referred it to the bread broken at the eucharist, which in the early church was administered every day. Others, again, hold that in this petition we ask for the supply of our temporal wants. Others have conjoined all the above interpretations. The mystical and figurative application seems to be over-refined and altogether uncalled for. The Scriptures never hint that it is beneath the dignity of the Most High to sustain the life that now is any more than it was unworthy of him to bestow it. Moreover the word bread is never used in the Bible to denote spiritual supplies without the addition of some attri- bute, as " the bread of life," " the living bread that cometh down from heaven." On the other hand we often find in Holy Writ that bread stands for all kinds of nourishment, and not merely that which is procured from grain. It represents the fruit of trees, and in one case even the milk of goats, for the Hebrew word rendered food in our version is literally bread. And when Amos foretells a general dearth he says that there shall be a " famine of bread." Inasmuch as we need clothing OUR DAILY BREAD. 211 equally with food, and as the Apostle exhorts us to be content, having food and raiment, we may hold safely that in this petition we beg all that is requisite to support our animal life — all physical necessaries. How this prayer contrasts with those that precede it ! " Thy name," " Thy kingdom," 11 Thy will," " Our daily bread " ! How infinite the love that could bridge the measureless space between them ! How deep the grati- tude such kindness should call forth ! Mark how the one petition of the Lord's Prayer for things temporal is fenced round by five for things eternal. We commence and conclude with spiritual mat- ters. Let us learn the comparative insignifi- cance of worldly good — that it ought to be al- together subordinate and subservient to our spiritual interests. Many men reverse this order: everything must yield to the acquisi- tion of wealth ; come what may hereafter, they must be rich here. Let the soul hunger and thirst, so that the body be well fed. They value the treasures of earth which moth and rust corrupt far more highly than the treasures of heaven. It is to be feared that many Chris- tians fall into a somewhat similar error. They are constantly desponding about the supply of their daily wants, Their earthly future does 212 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. not look as bright as they could wish, and they allow a carking care to take possession of their breasts. Nevertheless they can commit their sonls to His keeping, believing that he is able to save them to the uttermost. An old di- vine says, " We can sooner trust God for par- don than provision, for a crown than a crust." Can aught be more unreasonable and incon- sistent ? He who spared not his own Son will with him also freely give us all things. In the very discourse of which our text forms a part our Saviour tells us that our Heavenly Father knoweth that we have need of all these things before we ask him ; and asks, with a conclusiveness that neither the intellect nor the heart can resist, whether the same G-od that clothes the careless lilies in such royal garb, and feeds the unanxious birds from day to day, can be forgetful of their wants who confide in his faithfulness and obey his words. He who would provide and legislate for the comfort of the brute creation, he who feeds the young ravens when they cry, he who hath said, " Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn," surely cannot disdain to interest himself in the wants and necessities of creatures moral, intellectual, and redeemed. Temporal mercies are included in the covenant of grace. "Thy bread shall be OUR DAILY BREAD. 213 given thee ; and thy water shall be sure." If it be ingratitude not to thank God for earthly good it is impiety not to trust him for it. Christianity is as simple and condescending as it is mysterious and sublime. "While con- versant with spiritual mysteries, while an- nouncing the will of the Infinite, while unveil- ing the wonders of eternity, it is not unmind- ful of the present, and does not overlook the weakness of the flesh. It stops in the midst of its lofty, momentous, all-engrossing topics to consult our temporal necessities and to pity our infirmities ; to inquire, " Children, have ye any meat?" It regards no human care, no human grief, no human want as too trivial for its attention and sympathy. It intermeddles with every bitterness and with every joy, however domestic, however personal, however common, however lonely and recluse. Eeligion, while it introduces such infinite relations, such stupendous destinies, will mingle with our fire- side feelings and exalt our work- day thoughts. Hence results much of the pathos and sublim- ity of that passage, " The poor have the gospel preached to them." The educated, the philo- sophical, the affluent cannot monopolize this noblest gift, this richest blessing. The wis- dom that cometh from above condescends to men of low estate. It is not confined to the 214 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. colleges of the learned or the palaces of the high-born. No! it loves to visit the widow and the fatherless, to commune with the sor- rowful and the poor. As the same sun which enlightens and harmonizes our universe, and sustains the vegetable and animal world, dis- dains not to pour light and gladness through a cottage window, and to open the rose that graces a cottage door, so the same holy truth which proclaims the purposes of the Most High, and reveals the secrets of the future, engages to spread the table of the pious poor, and to hear the cries of their children. Our Lord acknowledged and honored the wants of the body. This is one lesson of the three miracles of feeding the multitude. It would have been just as easy to remove the cravings of hunger as to satisfy them. Again, when we pray, "Give us this day," etc., we acknowledge that we are entirely dependent upon God for our supplies. Though our barns may be full, though we have abundance of oil and wine, though our riches increase, yet we confess that each day's food is a direct gift from God. Not only does he give us power to get wealth, but also to use it. We acknowledge, too, that we have no merit on account of which we can demand even daily bread at God's hands, nei- OUR DAILY BREAD. 215 ther anything with which we could purchase it. Every creature is a pensioner upon God's bounty. All things wait upon him who, " sea- weed and seraph-life alike bestowing, delight- eth his vast family to feed;" how much more, then, we, whose sins silence our every claim ! Not more truly were the Israelites, whose manna fell each morn, and each eve grew corrupt, dependent upon God for food than are we. The sower scatters the seed, and God commands his clouds that they rain no rain upon it, and the parched earth refuses to yield the desired harvest. Or, o'er many a fruitful acre appears the green promise of an abundant return, and the sun hides his face, and the heavy clouds deluge the ground, and the ears miss their perfection. Or, one day hill and dale bristle with golden grain, and the next, blighted at God's word, the black ears mock the hopes they raised before. Or, God lays his hands upon our cattle, and we have a very grievous murrain among our herds and flocks. "Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God " — this is a lesson God will have men learn. Look at the limitations by which this prayer is guarded. " This day " — " day by day." We do not ask for goods laid up for 216 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. many years, but for the portion of a day in its day. Thus are we cautioned against a grasp- ing spirit, against the attempt so to heap up treasures as to be independent of God's bounty. Many would rather pray, " Give me each year my yearly bread." That would soon change to " Give me at once my life's portion." And the next thing would be, when we had eaten and were full, we should forget the Lord our God. It is better as it is. The prodigal, who took at once the portion of goods that fell to him, immediately left his father's house. We are kept at home by our dependence. Being fed from day to day, we have certain provision for the future without present care. " Our daily bread." We need not now dis- cuss the multitude of meanings that have been assigned to the word here rendered daily. The most probable signification is " sufficient for our being." However we interpret it this limitation plainly was intended to inculcate moderation and contentment — two essential graces of the Christian character, and also two virtues enjoined by natural morality. A well- governed mind will always endeavor to con- tract its desires within the bounds which na- ture and Providence have drawn for it. A subdued and contented spirit especially be- comes Christians. We are strangers and pil- OUR DAILY BREAD. 217 grims upon earth, and should show by our en- tire spirit and deportment that we seek a better country, that is, a heavenly. Having food and raiment suited to our condition, and sufficient for those who rightly look to us for their sup- plies, let us be therewith content. Whatsoever we have more than this let us hold it as though we possessed it not. It is beyond the terms of the agreement, and He who graciously gave may as graciously take away. Let us bow to his dispensations with lowly thankfulness. Let not us, the eyes of whose understand- ing the Holy Spirit hath enlightened, rush into the common blunder of the world, which confounds the two notions of riches and hap- piness — things in themselves so widely differ- ent and in fact so generally separate. "A man's life" — the reality and happiness of a man's life — " consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." The demon of discontent haunts the couches of luxury, while it finds no ingress into the cottages of industry, temperance, and prayer. " Our daily bread," i.e., the bread which is ours by right, legal and moral ; which we have obtained fairly, without dishonesty or oppres- sion. We must not wrong our fellow-men, nor even deal harshly or hardly with them. Wealth gotten in this way is not ours — it be- 218 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. longs to those we have robbed. It has not been given by God, but stolen by us. Again, we may gather from this word our that we may pray for, and in the general ex- pect, such temporal supplies as that rank in society which Providence has allotted to us indispensably requires, that we may be able to satisfy the demands not only of necessity, but of decency and propriety. Thus the phrase our daily bread encourages us for a continuance of those comforts which educa- tion and habit have transformed into necessi- ties. But it should also teach us to avoid envy because some whom we may regard as less de- serving than ourselves are more wealthy and prosperous than we. If we use this petition with the spirit and with the understanding also, we shall deprecate luxury on the one hand as well as extreme poverty on the other. "Give me," entreats the thoughtful Agur, "neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain." The two extremes of luxury and penury are equally injurious to the phys- ical and to the spiritual health. Want pro- duces weakness and pain, and tends strongly to discontent, dishonesty, and disregard of THE EAliTH A TEACHER. 2l9 laws human and divine. Luxury is scarcely less harmful to the body, and it tempts might- ily to arrogance, both toward the Most High and toward the poor — two evils which are sel- dom found apart from each other. He that feareth not God regardeth not man. Once more, in this word our we have a powerful protest against a spirit of selfishness and a great incentive to charity. Thus in- cluding ourselves in the multitude of God's pensioners, our exclusiveness must give place to sympathy. And when we pray that others may have all that is requisite for their bodily comfort, we pledge ourselves to do our part toward procuring these things for them. We beg God to provide for them ; but if we have wealth we are the stewards of God's property, and are bound to be his almoners. THE EARTH A TEACHER. " Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee." — Job. xii. 8. A habvest festival not only suggests to us man's triumphs over nature ; it not only makes us think of the intellectual and moral insight, which, as they can accomplish so much, we are all bound to use ; it leads us all further still. 220 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. " Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee ; ? yes, much more than physical facts and the laws by which matter is governed. 1. It brings us face to face with insolu- ble mystery. We should, try to learn something of the inner meaning of the world and of human life. Science is busy mainly with the outward facts with which the senses can deal. It teaches us about the cells in vegetable matter of which the plant is built up, as the microscope reveals to curious eyes. It maps out every bone, every vein, every muscle in the wonderful bodies of men. It teaches the functions of them all. It analyzes with searching chemical tests the sub- stances of which the plant or the flesh is com- posed. Science dissects, analyzes, but it does not grasp the thing itself. It is easy, for ex- ample, to describe a battery or a telegraphic wire, but what the mysterious electricity is which flies with lightning-like speed, who can tell? Look, for example, at Professor Tyn- dall's well-known little book on electricity. It asks the question, "What is electricity?" I turn to that with great interest, because it is the very thing I want to know. But it is somewhat disappointing reading. It tells me " it was by the exercise of the scientific imag- ination that Franklin devised the theory of a THE EARTH A TEACHER. 221 single electric fluid to explain electrical phe- nomena. ... It was by the exercise of the same faculty that Symmer devised the theory of two electric fluids, each self-repulsive, but both mutually attractive." Then the last para- graph of the section tells me that " this theory of electric fluids is doubted by many eminent scientific men." It is quite clear that the learned professor's answer to the question, "What is electricity?" might have been ex- pressed even more briefly, in the four simple words " I do not know." The same thing meets us everywhere. Look at the human ear. What an exquisite piece of machinery ! How wonderful is the tiny drum, which quivers with every sound that strikes it ! but more wonderful still is it, not only that each separate sound sets it in motion in a dif- ferent way, but that it hears, that the sound passes from the drum to the brain, to the liv- ing consciousness. Who can explain that? Take the eye, " with all its marvelously per- fect attributes," " with all its inimitable con- trivances for adjusting the focus to different distances." But the greatest wonder is, not how the picture of the external thing is printed, exact in shape and color, on the little black cur- tain at the back, but that it sees, that the pic- ture is conveyed to the consciousness. It is 222 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. said that if you took out the eye of a man or an animal and held it up before any object — a house or a tree, for instance — the picture of that house or tree would be printed on the back of the eye, but the eye would not see it, because it is cut off from the living brain and from the consciousness. Why is there such a thing as consciousness ? Why is it that a little nervous matter in the cavity of a human skull can think ? How is it that, through the action of certain muscles, it can set in motion waves of sound which transmit what it thinks to the nervous matter which thinks in the skulls of other men ? Who can explain this ? No man. It is prof oundest mystery. It is not only a mystery to us who perhaps have never made any special study of science ; it is just as much a mystery to the most cultured scientific man as it is to the humblest man of intelligence who tries to think at all about the problems of life. Speak to the earth, and it shall teach you this. It teaches humility to every man. The meanest flower has in it a mystery beyond all that the most powerful microscope and the subtlest chemical tests can reveal. Patient, teachable, humble — these words de- scribe the true attitude for man when face to face with the world ; not the impudent dogma- THE EARTH A TEACHER. 223 tism which struts and brags and asserts and insists that its latest guess must of necessity be an eternal law of the universe. The earth brings us face to face with insolu- ble mystery. Have we thought much about it ? Have we tried to sound with the plummet of human knowledge and found that we can- not reach the bottom ? Science has its limits ; do we believe that the end of our tether is but the beginning of infinite vastness ? Have we ever, recognizing this, fallen down in lowly, reverent worship at the foot of those altar stairs which slope through darkness up to God? " Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee." See its abounding beauty and produce. It is a world which appeals to a man's imagi- nation as well as supplies his wants. It clothes and feeds his body. A table is spread before us in the wilderness, as we toil and strive. The bounty never fails. Our' cup runneth over. The earth teaches us that the mysteri- ous power which has constituted it is bounte- ous and good. The birds of the air are fed by it, and by it, too, the flowers of the field are invested with their marvelous beauty. When we put these things together — the mystery, the productiveness, the beauty, and the unity of nature — they lead us to the old 224 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. conclusion: the earth witnesses to God, Nature testifies to the supernatural. Nature is at once a fact and a parable. It conceals God behind the working of what we call nat- ural laws, and yet when we seek to probe those natural laws to their depth they reveal his di- vine personality. " For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead." God, in the greatness of his power, is loving and gracious to us. He does good ; he gives us "rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness." He does this age after age, and the continu- ous gifts witness to his unchanging love. The earth is a teacher. We may bring its lessons yet closer home to us. We may learn not only from the stars in their courses, which are so vast, so magnificent, and yet so distant that the telescope cannot magnify them ; not only from the earth, with its pro- duce and its hidden wealth, or from the sea, with its beauty and its majestic force, but from our own nature. There is not only the body, which is so fearfully and wonderfully made, but those higher things : the sense of duty — the voice within which says, "I ought," "I ought not;" the conscience, which calmly THE EARTH A TEACHER. 225 points the way through self-sacrifice and suf- fering, even to the martyr's doom, rather than flinch a hair's-breadth from the path ; yes, and the sense of the everlasting, too, that bound- less yearning in the soul which neither life nor death can quench, the gleaming light of another world which shines within the soul. Where do these things come from ? The sense of duty, conscience, the belief in the everlast- ing — are they the product of dead atoms ? Do they come from nothing but carbon and phos- phorus ? Face such thoughts. They are part of those priceless gifts which make up the heritage and the responsibility of man. Let us count up our mercies this Thanksgiving season. May the remembrance of them brace our souls in faith and hope, that we may live more worthy of our high calling. Are we striving to do this ? Do we think of the mystery and mean- ing of life? With how many of us are its yearnings and powers stifled by the thronging, jangling interests of to-day ! With how many the higher part is covered with the dust of neglect ; is drugged, torpid, dead ! " Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee." Tovi must speak if the lessons it has to teach are to he impressed upon you. You must seek to learn if you would possess her 226 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS. truth. She is a teacher, but she does not force her lessons on unwilling scholars. The earth will teach you. The palace is vast indeed ; the treasures within are beyond all price, they gleam in the everlasting light. But the door seems to be shut. What is written over it? " Ask, and ye shall receive ; seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." Active, persevering interest in quest of truth and righteousness is the characteristic of the true Christian man. Strive to-day to begin in earnest to learn the meaning and nature of life, and then our Thanksgiving will be a bless- ing indeed ; a blessing to-day, a blessing for- ever! THE SPRINGING FORTH OF RIGHT- EOUSNESS. BY THE REV. A. H. VINE. " For as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth ; so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations." — Isa. lxi. 11. It is a great act that God performs before our eyes during the spring and summer of our year; and we shall see it many more times. We are exhilarated ; but our animal pleasure SPRINGING FORTH OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 227 is not enough for the celebration of this won- derful season, with its reminiscence of the first creation and its promise of the second. God seems to come forth from his pavilion of dark waters and thick clouds of the skies, and stand in the open and say, " Behold, I make all things new." I. It is a manifestation that we see — a mystery hidden during the winter months is fleing revealed ; there is a breaking into visi- bility everywhere of that which had been in- visible. As nature hides and then reveals, " so the Lord will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth." 1. It is a great manifestation of power that we see. We more readily associate God's power with vast convulsions, but this is the continuously working and gentle power of the Most High. Mark the consummate ease with which all is done ; there is no appearance of effort. u The earth bringeth forth fruit of herself." There is no sound. Yet not a sheath is split, not a flower starts from the earth, but it is moved to do so by some power. It obeys without a word. It seems irrational to dissociate power and per- sonality, for it is inconceivable that power, apart from personality, should have any regu- 228 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS. lation at all. We may reasonably think, there- fore, as the centurion did when he came to Christ and said, " Trouble not thyself to enter my house; for all things are thy servants to command." 2. Again, is not this putting forth of leaves a great manifestation of mind ? Suppose we discard the word design and ac- cept the word adaptation, do we escape from the suggestion of mental action? It is not possible to describe the facts as they appear to us without using language that implies ad- justment by means of mind. Take an instance: there is a plant of the orchid genus (Baryanthes), the lower lip of which is hollowed out into a large basin, into which drops of moisture fall from two horns of the flower that project over. When the basin of the flower is half full the overflow is drained by a spout on one side of the flower. The top of the lip so hollowed out curls over the basin, and is marked by certain fleshy ridges, which the bees are fond of gnawing. In doing so, crowding one upon another, they frequently fall into the water below, and are obliged to make their exit by the overflow- pipe. Now, as they crawl out by this passage they brush their backs first against a point of the flower which secretes a thick juice, and SPRINGING FORTH OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. 229 then against other points covered with the down or pollen of the flower, so that their backs are covered with it. When, after their escape, they visit another flower, or, as frequently happens, the same again, and, as frequently happens, with the same mischance, they make their escape as before. But now their down-covered backs brush against the point of the flower covered with juice, the down is left adhering, and the flower is fertilized ! So curious is the arrange- ment that Mr. Darwin says (" Origin of Spe- cies," p. 229) : " The most ingenious man, if he had not witnessed what takes place, could never have imagined what purpose all the parts of the flower served." Can we persuade ourselves that mind has nothing to do with these adjustments ? If not — whose mind ? 3. It is something more than mind that is manifested in the beauty of nature. Beauty is only visible to reason, indeed to the higher kind of reason. Your horse sees noth- ing of the beauty of the landscape ; your dog despises your flowers. The images of all these things are reflected on their eyes as on yours, but they produce no emotion. So that in na- ture, it seems, special provision is made for the peculiar gratification of the higher mind of man. Surely it must be reason that thus ad- 230 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. dresses itself to reason, and, if reason, then benevolence. The mind of man and the gracious mind of God meet consciously or unconsciously in the beauty of the world, so far as it is apprehended. II. The prophet sees in this the parable of another manifestation — " So the Lord God," etc. — a great moral and spiritual manifestation. It is pathetic that he should maintain this faith throughout the " winter of his discontent." May we then consider that forces are gath- ering, through long centuries, that will by and by break into visibility, and even suddenly? This is a striking and a charming passage. Once in a year this visible earth manifests its hidden powers ; " then the leaves come out, and the blossoms on the fruit-trees ; the flowers and the grass and corn spring up. There is a rush and burst outwardly of the hidden life which God has lodged in the material world. So shall it be one day with the invisible world of light and glory, when God gives the word. A world of saints and angels, a glorious world, the palace of God, the mount of the Lord of hosts, the heavenly Jesus, the throne of God and Christ — all these wonders, everlasting, all- precious, mysterious, incomprehensible, lie hid in what we see. What we see is the outward A BEGGAK IN HARVEST. 231 shell of an eternal kingdom, and on that king- dom we fix the eyes of our faith." (Newman.) And what saith the Scripture? "As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven," etc. That is, all spiritual influences are trea- sured up, and there is a conservation of spir- itual force as of natural. But the preparation is long, as the winter that precedes the spring. How great the joy of knowing that we may help to provide or strengthen the forces of the world's true vernal hour ! "What happiness to sow the seeds of light and peace ! III. Finally, remember that we shall be manifested. (2 Cor. v. 10.) Forces are gath- ering within us. When we " awake," may our surprise, even in respect of ourselves, be like that with which we look upon the new hea- vens and the new earth ! A BEGGAB IN HARVEST. BY THE REV. G. A. BENNETTS, B.A. " The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold ; there- fore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing." — Prov. xx. 4. Introduction. — No life is really secular. Plowing and sowing and mowing are a part 232 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. of the divine appointment for our life; and prudence in relation to these things is a Chris- tian virtue. The sanctifieation of our labor for the bread that perisheth is one of the pur- poses of our holy religion, and the inculcation of industry and prudence in earthly business is a part of the duty of the Christian minister. The Book of Proverbs tells us in no measured terms how great a sinner the lazy man is ; nor is the Book of Proverbs alone in its denunci- ation of idleness. (See also 1 Pet. ii. 18, 19 ; Eph. vi. 5-8; 1 Tim. v. 8; 2 Thess. iii. 7-12.) But the principles set forth in our text in re- lation to earthly business have also their appli- cation to the spiritual life. 1. Human cooperation is necessary in the beginnings of the religious life. If a man would reap a rich spiritual harvest he must plow. God does not save men, as a rule, by sudden movements of his Spirit upon their souls without their cooperation with him. Spiritual plowing consists of self-examina- tion in the light of God's Word, followed by self-condemnation, the confession and renun- ciation of sin, and the other exercises of re- pentance. 2. Plowing stands in the text as the representative of all the labors of agri- culture in preparation for the harvest. A BEGGAR IN HARVEST. 233 Human cooperation in the divine life is ne- cessary all the way from the beginnings of penitence up to the throne of glory. 3. The text teaches not only the ne- cessity for diligence but for courage. The sluggard was afraid of the cold. Courage is one of the chief virtues. Cowardice is inex- cusable in a soldier of Jesus Christ. Alas, what little things daunt some professors of religion ! A sneer will make a man resign all his offices in the church and retire into sulky indolence! In the divine life "the struggle for existence w is a stern reality ; and when the roll of true heroes comes to be read it will be seen that the heroes of faith have dared greater dangers and shown more valor than those who have marched to victory through a storm of shot and shell. 4. The plowing must be done at the right season. It would be of no use for the sluggard to bring out his plow and yoke his horses to it when other men are going to reap their grain. Youth is the best time for plow- ing. In any case there is no hope after death. 5. Note the sad picture — a beggar in harvest. See, the harvest-wagons are com- ing home ! The air is filled with the joyous shouts of the harvesters ! When, lo ! our eyes light on a miserable object, Mr. Sluggard! 234 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. He would not work, so now he begs ! He will have nothing in harvest "When others shall re- joice in plenty, he will wail in eternal penury. A THANKSGIVING DAY. " Then he said unto them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared : for this day is holy unto our Lord." — Neh. viii. 10. Nehemiah was brought up a captive and a servant ; but he displayed a kingliness worthy of that royal house of David from whence he sprang. He never fought a battle, but he displayed resolution, courage, and prudence. Strange abodes were the palaces of the Persian kings to men of high heart and pure life. These monarchs were treated as gods rather than men. Only seven nobles could obtain free admission to their presence ; their decrees were irrevocable ; their summons could bring millions to march at their command. Arta- xerxes was on the throne, said to be the son of a Jewish captive, probably of Esther, whose heroism saved her nation. He had a kindly feeling toward the Jews. He saw his cup- bearer Nehemiah looking sad and dejected; he asked what ailed him. Nehemiah had A THANKSGIVING DAY. 235 heard a lamentable account: Jerusalem was beset with enemies; the Bedouin robbers swarmed, and gathered the crops as soon as ripe ; the mongrel race at Samaria had tried to unite with the Jews ; Ezra had refused, fear- ing the corruption ; they had consequently be- come bitter foes of the Jews, maligning them to each new king, and interfering with the res- toration of the city ; they had persuaded the king that if the walls were restored the Jews would rebel; the high priest was a Moabite, the temple service corrupted, the walls dis- mantled, the tombs desecrated. Nehemiah grieved, wept, and prayed over these calam- ities for months. He replies to the king (chap. ii. 3) : " Let the king live forever : why should not my countenance be sad, when the city," etc. The king listens graciously : " For what dost thou make request?" Nehemiah asks to be permitted to go to restore the city. He obtains volunteers, surveys the city by night because of his foes, and beholds a ter- rible picture of desolation — a sight to make a patriot's heart sink. His wisdom and strength of purpose gave a new courage to an abject people. Their work was accomplished. The Sabbath month came, which was kept in mem- ory of their escape into the wilderness, which also served to commemorate the ingathering 236 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. of the fruits of the earth. The much-neglected Feast of Tabernacles was celebrated afresh with great joy and festivity. 1. We learn that we should not be in- different to God's gifts. (a) We should remember that they come from God. Nehemiah bids them eat the fat and drink the sweet. They are to use and enjoy. The perfection of the soul will come when we ap- pi^eciate Giver and gift. God commends his gifts by the way in which he gives them as well as by their value. Some givers are so patronizing, self-seeking, expectant, demand such flattery, that a starving man would re- fuse the bread of life at such hands. God be- stows freely with good-will, demanding little in return, seeking a recompense only in that which ennobles us — gratitude which enlarges, praise which glorifies, obedience which makes righteous. God gives his Son, Spirit, riches of his eternal Godhead. He gives as if he were surveying his own inexhaustible trea- sures rather than our needs — as if all the splendors of the material universe were in- sufficient for those who are joint heirs with Christ. (b) God wishes us to appreciate his gifts. The way in which we treat them will test A THANKSGIVING DAY. 237 our religion as well as our taste, our common sense as well as our devotion. Sensual men abuse them ; ungrateful men take them as only a small instalment of their due. The forget- ful and insensible man takes all as a matter of course. He builds a pyramid to his own self-conceit, and inters God's mercies therein. The ascetic slights the gifts for the sake of the Giver, so he says. He acts as though this earth were made, adorned, and preserved by Satan; as though God had never made an Eden, never had promised a Paradise with full- ness of joy. But Christians love the .Giver; therefore all his gifts are golden, and bear his superscription. Though Christianity is spiri- tual in aim, it does not despise material good. Why should it! Though it wins its highest trophies in the soul it strives mightily to make the body also a temple of the Holy Ghost. The body as well as the soul is to be made like Christ. Christianity should smile on all scenes of happiness and contentment. If it has its tears in repentance it has also the new life, and love and joy. It has its cross, but also its opened sepulcher and ascension; its stern forerunner, John the Baptist, but also its Christ gracing a wedding, feasting with his disciples, inviting the slanders of the envious by his sociality. 238 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. (c) God means us to take them as a reward for toil. Shall a man serve God for naught ? Every- thing on earth, in heaven, among all creatures, proclaims he shall not. God not only pays in stern righteousness for all our efforts, but lets grace abound. The deserving of all the good God bestows is an impossibility even for un- fallen angels. If men toil in vain it is not in harmony with the creative plan. Occasional failure proves not that labor is designed to fail. God is the active cause of success. Sin brings failure. Sin not only destroys, but prevents much good. Rarely do men fish all night and catch nothing ; and, if they do, the Lord appears in the morning, and their very nets break. When we enter the higher regions of the soul, where God alone can find the currency of heaven with which to pay, lack of recom- pense is an impossibility. If all good came without effort, man would soon become a mere brute, like Nebuchadnez- zar. If no recompense came, man would be like the Israelites in the days of Deborah, when the inhabitants of villages ceased because Philistines reaped their fields. Not for noth- ing will you toil up steep hills of difficulty. The prospect will more than repay the pain. A THANKSGIVING DAY. 239 Nebo will be your reward. Not for nothing shall you have the storm, the thunder's roar, lightning's flash. You shall see a sea of glass glittering like amethyst beneath the cloudless sky of eternity. The isles of the Blessed West, stately with palm, shall be the land ahead. Not for nothing will scoff, jeer of witless per- secutor, trouble you, or strive to hold you up to execration. Soon the streets of the city of the great King shall ring with that which shall be done unto that man whom the King de- lighteth to honor. (d) God takes pleasure in the delight of his people. The sculptor takes pleasure in the creation of his genius, when the ordinary statue seems to breathe and speak ; but when by his skill he impersonates a great statesman or reformer, so that through that rigid marble he touches a thousand hearts with generous impulses, with self-sacrifice and lofty aspiration, he rejoices more : even so, when Grod sees material boun- ties unloose our tongues with praise, make our hearts glow with gratitude, then he attains his end and rejoices therein. He never limits our joy by sorrow, except it lead to a higher joy. He never flings a shadow across our path but what he designs it to quicken our pursuit of that eternal substance from which it falls. 240 THANKSGIVING SEBMONS. Why should God create in vain ? Why should he not be satisfied with his works ? Has he not a right to make the earth a high altar, and man his priest ? Nature cannot pay her full revenue of praise until man assists. We may have different views of some of God's ways, "footsteps not known" even to keen eyes of angels ; but we cannot doubt he intends to make us happy. God smiles afresh when contentment, cheerfulness, gladness go forth to triumph. Wound not the heart of your Heavenly Father by base ingratitude. As God consults our highest interests in the gifts, let us consult his glory in their use ; as he puts his love into his bounties, let us strive to make our gratitude last as long as his mercy. Strive to distinguish between levity and cheer- fulness, for levity may be the production of folly and vice ; cheerfulness is the natural off- spring of wisdom and virtue. 2. Out of our prosperity we should bless others. (a) This is Godlike. " Send a portion unto him for whom noth- ing is prepared." How God delights to communicate ! Every star which glitters, every mind which thinks, every angel which worships, yea, even the fallen angels, declare how he delighted to go A THANKSGIVING DAY. 241 out of himself. All the laws of nature are almoners of his bounty. If God did not de- light to give, creation could never have been, and the very mansions of heaven must soon totter and fall. If he be churlish and miserly, we must change the name of God. Goodness is the most active of all virtues. Like fabled Time, it has wings upon its feet. God's readi- ness to bless outspeeds our needs. It degrades men to withhold good. Even the granite quartz yields the gold to the crush- ing-instrument. But, alas ! some hearts are harder than granite. Only universal goodness could be commensurate with God's own im- mensity. " Great minds, like Heaven, are pleased in doing good, Though the ungrateful subjects of their favors are barren in return." It requires no revelation from heaven to tell us that sorrows abound in this world. If we were invaded by a cruel enemy we must know that many would be exposed to attacks, sur- prisals, ambushes, requisitions. There must be many sufferers. If a battle rage we ought not to partake of delicious fruit in our plea- sant bowers, while, just beyond, our country- men are clutching the crimsoned grass in dy- ing agony. We know the world is not in a 242 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. state of profound peace and universal pros- perity. It has been invaded by cruel, untir- ing foes ; disease, making weak weaker, poor poorer, the helpless more despairing; vice, apples of Sodom, Dead Sea fruit; bereave- ment, shattering the pillar which supports the family, cutting off income. Such considera- tions should pierce our consciences as arrows of the Lord ; they should burden our hearts. We ought not to feast within drawn blinds, and forget the shivering and starving groping helplessly in the dark outside. We must not, even for sake of being early at a convention, pass rapidly on the other side, oblivious of the wounded one who has " fallen among thieves." When you have weathered commercial crises and find credit unimpaired, do not forget those who are still on broken spars battling with the waves. " Oh, there is need that on men's hearts should fall A spirit that can sympathize with all." (&) We should strive to cultivate sympathy. It ought to be impossible that in a Christian land honest worth or hopeless want should dwell unaided by our care and sympathy. Our poor-law system is honoring to Chris- tianity, which made it possible, but it is too narrow for that universal spirit of benevolence A THANKSGIVING DAY. 243 which Christianity strives to impart. Pene- trative though it is, it cannot ascertain many secret burdens crushing the most sensitive. It cannot be full of sympathy. It may encourage indolence ; it does not go in search of misery — it has enough brought to its office. Poor- laws were never designed to fulfil all our duty to our neighbor. They are much more than the priest and Levite who passed by on the other side, but much less than the good Sa- maritan. Poor-laws are too much like auto- matic machines which supply sweetmeats, but there is no feeling. The relieving officer, who gets the " blessing of them that are ready to perish," is likely to get censure of those whose " eyes stand out with fatness." Christian benevolence has heart as well as head. Talking about the golden age will not bring it. Christianity will no longer multiply the loaves by miracle, save by the miracle of God's gracious providence. The plenty is put into our homes to carry it to others. 3. True holiness is not incompatible with innocent enjoyment. God is holy as well as happy ; but he is holy first. God looks on what he has made and pro- nounces it to be good. What right have we to reverse Heaven's high verdict ? Is not this as bad as transforming it into a curse ? The 244 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. day was holy on being set aside. But the mere formal setting aside, the describing a circle more or less limited within the sweep of time, the cutting an infinitesimal arc off the circle of eternity, cannot make it holy. Chris- tianity has been injured by its fast-days, its whips, flagellations, and heavy penances. When these were rife Christianity was most corrupt. We must put holiness in the princi- ple rather than in the theory. We must teach, not that there is one holy temple in Zion, but that every Christian may become a temple ; that every day and hour may be a time for holy living. To do everything unto is equiv- alent to doing everything for the Lord. When we throw the spirit of holy angels into the duty of life we make the secular spiritual, and the whole earth a temple overflowing with the light and glory of God. Matter in itself can- not be sinful. Impurity is not associated with each gift and bounty of a material kind. Health need not lead to sin, nor prosperity to rebellion. The streams of heaven are pure as well as joyous. Let all matter be associated with sin, then all material emblems of heaven are illusive. Yes, the fontal spring was pure, but ere it flowed far an enemy cast in mire and dirt. The impurity comes in the dethronement of the higher matter. Holiness is not a mere THE CUP OF SALVATION. 245 crotchet, but a principle far-reaching as God's omnipresence, penetrative as his omniscience. The holiest men have had fullest foretastes of heaven. Through holiness the highest spiri- tual joy will flow. " We will worship toward thy holy temple, and praise thy name for thy loving-kindness and for thy truth." THE CUP OF SALVATION. " What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits to- ward me ? " I will take the enp of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord."— Ps. cxvi. 12, 13. We have here a question and its answer ; a question we all ought to ask and an answer we all ought to give. Look at the question — have we ever asked it ? Have we tried to think about the Lord's benefits? Have we in some quiet hour at- tempted to count over the numberless mercies which abound in our lives ? Let us put the matter to ourselves in some practical way. Let us go for a little time to the waiting-room or the wards of some great hospital and see the large numbers of our fel- low-creatures who come with their heavy phys- ical burdens that they may obtain the advice 246 THANKSGIVING SEKM0NS. and relief which science can give. Look at the crippled limbs, the white, sunken, wasted faces, the helplessness, the suffering, the want. If we spent a few hours thus should we not be thankful indeed for our own abounding health, our sound limbs, our freedom from weakness and pain, our large capacity for work and en- joyment ? Should we not ask some such ques- tion as the psalmist's : " What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me ? " Or we might go through a lunatic asylum and see hundreds of men and women mentally diseased, their minds filled with delusions which make their lives useless and wretched to themselves and oftentimes dangerous to^ so- ciety. What more fearful calamity can over- take a man than to have reason dethroned and some childish or animal impulse assuming the government of the life ? Would not a sad sight like that fill us with thankfulness for our own soundness of mind, our power to think and learn more and more of the great truths and facts with which men have to deal ? Should we not ask ourselves the psalmist's question : How can we ever repay Grod for all his good- ness? We might try to measure the misery linked to the rags, the hunger and the dirt, and the unceasing pain of daily struggle for the barest THE CUP OF SALVATION. 247 maintenance of life. Then, as we went back to our own comfortable homes, with their order, plenty, and moderate adornment, should we not think of the psalmist's problem ? Should we not ask : What thank-offering can be made to God for his abounding mercy ? Look steadily at the picture of the fearful sufferings of men and women and little chil- dren for want of bread. Aye, and look at the terrible mortality too ! Then turn to the bountiful provision which God has made for us. See the abundant harvest which is once more gathered in. Measure up, if you can, the varied fruits of the earth which are safely housed in our garners for the sustenance and comfort of man's life. The dark story of the famine will help us to estimate rightly the greatness of common mercies— those gifts which are bestowed upon us in such plenty that too often we use them without thought and without thankfulness. The purpose of our annual Thanksgiv- ing is to bring us face to face with the fact that all the products of nature are the gift of God, and to teach us the trust and the thankfulness with which we should receive and use them all. When we see the harvest-fields in their autumnal beauty, and feel that G-od has once more prepared a 248 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. table for us in the wilderness, we should ask, like the psalmist : " What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me?" These common mercies we have thought of are great, but they are the least portion of the benefits on which the psalmist meditated. As we read the psalm we see that the main mercies around which his mind was lingering were spiritual ones, those precious gifts of grace and mercy which were linked to the covenant. He may have been brought into contact with some of the debasing forms of the idolatry of the age. He may have seen the results of a false worship on the mental and moral state of a nation, and then was filled with thankful- ness at the mercy vouchsafed to Israel. They were blessed with "the courts of the Lord's house in the midst " of them. In those courts the faithful soul could enter into communion with Grod, and find grace and strength for the life in every time of need. His own inner life was a sufficient witness of this. He had been in the depths. Pain and sorrow and darkness had laid hold of him. In answer to his cry he had not only found deliverance, but the very trial itself had been blessed to his spiritual growth. Thoughts such as these are far more full of meaning to us than they could have been to THE CUP OF SALVATION. 249 the psalmist. The Lord's benefits ! What a flood of light is cast on the words by the cross and resurrection of the Saviour ! God's own Son taking human flesh, dying for our sins, rising again for our justification, sending the Divine Spirit down upon his believing people ! How vast and how abiding is the grace en- shrined in such familiar facts as these! If the psalmist, in passing Grod's benefits in re- view, felt that they surpassed infinitely not only his desert but also his power of adequate acknowledgment, what ought our thankfulness to be at the greater mercy and the clearer light vouchsafed to us ! Have we ever really thought about these things ? Have we tried in any way to mea- sure our boundless spiritual opportunities and to estimate the preciousness of the golden chain of love and goodness with which, both in temporal and spiritual things, G-od has en- circled our life? Have we ever asked what duty these things place upon us ? " What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me ? * This is the question of a grateful heart, a heart which would like to make some return to G-od if it were possible to do so. A right and noble desire — would that it dwelt in us all! 250 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. What answer can we give to the question ? Grod bestows so many blessings upon us that, in one sense of the word, we can return abso- lutely nothing to him for his gifts. The psalm- ist's words imply this: I can bring thee no great gift, I can lay no priceless offering at thy feet, I have nothing which is not already thine own, for all has come from thee — I will take the cup of salvation. I will accept thy bounteous mercy with a thankful heart. I will seek to link all my life to thee. This thought helps us to meet a very com- mon temptation. A man may realize some- thing of the goodness of Grod. He may say to himself : " Oh, if I had very large means like some men, how much I would try to do in re- turn ! I would build a stately cathedral for the service of God, a noble house of prayer for all time. I would endow a hospital to minis- ter to human suffering. I would put the high- est education within the reach of the poorest- man. But I have so little income, it scarcely overlaps my own pressing wants." Then, be- cause he cannot do great things, he sinks back and does nothing at all. He would reform an empire, but does not order his own house. He dreams of cleansing a city, but never sweeps before his own door. The psalmist teaches us the true lesson, and shows us what we may all THE CUP OF SALVATION. 251 do. We may give ourselves first of all, and then the avenues of service will open out be- fore us according to His will. " I will take the cup of salvation." Is it not saying, in other words, " God shall be my Grod, and I will be his servant " ? " I will take the cup of salvation." How are we to understand the figure ? The word cup is often used in Holy Scripture to represent the portion allotted to man, whether of prosperity or adversity ; just as the Arabs speak of the cup of love and the cup of death. (See, as examples of this, Ps. xi. 6, xvi. 5, xxiii. 5.) So the words of the text would mean : " I will accept with thankfulness and worship what Grod may see fit to send me as my life's portion." To enter into the lesson of the words we may take three pictures : 1. That so familiar to us in the Twenty- third Psalm. A human soul pondering over the past life with all its alternations of light and shade, of joy and sorrow. He scans the winding pathway by which he has been led out of the bare desert into the green pastures and beside the still waters. In strife and in darkness the protecting hand had never been withdrawn. All his wants had been supplied. His table had been prepared even in the pres- 252 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. ence of his enemies. He saw that all his life had abounded with blessing. "With thankful heart he says to himself and to the world, " My cup runneth over." My lot has been always blessed by the unfailing goodness of God. 2. A second picture. The Christ, in his great agony in the garden, bending low under the shadow of the aged olive-trees, while the Passover moon was lighting up the rough mountain side with its brightness. How aw- ful a burden bowed him down when his sweat was as great drops of blood falling down to the ground! His anguish of body and soul was as a cup of unspeakable bitterness he had to drink. Even he pleaded, " If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." And yet, withal, there was the prayer so sublime in its self-f or- getfulness : " Not my will, but thine, be done." How complete was his submission to God, and how unfaltering his devotion to the great work for which he came ! 3. A third picture. The father of the family, at the Passover, as the master of the feast, took a cup of wine into his hand and solemnly blessed God for it and for the mercy which was then acknowledged. He then gave it to all the guests, and each one drank of it in turn. Many have thought that this is what the psalmist refers to in the text. It was the THE CUP OF SALVATION. 253 custom of the feast in our Lord's time, but there is no evidence of the existence of the custom at the celebration of the Passover in the Old Testament, and the time of its intro- duction may be open to question. Still the idea is in the words, whether the psalmist was referring to any such particular custom or no. In taking the cup they signified their accep- tance of God's offered mercy — the fruits of the great deliverance of Israel from their bondage — and while accepting the mercy they declared their allegiance to the God of their fathers. "I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord." Jehovah shall be my God ; I will be his faithful servant. Do we think over the manifold gifts of God : the temporal gifts — the food we eat, the rai- ment we wear, the comforts ever about us; the spiritual gifts which he continues to offer us with such patient love? Does each one say : " I will take the cup of salvation : what God offers I will not refuse"? For the best recompense we can make is thankfully to ac- cept and rightly to use his great and precious gifts. Many cups may be offered us as we go through life. We may for the moment be dazzled by the gemmed and sparkling cup of earthly pleasure, or the cup of worldly aims 254 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. and ambitions. Let us put them aside. Let each say, "I will take the cup of salvation." I will accept and use all God's offered mercy. The chalice of redeeming love shall be my chiefest treasure. I will take it — I will seek to be God's true child, the grateful son of so loving a Father. I will endeavor in all things to do his will, hoping to be guided ever by his grace and shielded ever by his protecting care. "I will call upon the name of the Lord" openly, constantly, in my loftiest thanksgiv- ings as well as in my sorest need; in my health and strength as well as in my pain and sickness : thus his mercy and my trusting ser- vice shall bind me to his throne by links which neither life nor death shall break asunder. THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. BY THE REV. J. ROBINSON GREGORY. Mark iv. 1-20. Of all the parables, that of the Sower deals most directly with the preacher's and teacher's work. Our Lord, too, not only interpreted the parable himself, but set it as a kind of model for the interpretation of all parables (verse 13). THE PAKABLE OF THE SOWEK. 255 Very likely while Jesus was speaking he saw a sower casting his seed upon the earth. It is quite conceivable that all the different sorts of ground might be found within a comparatively small space. A footpath runs through the field, beaten hard by the continual tread of travelers. Near it the rock rises close to the surface, but it is still completely covered with soil. Here, again, is a portion of the field which has not been cleaned properly; the thorn-roots have not been stubbed tip — their heads already ap- pear above the earth. And here is a piece of good ground, naturally rich, and cultivated with skill and diligence. One could almost tell the fate of the seed beforehand. Some fell on the unplowed and uninclosed footpath over which every one had a right of way. It could not sink below the surface, and the eager birds, ever on the outlook for the good grain, seized it immediately. Some fell on the rocky ground. The thin coating of soil held it, but the stone bed would not permit it to be more than just covered. The earth there was all the warmer because the rock radiated the heat. Like Jonah's gourd, the seed sprang up in a night, the warmth causing it to germinate with un- natural rapidity. But the thin, hot earth lacked moisture, and when the fierce sun beat upon the too hasty plant it had no sources 256 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. whence to draw its supplies, and, not on the instant, but gradually, it withered aivay. For a little while it endured the scorching, but it speedily perished. Some fell among thorns, and the thorns and it grew up together (see Luke viii. 7), and the thorns choked it, deprived it of light and air and room, and it became un- fruitful. Its stalk still stood, but its ears were like the devouring ears in Pharaoh's dream. But some fell upon good ground. Here, where the soil was in the condition in which it ought to be, where there was nourishment which the living seed could appropriate and assimilate, it grew ; and, as its progress was not checked by illegitimate hindrances, it yielded fruit. All the good was not equally rich or equally well cultivated, had not equal benefit of air and sunlight, so that the final yield was un- equal. But in each case fruit was brought forth to perfection. The largeness of the in- crease need not surprise us. It was good seed that the husbandman sowed. The average number of grains in an ear of English wheat is forty-one, in an ear of Heshbon wheat eighty-four. The authoritative interpretation informs us that the Sower is Christ himself. But just as there are under-shepherds while he is the Chief Shepherd, so there are under-sowers. Every THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. 257 preacher and teacher, every faithful Christian, is such an under-sower. The seed is the Word — of God (Luke viii. 12), of the kingdom (Matt, xiii. 19). It is given by God ; it proclaims the kingdom, both the external kingdom of heaven and the internal — righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. The Word is sown — preached, i.e., declared in any way so as to reach the soul by the ear or the eye. Some men's hearts are like a public footpath. There is no guard to them. Thoughts rush in, over, and through them, unexamined and uncon- sidered. Such a man heareth the Word, and under standeth it not (Matt. xiii. 19) ; from sheer heedlessness does not perceive its real meaning and power (see 1 Cor. ii. 14) ; does not even think about it long enough or earnestly enough for it to attach itself in the slightest degree to his real self. Nevertheless, if the seed were left in his heart it might take root even there ; afflictions might plow it and soften the hard soil. Lest it should be so, lest some grain might have fallen upon a spot where it could take root, Satan cometh, by agents numerous as the fowls of the heaven, using "trifles light as air," filling the heart with other thoughts, not necessarily harmful intrinsically, but only as they render the Word forgotten, and taketli away that which hath been soivn in the heart 258 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. Other hearers are all impulse and emotion. They feel quickly and keenly, but not strongly. To them the Word has a pleasant sound ; they notice only its promises ; and they do not sus- pect their own shallowness. Such a hearer receives the Word with joy and straightway. Not only is there absence of struggle, but also absence of sorrow. His acceptance of reli- gion is sincere as far as it goes, but it has not touched the deeper fibers of the being. Trib- ulation, affliction, temptation, persecution — any one of these tries or assails him, and, with scarce an effort to keep his feet, immediately he stumbles and falls. This kind of hearer often swells the roll of converts at mission ser- vices. He is accountable, probably, for the large number of those who yearly leave our churches. We may do our best to test them, to break up the underlying rock, but we may not reject them peremptorily, even if we could discern them, for they have, for the time, the seed of the kingdom in their hearts. The third class of hearers have the seed rooted in themselves. They go forth (Luke viii. 14) from the place of hearing to their house- holds, their business, their pleasures. Worldly cares not cast upon God; the deceitfulness of riches — the glitter of gold, of which they think they will make good use ; the pleasures of this THE PAKABLE OF THE SOWEK. 259 life, even physical passions and appetites un- subdued ; lusts of other things — desire for godli- ness mingled with desires for something else as well ; affections not set ivholly upon the Lord, contend with the living Word in the heart, and the naturally productive Word, the real grace of God, a measure of which has been received, becometh wholly unfruitful, or at the best bring- eth no fruit to perfection. (Luke viii. 14.) The Christian life ends in failure, while perhaps the profession of it continues. Of course, be- coming unfruitful is a process which, thank God ! may be arrested. The evil dispositions may be weakened and destroyed. From the three ways of losing, wasting, or spoiling the seed, let us turn to the one way of keeping and using it. The seed on the way- side did not even spring up ; that on the rocky ground sprang up, but did not take real root ; that among thorns sprang up, took real root, but did not ripen. The seed sown on the good ground takes true and deep root, springs up, ripens, and yields fruit — to perfection. This series of stages is clearly marked in the para- ble : receiveth, retaineth (accept R. V.) — in con- trast to the wayside ; bringeth forth fruit — in contrast to the concealed rock; with patience (Luke viii. 15) — in contrast to the thorn-bear- ing soil. All this only the honest and good 260 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. heart accomplishes : honest, in that it neither deceives nor will be deceived ; good, in that it nourishes the seed and will not nourish thorns and weeds. To the preacher a caution against pressing the parable unduly to his own advantage is necessary. No shadow of blame can attach to the Sower; no possible defect can inhere in his seed. But human sowers may fill their hands with other seed than this gospel of the kingdom, the incorruptible Word of God ; may mix the worthless or harmful with the precious ; and may cast their seed carelessly or unwisely. Still the responsibility of the hearer is not one whit lessened. Let us sow broadcast, but let us take earnest heed as to the manner of the sowing and the quality of our grain. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear, is more than a call for attention or an intimation of the importance of the subject. It is an appeal to the individual to receive that which is cer- tain to be rejected by the crowd. GROWTH AND INCREASE. " And the Word of God grew and multiplied." — Acts xii. 24. The chapter relates how "Herod the king stretched out his hand to vex certain of the GROWTH AND INCREASE. 261 church " ; how he killed James with the sword ; how he imprisoned Peter; how instant and earnest prayer ascended to God from the church for him ; how Peter was delivered mi- raculously; how Herod expired in exquisite agony ; and how " the Word of God grew and multiplied." The persecutor who would have destroyed it perished — the gospel spread only the more rapidly. It would be easily possible to draw a contrast between that age and the present day. We might speak of the absence of persecution, and a corresponding absence of swift and marked success. Such a contrast must not be pressed too strongly. There is still some persecution, and there is thankworthy success. Neverthe- less the historian of the church of to-day would scarcely choose our text as the motto for his chapter or book. And the contrast, partial though it be, carries its own lessons. I. The wording of our text is sugges- tive : " Grew and multiplied." The meta- phor almost explains itself. The one seed dropped into the earth shoots upward, the blade that rises higher and higher then brings forth the ear, and at length the full corn in the ear. Thus the one grain has become many grains — has grown and multiplied. Growth implies life. Without life it is utterly impos- 262 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. sible to produce growth. Other modes of in- crease you may employ — accumulation, aggre- gation, inflation — but not this. Another expression should be noticed. It is not said that the church achieved great con- quests over her enemies and enlarged her bor- ders; that the preaching of the apostles re- sulted in numerous conversions; that the labors of well-advertised and belauded evan- gelists added largely to the membership of the church; but that the Word of God grew and multiplied. Attention is diverted from the human instruments to the message they de- livered. Hence we gather that the gospel spreads by its own inherent vitality, not by human might or energy. Like its divine Author, it has life in itself. This is the reason why, in the New Testament, it is compared so frequently to seed. Even when a figure is used which does not imply actual life active energy is assumed — e.g., the leaven hid in three measures of meal. The living force may lie dormant in the seed for many years. Though hidden, it is not destroyed. And the truths of the gos- pel lodged in the human heart may long seem to be uninfluential, and yet at last develop and bring forth abundant fruit. But however intense may be the inherent GROWTH AND INCREASE. 263 vitality of the seed, it requires, first, sowing ; second, suitable soil. 1. Sowing. Every Christian should be a sower. In the persecution that arose about Stephen those that were scattered " went everywhere preaching the Word" — not only apostles and deacons, but all who believed in Christ. Of course ministers of the gospel are specially responsible for this sowing, but it may not be left wholly to them ; and there are other modes of sowing than preaching, as the term is now understood. (Compare Mark v. 18-20.) 2. Suitable soil. The parable of the Sower makes the success or failure of the good seed entirely dependent upon the quality of the ground into which it is cast. The interpreta- tion of the parable shows that the gospel has its designed effect upon men only when it is received by honest and good hearts. But hearts naturally sinful can be rendered honest and good only by the prevenient influence of the Holy Grhost. Hence we may estimate the spheres of our helplessness, our power, our responsibility, with respect to the spread of the kingdom of God. We must sow ; we must see to it that it is good seed that we sow ; but we cannot insure results. 264 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. II. We may not, however, regard the seed once sown with indifference, as though our connection with it ceased when it had left our hands. The husbandman watches his seed eagerly, and he prays to God concern- ing it. The Word of God grew and multiplied after instant and earnest prayer had been offered by the church. In times of spiritual dearth and destitution we can cry, "Help, Lord : for the godly man ceaseth ; for the faith- ful fail from among the children of men." (Ps. xii. 1.) We can ever accept the divine challenge, "Bring ye all the tithe into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the win- dows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." (Mai. iii. 10.) The church can present to the Lord of the harvest the full tithe of faith, hope, effort, gift, prayer. And the God of both nature and grace will fulfil his promise : "I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground ; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of hosts." The seed shall be protected from its many foes, safe-guarded against the numerous dangers that beset it ; and the fostering influ- WEATHEK-WISE. 265 ences of beneficent winds and sun and rain shall be granted to it. There is this analogy between the operations of the agriculturist and the labors of the Christian preacher, that both depend for ultimate success upon forces be- yond their own control ; both necessarily run some hazard of failure and waste of toil and material ; but both can rely upon the pledged faithfulness of God that the labor and expen- diture shall not be altogether vain. Both may look for an abundant return. WEATHEEr-WISE. " He that observeth the wind shall not sow ; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap." — Eceles. xi. 4. Wokk was once the recreation of Paradise ; it is now the stern necessity of daily life. It is the tax we pay for life. Out of labor spring comfort and enjoyment. Secular duties need not be distinct from piety. A religious motive and end may secure the divine blessing. No man has a charter to be idle. Men of the most ample estates are stewards, and should be ser- vants of God. Wealth, exempt from daily toil, opens a thousand doors of usefulness. He who, through past diligence and prudence, 266 THANKSGIVING SEKM0NS. has reaped a competency may produce the most enduring fruits even in old age. 1. The text exhibits the indolent and undecided. The Wise Man represents a hus- bandman intending to sow his seed; but the wind is too fierce or gustful, and he fears the seed will not be uniformly scattered, or it will be mixed with other kinds or carried over into his neighbor's fields. He waits for better atmospheric symptoms, and seed-time passes away. The same truth is taught by the clouds. The husbandman should trust the promise, "While the earth remaineth, seed- time and harvest shall not fail ; " even so the spiritual husbandman needs faith in the seed of the kingdom, the life-giving power of the gospel, the potencies of the Holy Spirit, etc. (a) Inaction may spring from indolence. What can be more unworthy of man than to bury himself alive in indolence ? An idle man is dead while he liveth, and has not received the honors of decent interment. To have powers and not to use them is robbing G-od and man ; to use them amiss is rebellion against the King of kings. The idle man has virtually outlawed himself. Private diligence is a pub- lic good, for the careful management of every man's estate is advantageous to the whole. Spiritual idleness prevails. There is WEATHER-WISE. 267 little room to complain of idleness in temporal things. How many diligent in business are at ease in Zion ! How many flourishing in busi- ness are in spiritual bankruptcy! We see their growing wealth, adding house to house, when, in " their growing riches," their heart is not in their religion. Some act as though the body and soul were all hearing ; as if religion dwelt alone in the temple, or had to be used only on the Sabbath. St. Jerome says, " The husbandman may pray and praise the Lord, and sing halleluiah at the plow." St. Augus- tine says, "One prayer of an obedient man who walketh in his calling according to rules shall sooner be heard of God than ten thousand from him who maketh his diligence to keep one commandment a privilege and warrant to break the rest." Occupations vary : some are so mechanical that they may admit of consec- utive thought on religious subjects; others, e.g., man at wheel, switchman at signal, artist at portrait, demand constant attention. But all can be done unto the Lord. The more a business takes us into a wilderness of evils the more should we redeem each supernumer- ary moment for the Lord. (b) The words may mean excessive pru- dence. The text has a connection with the first and second verses : " Cast thy bread," etc. ; 268 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. u Give a portion to seven, and also to eight." That is, never cease giving if you have the means and see a person in distress, or never cease working while there is a duty waiting near. The lesson seems to be that we are not to be too scrupulous in inquiring into the charac- ter of the poor, distressed, and needy. Fitness to receive charity need not mean worthiness. If we wait until real merit claim charity we may wait long, while our charity will die, like the sufferers unrelieved. The household of faith must have first care: they are of the same family. Eeal charity goes beyond. Prudent you ought to be, righteous you must be. You dare not send the drunkard back to his intem- perance, encourage the indolent in his vice. Blend justice and mercy in all their elements of strength and beauty. G-od will teach you, if you are ready to learn of him. Better to entertain one angel unawares and be deceived by a crowd of impostors than to lose the bless- ing of the angel's visit. Better that all the objects of your bounty should prove unworthy than that the divine principle of charity should languish in your souls. If all were angels they would not require your food, clothes, or money. It may be applied to some churches. They regard the clouds. Some material develop- ment is required — schools, churches, to be built WEATHER-WISE. 269 or enlarged. All admit necessity, but the time is not come — have done so much, let other churches do their share. The wealthiest are not willing ; we are not all of one mind. Thus the Lord's work tarries at bidding of human convenience or whim or prejudice; opportu- nities are lost, never to be recovered. Some have tarried for months, and the cause has suffered for generations. While men linger the divine glory is waiting to depart. It * may apply to spiritual prospects. Churches waiting for a revival. The work of preparation is not commenced ; bickerings, jealousies, slanderings, misunderstandings rife. If everything were as we want it to be a revival would not be needed. They set God a time. Diseases are not cured by studying them, but by going to the physician ; even so deploring the state of church will not heal, ex- cept we go to the Great Physician. Men would laugh at a farmer who in time of drought would employ his men in filling up with soil the cracks in the baked soil, or who sent horses and men with vessels to a river to pour water over wide acres of drooping corn ; they would know that one good shower would cure all. Even so we must ask God to " open the win- dows of heaven." It may apply to conversion of individ- 270 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. uals. To those who put off the day of salva- tion — who believe in a modified kind of pre- destination ; some supreme moment when they must be saved. This doctrine is dangerous in itself, but its partial belief makes it more dan- gerous. The Sunday scholar intends to be saved when he gets to the select class; then when he has served his time or taken his de- grees; and so on through commencing busi- ness, getting it well in hand, establishing his family, winning competency. Satan is always near to manufacture excuses, but no excuse is excusable if we neglect our great salvation. Godliness is at all times a great gain, but those who come earliest get it most readily. True repentance is seldom too late ; but late repen- tance is seldom true. God, who has given you all your days, deserves at least your best days. Don't wait until in unavailing regret you say : " My heart is very tired, my strength is low, My hands are full of blossoms plucked before, Held dead within them till myself shall die." 2. Folly seen when we consider that the present alone is ours. Grod is frugal of time ; gives but one moment at a time ; does not give a second until he withdraws the first. The best way to prepare for the last moment is to use the present well. Too often we dote WEATHER-WISE. 271 upon the present hour as if it would never end, and neglect the next as if it would never begin. Time is the bud, eternity the bloom ; time the chrysalis from which springs eternity. Present faithfulness is a promissory note to be paid in eternity in heaven's best coin. Though God gives us so little time he gives us enough ; short as it is, it contains precious possibilities. The body-guard of the Eternal King, in all their loyal love and zeal, could not do so much for our soul's eternal weal as these moments which pass over some unheeded, as the sunbeam or passing breeze. Time is the seed-sowing of an eternal harvest. He is the greatest spendthrift who spends time, for he who squanders time wastes all the bliss which eternity contains. ' To the indolent time moves too slowly, for he has never appraised its value; to the Christian too swiftly, for he knows how to stamp on each moment the im- pressions of eternity. Regularity of nature encourages the farmer, but it may mislead those who think that length of days must be theirs, that gracious opportu- nity must come with constancy of the seasons. God has a right to set bounds beyond which we cannot pass. "Now unto the King eter- nal, immortal" (1 Tim. i. 17.) 272 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. THE SECRET GROWTH OF THE SEED. "For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." — Mark iv. 28. 1. All growth is a mystery. Look at a harvest-field; what a profound mystery it is! After a man has done all his work and taken all his precautions ; after sci- ence has taught him all it knows about soils and suitable manures and the best methods of culture, what does he know? When he is awake and watching he cannot understand; when he is asleep and unconscious the growth goes on. Our efforts do not produce the life. "When we sow we cast the seed into the keep- ing of a higher Power. So is it with all growth. Take the little child. We may use our means, but what a mystery there is beyond them all ! Can we, with all the proud achievements of so many centuries, add one cubit to any man's stature ? Who can explain how the food is transmuted into flesh and bone, and, more than this, how the food helps to develop the immaterial power to understand and think ! Yes, and further still, we may ask, How does it help to develop love, THE SECRET GROWTH OF THE SEED. 273 sympathy, purity, likeness to God? What a difference between the religion of the child and the saintly man ! The food has enabled him to progress from the one point to the other. If you put a seed of iron into the ground, and, lying there, it gathered materials to itself and produced, of itself, a complicated locomo- tive, all would go and pay money to see it. Such a wonder would be in no degree more wonderful than the growth of an ear of corn. It would not be half so wonderful as the growth of any child. Need we be surprised, then, that the divine life is a mystery to us ? 2. Growth is slow. The child is eager and impatient and expects what he sows to spring up immediately. Men, too, are often fussy and anxious about their concerns, and want growth to develop in all haste — in a night, like Jonah's gourd. We are impatient of processes and in a hurry to grasp results. But if you try to hasten growth with human expedients, the increased speed is at the expense of strength and durability. What rapidly grows quickly perishes ; what is to last long is of slow development. Rome is not built in a day. The oak attains its massive size and its giant strength not suddenly, but by some hundred years of slow and steady 274 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. growth. God aims at perfection and works for eternity, therefore there is no hurry with him. Are we surprised that growth in the divine life in the soul is slow? Do not be disheart- ened at mistakes and at failures. Do not ex- pect a fully developed Christian sanctity all at once. 3. Growth is orderly. " First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." Each in its place, each preparing for what is to come after. TVe see this orderly development in all life : in the plant, in the growth of a child, and in the suc- cessive steps of the Christian life. In Chris- tian growth it is first the simpler virtues and then the varied high qualities of a true Chris- tian manhood. See the progressive steps as described by St, Peter (2 Pet. i. 5-7). 4. Growth is continuous. Sleeping and waking, night and day, the growth goes on. It is so in the corn ; it is so in the child. The changes which pass over nature do not hinder this. Every year we have such differ- ences of atmospheric conditions as might well seem fatal to the continuance of delicate vege- table life. But the growth goes on. We find in time that the very changes which might at THE SECRET GROWTH OF THE SEED. 275 first seem hurtful are really helpful for the de- velopment of the life. Night as well as day, the winter snow and the summer sun, all have their place and do their work in helping this continuous growth. So is it with the changes which come to us in life which seem sad, which we may even shrink from with dread; yet the Christian growth within goes on in spite of them. Nay, we often find that the things which seemed most hurtful to us are those which, under God's providence, most helped forward the growth of the spiritual life. The great truth taught in this parable is that all growth is a mystery to us. It is so in the corn and in the child, and still more so when we try to study the divine life in a hu- man soul. The germ of truth and righteous- ness is planted within us by Grod's loving care. It goes on developing while we are sleeping and waking, we know not how. Our anxiety and fussy impatience cannot hasten it. A power outside us does its own great and benef- icent work. As the corn and the lily grow by a power within themselves, so the divine life within us has a spontaneous, inherent energy of its own. You cannot make them grow by any or all your efforts ; you can only help to supply suitable conditions. The lesson of the 276 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. parable is not about the influence of the soil, the sunlight, and the rain — that influence is implied ; but the main truth is that the power of growth is in the thing itself, and is not im- parted to it by any external agency. So it is with the divine life. The seed of truth grows within us by virtue of its own in- herent energy. It only wants suitable condi- tions and it will grow. Do not be afraid to trust to that power. Do not be over-anxious. Expect everything from God, but do not ex- pect everything at once. All the development of that higher life will come, if you will be patient and trusting. In his own time, in his own order, the growth will go on till the ripened ears wave in their beauty ready for the reaper's sickle, and till the true Christian life, humble, trusting, saintly, waits the Mas- ter's call, and is ready for the garner in the heavenly habitations. GOD SUPPLYING HUMAN NEED. " My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus." — Phil. iv. 19. The Philippian church had sent gifts to St. Paul during his imprisonment at Rome. The Apostle acknowledged their love and liberality GOD SUPPLYING HUMAN NEED. 277 with a grateful heart. He did not covet their gifts — the spirit of the hireling had no place in his heart — yet he received them thankfully : 1. Because of the principle involved — the laborer was worthy of his hire. They who preach the gospel shall live of the gospel. This is true and binding on all ages. 2. Because the offering was a mark of their love for him. While he did not want the gift, he was grateful for the love which offered it. The thought of the gift suggested the words of the text. God knew their liberality and self-denial. The service offered to the Apostle in his need would be remembered and re- warded. (Luke vi. 38.) St. Paul could make no return, but God would surely repay them. 1. The fact — God would supply all their need. How many and how varied are the needs of men L There is little need to enlarge on such a theme, for experience teaches us surely and sometimes bitterly enough. There are the wants of the body. Food and raiment are daily needs. Life, with its mani- fold activities, is a consuming thing, and fresh supplies are conditions of its continued exis- tence. God supplies even all these needs of ours. 278 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. How wonderfully and how liberally lie is al- ways doing this! What a marvelous store- house this world is ! The earth and the sea are teeming with the living things on which the more complex life of man is sustained. Our own toil must not blind our eyes to this truth — for what do we work upon f We create nothing. All our labor is but fashion- ing, for immediate use, the substances which we find ready to our hands. If God's world gave us not its manifold produce all human industries would immediately collapse, all hu- man life would speedily end. We may think, then, of our Master's teach- ing — how the birds of the air are fed, how the lilies of the field bloom with their marvelous beauty; much more will the same divine bounty provide for us. The testimony to the psalmist's experience (xxxvii. 25) is ever ac- cumulating, generation after generation. Then there are the deeper needs of the soul. We are defiled with sin. The divine image in us is dim, well-nigh effaced. We want cleansing and renewal. The fetters of sin must be broken for us ; we cannot break them ourselves. We want grace and strength plant- ed in the soul to enable us to fight life's battles as good soldiers of Christ Jesus. Whence can such needs be supplied? The world has its GOD SUPPLYING HUMAN NEED. 279 remedies — education, thrift, music, temper- ance, and so on, all good in their place, but all powerless to heal the plague of sin. We may drink of these waters, but we shall thirst again. Experience teaches that all human remedies are blundering and impotent; but God in mercy supplies our spiritual need. His grace brings cleansing, healing, and newness of life to the soul. 2. The instrumentality by which God supplies it — " by Christ Jesus." God is everywhere present. While distinctly a person, he surrounds us like the atmosphere in which we dwell. "In him we live and move," in more senses, perchance, than we com- monly think of. He is everywhere present, like the light which fills the broad universe; no nook or cranny is hidden from it. But this, to most of us, is an abstraction. We know that we live ever in that divine presence, and yet we think but little of it. The faith faculty, by which alone we can apprehend it, is small. How is this to become real to us? What connecting-link can there be between us and God? How can finite manhood meet and touch the Infinite? What channel can reach from heaven to earth ? God has mercifully put this truth before us in a concrete form, not in the shape of doc- 280 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. trine only, but by a living person. Just as a burning glass gathers the scattered rays of light into one focus whereby the presence and power of the light become the more manifest, so in Christ Jesus we have the Deity which fills the broad universe manifest in a living person. Through his earthly ministry divine grace shines upon us, and the light of heaven falls in a bright focal stream upon a sin-dark- ened earth. This is historically true. He is " the Word made flesh." (1 Cor. i. 30 ; Col. ii. 3 ; Eph. ii. ; Col. ii.) 3. In what measure will God supply man's need ? How will God give ? With stinting, grudg- ing, niggardly hand ! Nay, but according to the perfection of his nature and his divine greatness. (Eph. i. 7., iii. 8, 16.) Look at the world. Has God created those things only which are sufficient for our wants ? Nay, the world is teeming with life and is full of beauty. Gorgeous coloring, richest per- fumes are scattered everywhere, not for the supply of man's wants, but to give him plea- sure and to gratify the instinct in him which appreciates the perfect and admires the beau- tiful. Everywhere, and in all ways, God has given with the boundless exuberance of love. So, too, does God give in grace. See the pictures of this in the old dispensation: the GOD SUPPLYING HUMAN NEED. 281 water flowing from the smitten rock, not a little stream, but sufficient for all the mighty multitude, for all their flocks and herds, for all their wants ; the manna. These pictures are fulfilled in the new cove- nant. Look at Christ. He gave gifts and bestowed blessings in the same lavish, loving way. When he fed the five thousand was it with just a scanty supply for each ? Nay, but after they had all eaten and were filled they took up of the fragments which were left twelve baskets full. So was it ever : not one miracle or one of a kind, but he was ever healing. Multitudes making their eager de- mands upon him in no degree impaired the fullness of his grace and power. A very foun- tain of mercy was opened which all the needs of men could not exhaust. Day by day they brought the sick and the suffering to him, and virtue ever went out of him to heal them all. The text teaches us a great lesson. It would plant faith and hope and courage in every earnest heart. Are we looking forward to a dark future with foreboding heart? Are the clouds above us black and threatening, and the path before us arid and desert-like ? Are we cast down and disquieted? (Ps. xlii. 5.) We must have faith in God. He will supply all our need, whatever the need may be. He is our sun and shield, our light in the world's 282 THANKSGIVING SEBMONS. darkness, our defense in the world's danger. We are weak in ourselves. We may always be strong in him. We may trust him at all times and for all things. In quiet days he leads us in green pastures and by the still waters. In the dark valley he is with us to support and comfort us. In strife and danger he prepares our table in the very presence of our enemies. (Ps. xxiii.) We may trust him at all times and for all things. God's power and wisdom and love are all infinite. You can no more exhaust his fullness than you can exhaust the depths of the sea. He will supply all your need accord- ing to the measure of his own greatness by Jesus Christ. My God — St. Paul's personal experience of God's loving care is the assurance that they too will be watched over and provided for. PRAISE. " O Lord, I will praise thee : . . . the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song. . . . Sing nnto the Lord ; for he hath done excellent things : this is known in all the earth." — Isa. xii. 1, 2, 5. This whole chapter is a song of praise. Joy, gladness, thanksgiving, sparkle in every verse PRAISE. 283 of it. And yet how little we hear of this praise in ordinary life ! Perhaps we may add, How seldom do we find it bursting forth from our own hearts! Our thoughts generally center upon ourselves. When we praise, ourselves, our families, our connections, and not God, are too frequently the objects of it. Look at verses 3 and 4. Would that that day had come! Praise itself is uncommon. Listen to the ordinary talk of every-day life, and, as Lord Bacon says, you shall hear more hearse-like airs than carols. We may go a step further and say praise is not natural to us. The prophet's grounds of praise were not found in those gifts and possessions which are, and probably must be, unequally distrib- uted here on earth : not unbroken health, large means, commanding intellect, denied to the many, but bestowed upon him ; not these, but the priceless spiritual possessions which God offers with loving bounty to every man with- out respect of persons. They are offered, like all God's greatest gifts, not only bountifully, but freely ; like the air, like the sunlight, with- out money and without price. The blessings specified in the chapter are : 1. The sense of forgiveness (verse 1). 2. The sense of assurance (verse 2). 284 THANKSGIVING SEKM0NS. We have one great common blessing, a gift which is year by year repeated : the produce of the earth which we gather in in the harvest, and by which man's life is sustained. We want to think of the importance of this pro- duce, and to feel that it is God's gift, because that is the only true basis for a thanksgiving service. When mercy is realized, then thanksgiving must be the inevitable result. When we find, by happy experience, that Jehovah is our strength, then the grateful heart says that he also shall be its song. True thanksgiving touches every part of our being. It does not limit itself to merely barren words ; it is fruit- ful in acts of self-sacrifice and love. We show forth God's praise " not only with our lips, but in our lives, by giving up ourselves to his ser- vice." What a picture of deepest thankfulness we have in the woman that was a sinner. See her eyes red with weeping, her hair streaming and disheveled as she knelt before Christ with deep humility and yet with adoring love, that she might wash his feet with her tears and wipe them with the hair of her head. See her breaking the alabaster box and pouring the precious ointment on his head. Why these lavish expressions of love? Because of the PRAISE. 285 greatness of the mercies she had received. Much had been forgiven her, and therefore her love was great. The Feast of Tabernacles — a great, bright, joyful thanksgiving for God's yearly gifts in nature. They felt it was divine bounty which blessed the national life and sustained them all. It must be so. Where great mercies have been received they must manifest themselves in both public and private thanksgiving. As may be seen on some calm summer day by the sea-shore, when looking out on the bosom of the great deep — far as the eye can reach, it is bright and radiant as a sea mingled with fire ; every breaking wave sparkles with diamond- like luster in its ceaseless motion. Whence comes all its glittering beauty! It is only giving back to the earth and sky the bright- ness which it has received from the noonday sun. So if we have received God's precious gifts, if we are conscious of the blessing of them to us, they must manifest themselves in our lives. If the love of God is shining upon our hearts, the brightness will diffuse itself around us. It must be reflected back to God, from whom it came, in words of praise and in deeds of love. 286 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. In all our praise, in all our benevolence, we are only giving back to Grod a part of that which we have so freely received from him. Thanksgiving is the result of God's great gifts to us in nature. THE MORAL LESSONS OF THE HARVEST. " Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns." — Jer. iv. 3. 1. Preparation. When you see a corn- field, you know the corn did not always grow there. The land had to be cleared and plowed. The wilderness will not blossom as the rose by itself. The obstacles must be removed out of the path of the beautiful and useful before they will come and possess the world. So is it in human education, in ordinary business, and in all the training of human character in higher things. If the Lord is to come to us and dwell within us, we must pre- pare the way for him and make his paths straight. A turning away from evil before we can walk in newness of life. 2. Labor. " And the Feast of Harvest, the first-fruits of thy labors, which thou hast sown THE MOKAL LESSONS OF THE HARVEST. 287 in the field: and the Feast of Ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labors out of the field." (Exod. xxiii. 16.) The harvest, while the gift of God, is also the reward of man's toil. Grod has so ordered it that many of his precious gifts shall come to us through the channel of human effort. How great the toil in the sowing and the reap- ing, from morn till night, day after day ! But how ample is the reward ! " In all labor there is profit." Not only in agriculture, but in every part of human life. What we sow of good, in toil and perhaps even in tears, we shall reap in joy. 3. Patience. "Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient." (James v. 7, 8.) The seed is cast from the sower's hand out of sight; seems for a time to be lost. The husbandman waits. After a while it appears ; even then the growth is slow, and many alien influences are at work. He waits. He does not wait in vain. Be ye patient in all things : growth is always slow. Do not be in a hurry to be rich. Be patient in moral things : growth in good- 288 THANKSGIVING SEBMONS. ness is slow ; you must not expect to become a complete saint in a day. 4. Hope and trust always. "I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the good- ness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait on the Lord : be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart : wait, I say, on the Lord." (Ps. xxvii. 13, 14.) Courage, hope, belief in the goodness of God are the great supports of human life. That divine goodness will never fail his true children. The harvest will surely come. The toil will be crowned with rich reward. The sheaves shall be brought home in due time. So will it be, also, in all other parts of our life. NATURE WAITING UPON GOD. " The eyes of all wait upon thee ; and thou givest them their meat in due season." — Ps. cxlv. 15. Natuke, animate and inanimate, depends upon God for the supply of all wants. This is true of the animals. (Ps. civ. 21 ; Joel i. 20.) Man, with larger knowledge, trusts and prays: "Give us this day our daily bread." God hears the cry. He knows the need and mercifully supplies it. He gives : NATUKE WAITING UPON GOD. 289 1. What is good. "They are filled with good." He bestows what is suitable to our physical condition. There is a wonderful adaptation between our need and the supply which the world produces. The wants of different crea- tures are various indeed, but every one of them finds his suitable food. The gifts of nature are fitted for every kind and order of life. 2. In abundance. There is no stint in nature. Even the " hired servants have bread enough and to spare." Man, and the lower creatures of all ranks, are " filled with good." " God opens his hand, and satisfies the desire of every living thing." " He fills us with the finest of the wheat." 3. Year by year — regularly. As the need is unceasing so the supply is unceasing too. The promise is that seed-time and harvest shall not cease. All wait upon God. "Where else can they go ? What can human governments and asso- ciations do for us here! All the science in the world cannot make a single blade of grass or a single ear of corn. We look up to God. He can supply our wants. He has done so through all the past. We can trust him for all the future. Let us bless him for his bounty 290 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. as we see it in " our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life." Let us show our thankfulness kt not only with our lips, but in our lives B — by active and loyal service. THE FEAST OF HARVEST. " He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man : that he may bring forth food out of the earth." — Ps. civ. 14. Harvest a great feast — as Tabernacles was with the Jews. The Feast of the Ingathering was the most joyful time of the year — and for many reasons. I. The need and the blessing of the harvest. Our life is depending on these blades of grass and ears of corn. Without our food and our clothing we could not live long. They are far more important than money. Money has no value in itself: its value is only because we can purchase necessary things with it. Ship- wrecked sailors, cast upon a desolate island, find a mountain of gold, but no grass, no corn, no life ; what would the gold be worth I We rejoice, then, when* the harvest comes round, when we gather the corn and fruit once more into the garners, because the supply for another year is safely stored. THE FEAST OF HAEVEST. 291 II. We come to church* Why? The Jew went up to the temple at Jerusalem to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. Why ? Where does the harvest come from ? Nature ? How can nature produce by itself? Some people seem to think the world is like a clock, which works and works by itself when it is wound up. We believe that God created the worlds. (Gen. i. 1.) God sets these natural processes in motion. God sustains the life of the world. Jesus multiplying the bread and feeding the hungry multitudes : showing us by the miracle what God is always doing for us by the slower annual produce of the earth. So every harvest we see God's gifts renewed. We look at the yellow fields of waving corn, and the fruit- trees, their boughs bending to the earth with their precious produce, and we sing with grate- ful hearts : " Thou crownest the year with thy goodness." We see God's bounty and love giving us all things necessary for the support and comfort of life. We make the harvest, therefore, not merely a feast, but a religious feast. We come to church because we want to publicly thank and praise God. m. The harvest a picture of niauy niost important truths : 1. As God gives seed to sow in the fields, so 292 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. he gives the germs of heavenly truth and spir- itual life to take root in the hearts of men. As the rain and snow and sunlight are all intended to produce certain definite results upon the earth, making it fruitful, so God's Word acts upon believing souls (Isa. lv. 10, no 2. " Man shall not live by bread alone." " I have meat to eat that ye know not of." We all have another life as well as the bodily one : the life of the spirit. This needs bread, " the bread of life," for its sustenance. This needs vesture, even truth and righteousness, for its covering. What God does for the body in the abundant supplies of the harvest is a picture of what he also does for the soul, send- ing us his quickening eternal truth ; sending Christ and the Divine Spirit to the world. 3. Why, then, is there so little goodness in the world ? Because, while the earth responds to God's influence, and is obedient to the laws by which it is governed, man too often is self- willed and disobedient. He rejects the mercy and help which are offered to him. Parable of the Sower. Man's heart is hard like the wayside, or shallow like the stony ground, or preoccupied with worldly things like the soil filled with thorns. Only one out of four good ground. THANKSGIVING— ITS DEFINITION. 293 4. We are sowers too. Every action, every word, has a germ of life in it. It grows up, it meets us in the years to come. (Gal. vi. 7 ; Ps. cxxvi. 5, 6.) Will a man sow thistles in his field ? Will he sow evil in his life ? Sow faith, prayer, self-denial, goodness, love. For — 5. Harvest comes. The angel reapers will come and separate the tares from the wheat. What is growing in us ? Pray : " Lord of harvest, grant that we Wholesome grain and pure may be." THANKSGIVING— ITS DEFINITION. BY ISAAC BARROWS, D.D. " The act of giving thanks or expressing gratitude for favors or mercy received " is the cyclopedic and universal definition of Thanks- giving. It implies : 1. A right apprehension of the benefits conferred. 2. A faithful retention of the benefits in the memory, and frequent reflections upon them. 3. A due esteem and valuation of bene- fits. 294 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS. 4. A reception of those benefits with a willing mind, a vehement affection. 5. Due acknowledgment of our obliga- tions. 6. Endeavors of real compensation, or, as it respects the Divine Being, a willing- ness to serve and exalt him. 7. Esteem, veneration, and love of the benefactor. THANKSGIVING DAT. BY E. H. S. It is for us to accept the day with all it has for us, thankfully to unite in praise to Him who, for his own, doeth all things well. The coloring of each life is laid on by unerring wis- dom, and the very darkest shades will prove a fitting background for the completed whole, when we view in the glory of heaven the pic- ture of the years. Then let us be truly grate- ful for: 1. Treasures in heaven. 2. Hopes that fade not away. 3. Anticipations to he realized. 4. Newness of life in Christ Jesus. 5. Knowledge of the blessed Com- forter. HARVEST FESTIVAL. 295 6. Salvation. 7. God's promises. 8. Innumerable mercies. 9. Victory over sin. 10. Ineffable glories beyond. 11. Nourishment of soul as well as body. 12. Grace sufficient. 13. Discipline. 14. Answer to prayer. 15. Years that know no limit. "And at the last, When all the days have lost the wondrous power Of brightening joy with sorrow of an hour, When time is past, " When all is rest, Life's ripened glory, like the western sky, And morn of heaven, and love of Christ is nigh — Then all is best." HARVEST FESTIVAL. BY THE REV. M. F. SADLER. "Ye are God's husbandry." — 1 Cor. iii. 9. All our salvation is of God through Christ, but are we allowed to cooperate? There are some who teach, or seem to teach, that the work of salvation is so entirely God's that man 296 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. has to do nothing ; he has simply to lie still and allow himself to be acted upon by God. But the teaching of all Scripture is against this. Especially are those very numerous pas- sages in Scripture against it which illustrate the work of salvation by the work of husban- dry. Such is our text. Let us look first at God's operation. God prepares the seed : he causes that every seed we sow should have a germ of life in it. God prepares the ground so that it should be, as it were, a fruitful womb for the seed. Then he sends his rain, without which the young plant would get no nourishment from the dry soil. Then he sends the sunshine, without which the seed would not germinate and shoot forth above ground. These are some of the things which God does. Then, what has man to do ? He has to plow the land which God has prepared; he has to sow the seed into which God has put a living principle ; he has to cleanse the ground from weeds which would choke the seed if permitted to grow ; and when the grain is ripe he has, in due time, to reap the harvest and to gather it safe into his barn. Now in all this he has to work with God. And so in the spiritual harvest. He has to prepare his soul — he has to break THE HARVEST. 297 up his fallow ground with the plowshare of repentance ; he has to sow his soul with the good seed of God's Word in order that it may bring forth the fruit of good works ; he has to weed his soul, for there is one always at hand sowing noxious weeds. But has he to reap ? Yes, because the Spirit of God has said, " Let us not be weary in well-doing : for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not ; n and yet he has to wait and prepare for the an- gelic reaping, when the Lord will say, " Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them : but gather the wheat into my barn." THE HARVEST. u He reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest." — Jer. v. 24. There are two especial teachings respecting God to be learned from the harvest — his power and his faithfulness. His power. The united skill and power of the world could not make one seed, much less implant in it a principle of life ; and yet God causes seeds which man has sown to spring up every year in every part of the world, enough 298 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. to feed the whole human family. Men try to elude the force of this, as setting forth the power and the will of God, by saying that seeds grow and produce food by a law of na- ture : but a law of itself can do nothing. A law is imposed by a reasoning lawgiver, who must not only enact the law, but see that it is carried into effect. This must be the case with unconscious, unreasoning matter such as seeds are made of. God must be in every field, and in every inch of that field, or the seed sown would not vegetate. When a sovereign makes a law it by no means follows that that law is observed. There must be forces stationed in every part of the kingdom to make the law observed universally. There must be a power- ful will everywhere to overawe the wills of the disobedient, and much more must this be the case with dead, unthinking matter. God must be at work in every field you sow, to make the seed sown not only spring up, but spring up in the particular form of the plant you de- sire. Then, in the next place, the regular re- currence of the time of harvest is a proof of the faithfulness of God. "While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, . . . day and night, shall not cease." (Gen. viii. 22.) Again, "He reserveth unto us the appointed FOR WHAT TO GIVE TfiANKS. 299 weeks of the harvest." (Jer. v. 24.) Now con- sider under what provocation God has thus held to his promise. The race of men, as a race, cannot be said to acknowledge him. Scarcely a quarter of the world worships, even out- wardly, the ever-blessed Trinity ; and see how they go counter to him — even those who are nominal Christians — to the law of right which he has written in their hearts. And yet, though they do not acknowledge him, he gives them " rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness." Lord, make us ever mindful of all thy mercies ! In everything may we give thanks for this thy will in thy Son concerning us ! FOR WHAT TO GIVE THANKS. BY REV. J. H. BROOKES. 1. For God's goodness. give thanks unto the Lord ; for he is good ; for his mercy endureth forever." (1 Chron. xvi. 34 ; Ps. cvii. 1, cxviii. 1.) 2. For his holiness. " Sing unto the Lord, O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the re- membrance of his holiness." (Ps. xxx. 4, xcvii. 12, cxl. 13.) 300 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. 3. For revealing himself. "Unto thee, O God, do we give thanks, unto thee do we give thanks : for that thy name is near thy won- drous works declare." (Ps. lxxv. 1, cxxxviii. 2 ; 1 Thess. ii. 13.) 4. For the gift of his Son. " Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift." (2 Cor. ix. 15.) " For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John iii. 16 ; Rom. vi. 23.) 5. For a present salvation. "Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light : who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son." (Col. i. 12, 13 ; John vi. 47.) 6. For victory. " The sting of death is sin ; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Cor. xv. 56, 57 ; Rom. vii. 25.) 7. For everything. "In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." (1 Thess. v. 18.) " Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." (Phil.iv. 6; Eph. v. 20.) CALL TO GRATITUDE. 301 CALL TO GRATITUDE. BY THE REV. JOHN STEVENSON. " Bless the Lord, O my soul."— Ps. ciii. 22. We should often hold our " Jubilee " of en- tire gladness, recapitulating the gracious acts of the Lord with glowing gratitude. We should enumerate the averting of evils that we feared, the unexpected turnings of affairs that revived our hopes, the hairbreadth es- capes that surprised and gladdened us, and the answers to prayer that put our unbelief to shame. 1. The various circumstances by which mercies have been distinguished and accom- panied should be carefully remembered ; 2. The seasonableness of their supply ; 3. The tenderness of love and the wisdom of adaptation with which they were brought to our need and suited to our case ; 4. The greatness of the evils prevented and of the blessings bestowed ; 5. The health and food and raiment with which God has provided us ; 6. The friends raised up to us in the hour of difficulty ; 7. The light which has arisen upon us in seasons of darkness and perplexity ; and, 302 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. 8. The peace which has sustained our souls under bereavement, should all be specially and thankfully acknowledged. THE DUTY OF THANKSGIVING. BY ISAAC BARROWS, D.D. The obligation to this duty arises : 1. From the relation in which we stand to God ; 2. The divine command ; 3. The promises God has made ; 4. The example of all good men ; 5. Onr nnworthiness of the blessings we receive ; 6. The prospect of eternal glory. Whoever possesses any good without giving thanks for it deprives Him who bestows that good of his glory, sets a bad example before others, and prepares a recollection severely painful for himself when he comes in his turn to experience ingratitude. THE BLESSINGS FOR WHICH WE SHOULD BE THANKFUL. 1. Temporal, such as health, food, rai- ment, rest, etc. PRAYER AND PRAISE. 303 2. Spiritual, such as the Bible, ordi- nances, the gospel and its blessings, as free grace, adoption, pardon, justifica- tion, calling, etc. 3. Eternal, or the enjoyment of God in a future state. 4. Also for all that is past, what we now enjoy, and what is promised ; for pri- vate and public, for ordinary and ex- traordinary blessings, for prosperity, and even for adversity so far as rendered subservient to our good. PRAYER AND PRAISE. BY THE REV. JOHN STEVENSON. " In everything give thanks." — 1 Thess. v. 17. " Pray without ceasing," says the Apostle, and immediately adds, "In everything give thanks : for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you." Obey this command, O believer ! Look around you for causes for thankfulness. Be eagle-eyed to discern your mercies, rather than your miseries. See how many they are : in the house and in the street ; in the country and in the city; in your own person and in your family ; among your rela- tives and throughout your friends; in your 304 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. native country and in the world at large. Look not always at the dark spots in every picture, lest your mind be darkened like them. Fix your eyes also on the bright and beauti- ful, that your mind may reflect your image. Let the one teach you to pray. Let the other teach you to praise. THANKSGIVING IS A NECESSITY. BY THE REV. S. BARING-GOULD, M.A. " Hezekiah rendered not again according to the benefit done unto him ; for his heart was lifted up : therefore there was wrath upon him." — 2 Chron. xxxii. 25. Introduction. "What was it that had lifted up the heart of Hezekiah? We read (verses 27-30*): "He prospered in all his works." Why ? u God gave him substance very much." Thanksgiving: is a necessity, to keep alive our consciousness of dependence upon God. 1. God visits in mercy. People forget this. When a man falls dead, when a rich man is ruined, when a nation is humbled, peo- ple talk of it as God's visitation. If corn-crops go on right, if trade prospers, we attribute it to the soil and weather, or to our skilful speculation. But if there comes a THANKSGIVING IS A NECESSITY. 305 hail-storm, or a fire consuming our stock, at once — it is God's visitation. Do you think God only visits the earth to curse it ? David thought differently : " Thou visitest the earth, and blessest it ; thou makest it very plenteous." Every blade of corn grows by the visitation of God. People talk of God as if they saw only his majesty as a retribu- tive justice; but he waters the hills from above. (Read Ps. civ.) 2. Gratitude, therefore, is due to him for all his mercy that he exerts day by day. Hezekiah had received ; he rendered not in re- turn the thanks that were due to God. The Jews received abundant blessings ; they ren- dered not a return, and were cast off. Indeed it is a law of nature that return must be made. The seas receive the rivers and return the clouds ; the earth receives the grain and dress- ing, and returns the harvest; the flower is given water, and it returns its fragrant scent. It is true that we can, of ourselves, make no adequate return, but a means has been pro- vided us for making one, which is an equiva- lent to all blessings accorded us. This means is in the Eucharist. 306 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. ABSTRACT FROM THANKSGIVING ADDRESS. BY THE HON. JOHN W. RAMSEY. The year passing away has been to us crowded with blessings; health, peace, and plenty abound. What a happy country is ours, situated between the extremes of heat and cold! A land diversified by mountains and plains, ridges and valleys ; abounding in springs, rivulets, brooks, and rivers. Our for- ests still furnish all the timber necessary for building or furniture; mountains and hills veined with coal and precious metals ; plains and valleys yielding richly in grains and grapes. We were born in or have adopted a blessed country. The lines have fallen to us in pleasant places. Our opportunities and advantages are wonderful, as compared with those of our fathers. At the peril of their lives they possessed this land. They felled the forests, fenced the farms, built the log cabins and other houses as they could, with poor and limited means ; made the roads and finally the railroads; built the school-houses, churches, and mills in every valley, and prepared the way and the country for their children. They had but few books, their education was mainly ABSTRACT FROM THANKSGIVING ADDRESS 307 practical, but they appreciated the worth of a good education. As for newspapers and mag- azines, they knew but little about them. But if they could not write their names they left their marks deep and lasting behind them. We thank God for such fathers and mothers, and what they did for us, and take courage for the future. When we look around we are grateful that God has enabled us to do some- thing to elevate humanity in our country. The old style of farming and domestic work is be- ing replaced by superior implements and work. The log cabins and log stables are passing away, and elegant mansions and convenient barns are taking their places. Fine flouring and merchant mills have sprung up along the streams where the tub corn-cracker rubbed out its few bushels of meal a day. Villages and cities are rising all over the land, with all their conveniences and civilizing and humanizing appliances. The family of the poor is no longer limited to the spelling-book, reader, Bible, and almanac ; but almost for the ask- ing can it enjoy a good library of valuable books, magazines, and newspapers. If we do not advance it is our own fault. Our system of government is the best ever yet devised by man: a national government for national matters, with its law-making, law-expounding, 308 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. and law-executing departments ; State govern- ments for local and domestic affairs, with their legislative, judicial, and executive depart- ments ; then our county and corporation de- partments, for our cities and neighborhoods, bringing the streams of legislation and justice to our doors — all done by our consent and free will. Such are but a few of the blessings for which we join in thanksgiving on this bright day. GRATITUDE EXPRESSED. BY THE REV. R. ANDREW GRIFFIN. " I love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications." — Ps. cxvi. 1. First of all, we are constrained to love God for the benefits he has conferred, and then more intensely for the disposition which be- stowed these benefits. 1. The psalmist's heart was filled with gratitude. The affections of the heart are won by Grod's gentleness and condescension. 2. His heart was filled with hope. " I will call upon him." He felt that in the future God would be as kind as in the past. 3. His heart was made strong — so OUR THANKSGIVING. 309 strong that lie resolutely declares lie will never cease pleading and singing before God. In conclusion : 1. Use past mercies as encouragements for future approaches. Beggars grow bold as their requests are granted. Sinners drew near to Jesus in crowds when it was known that he " received sinners." 2. Examine yourselves, seeing that past mercies produce this holy confidence. 3. Be not afraid to place confidence in a prayer-hearing God. (1) Trust him when you are in personal trouble. (2) Trust him when Jerusalem is in peril. The past should generate present confidence. 4. Pray always — in public or private, " be- cause he hath heard" prayers offered in the general assembly and in the secret closet. 5. Forget not your vows : " I will love," etc.; "I will call," etc. OUR THANKSGIVING. Our day of national Thanksgiving is in itself a benefaction. It calls upon men once a year at least to thoughtfully consider the mercies of the Lord. Since the degree of our apprecia- 310 THANKSGIVING SEKMONS. tion of what God has done for us will deter- mine unmistakably the measure and spirit of our thanksgiving, we cannot do better than to stop and recount and seek to estimate the bene- fits which a smiling Providence has bestowed upon us ; for no one will be thankful for more than he appreciates, and no one will appreci- ate blessings of which he has no realization ; so that not only mercies, nor even a knowledge of mercies, but a sincere and trustful apprecia- tion of mercies, is essential to real gratitude. In making an inventory of the manifold good- ness of Grod we will consider : 1. Our country. This is a goodly land. We have a marvelous history of prosperity and growth. To-day no nation under the sun is more highly favored in all that goes to make up good government and a happy and thrifty people than our own. During the past twelvemonth no blighting, desolating epidemic has visited our shores. The rose of health has been on the cheek of our people. Men of all classes and ranks everywhere have abundant occasion to join hands with the tiller of the soil and shout the harvest-home and re- turn thanks to Grod. But above the material blessings which fill our storehouses and increase our wealth are OUR THANKSGIVING. 311 those of a moral and intellectual nature. This is a Christian nation. We have in the United States, of Protestants alone : Ministers, 101,796; Church organizations, 154,901 ; Communicants, 13,354,935 ; Church edifices, 133,705; Sittings, 40,189,953 ; Church valuation, $560,258,773. Add to this the amount of millions annually paid to support the same, and the whole is overwhelming. How great and precious are the blessings which come to us through the church of Jesus Christ ! We cannot speak here of our public schools, colleges, and other institutions which have for their object the amelioration of the condition of our race, old and young, in an intellectual way ; of the newspapers and books, largely re- ligious and beneficent in their influence on in- dividuals and homes. Only this : for all these uplifting, refining, and ennobling influences our thanksgiving should be hearty and devout. 2. The prosperity of God's cause in the world. The past year has been one of great religious awakening and progress throughout the world. In Christian and heathen lands the victories of the cross have been heralded abroad. Multiplied thousands have been res- 312 THANKSGIVING SEEM0NS. cued from the ways of sin and gathered within the fold of Christ. We have abundant reason to Join in the song of David : " Now, therefore, our God, we thank thee, and praise thy glori- ous name." 3. Personal blessings. Who has been without personal blessings? Who has not shared the mercies of a gracious Father, even though unmindful of his faithfulness ? Aye, in a thousand ways, from day to day, throughout the year, have the tender love and care of the Lord been manifest to all. But some who have had trouble, financial losses, great trials, or from whom loved ones of the family circle have been called, will ask, " How can you say that Grod has been near to and blessed all?" Truly, the home may be empty and the grave- yard fuller, but remember the faithfulness of Grod. A father once sat by the fireside under the shadow of grief. He held his little child on his knee, who asked the meaning of the verse that hung framed over the mantel — " The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul." No answer was given. Then the infant questioner said, " Papa, doesn't it mean Grod makes no mistakes ? " Though the outer sunshine may have faded from our pathway, still there is an inner sun- shine which should cheer every heart — " God HE HATH BONE GKEAT THINGS. 313 makes no mistakes." Then who cannot sing praises to God? To him, the Giver of all good, let ns render with pure and glad hearts, and with renewed consecration for the years to come, our thanksgiving. — Selected. HE HATH DONE GREAT THINGS. BY THE REV. W. H. STRICKLAND. " The Lord hath done great things for us ; whereof we are glad." — Ps. cxxvi. 3. These words voice a national thanksgiving. They are the grateful song of liberated Hebrew captives. With a genuine heartiness it wells up from the very depths of their being. For many years they had worn the yoke of bond- age ; had dwelt in a strange land. Their cap- tivity in Babylon was a punishment for their idolatry ; but its long term expires, and their state is so gleeful that all their neighbors no- tice it. Observe the opening of the psalm: "When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing: then said they among the heathen, The Lord hath done great things for them ; n and the liberated sons of Judah re- 314 THANKSGIVING SEEMONS. ply, u The Lord hath done great things for us ; whereof we are glad." The atheist says, "No God" — no all- wise, almighty, superintending Being. Who made this universe and regulates, repairs, and sus- tains its vast, intricate machinery? In love with "the gospel of dirt," he sees a "power and potency in nature " capable of producing and sustaining all about us, above us, within us. He tells us that all our poetry, our eloquence, our science, our art, our emotion, our senti- ment, our patriotism, our reasoning, once burned fiercely in the fires of the sun. He declares that theology is exploded, and corre- lation of force and conservation of force take the place with him of Grod and revelation. He taunts the Christian with his fetish. De- ceiving himself, he exalts matter and bows be- fore it as his fetish. Until he can practise ieon- oclasm for himself, let him cease to rail at the Christian. Away with such doctrine. It is as heartless, as f eelingless, as lifeless as the strata of the granite hills. It has no eye to pity ; it stretches forth no hand to save; it has no gratitude for favors received ; its ear is dead to the wail of the helpless and the guilty ; its eternal silence is the crudest mockery in the ear of want and woe. He hath done great things. 315 The deist acknowledges a personal God, but wraps him in garments of indifference and in- sensibility to the wants of his own children. More careless than the ostrich of the desert, he stoops not to pity or relieve the workman- ship of his own hands. Deism makes the Eternal a sort of ship- builder, who, having fashioned his craft, sup- plied its wants, and adjusted it to its element, launched it, and straightway relinquished all interest in ship, crew, cargo, leaving them to the vicissitudes of storm and calm, rock and beach. So deism tells us, God, having made the worlds, and peopled them and adjusted them to their environments, retires from the scene and concerns himself no further for their suc- cess or failure. Practically deism is no better than atheism: such a God is worth no more to man than no God. The Bible reveals to us a Being who repre- sents himself as a wise, loving, beneficent Father, as a supervising and superintending Providence, whose heart is interested in every object of his handiwork ; whose ears are ever open to the cries of his children ; who notes the falling of a sparrow and corrects the quo- tations in the daily price-current of little birds ; who causeth the grass to grow for the cattle ; 316 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. who heareth the young ravens when they cry ; whose arm of might and whose word of com- fort are alike extended to all the sons of a ruined race ; whose soul, filled with sorrow, weeps tears of compassion for his erring, un- grateful offspring. Such was the Hebrew God. "The Lord hath done great things for us." The theology of the patriarchs and the prophets makes no account of second causes — all is traced directly back to Jehovah. Said Job, suffering under the afflictive dis- pensations, " The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away." Said Joseph to his confused, convicted, com- fortless brethren, " God did send me before you to preserve life." " The Lord hath done great things for us." The God of grace and providence is the Christian's God. The child of faith hears a Father's tones and sees a Father's hand in everything. That man is miserable who sees the cyclone level his es- tates and devastate his property and yet sets it down to the hand of fate or chance ; he frets and murmurs. But he is calm, restful, trust- ful, who sees God's hand in the floods and drought. He can say, " It is the Lord : let him do what seemeth to him good." HE HATH DONE GREAT THINGS. 317 Brethren, we magnify second causes and minimize the supernatural. Let us study the natural, but let us not forget to magnify God. Losing sight of God tends to unhappiness. To-day we are met, in response to the chief magistrate of the republic and the governor of our State, to engage in national thanksgiving and praise. It is befitting so to meet. Al- mighty God gave to our fathers this broad land in which we live, and he has fashioned us what we are to-day. 'Tis meet that we thank him for civil liberty and religious freedom. He has led us by the hand and exalted us far above our fellows of other ages and climes. He smote one rock for the children of Israel : the waters gushed forth. He has smitten a thousand rocks for us, and our thirst is ever satisfied. The Jews were God's ancient peo- ple ; we are God's modern people. They wan- dered in a desert forty years ; we have dwelt in a garden a hundred years. With greater propriety than those liberated captives can we say, "The Lord hath done great things for us ; whereof we are glad." I speak not in hy- perbole when I say the people of the United States are the most highly favored people under the sun. " Great things," says the text ; religious lib- 318 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. erty, the boon of the soul, first budded and bloomed and fruited on these Western shores. Nowhere else under heaven's cope is it en- joyed in its fullness to-day. There is a vast difference between religious liberty and tolera- tion. In other lands 'tis true that each one may worship God under his own vine and fig- tree, but provided always that he pays his church-rate for its support. Here we enjoy voluntaryism to the full — here religious opinion and practice are uncir- cumscribed. We thank God for this union thanksgiving service to-day, in which Christian denomina- tions, differing widely in many things, can come together in Christian fellowship and find a platform broad enough upon which all can stand. Here, joining hands and voices, we can sing : " Blest be the tie that binds Our hearts in Christian love," without scratching one iota of independency of thought or distinctiveness of practice. We be Methodists, Christians, Presbyterians, Bap- tists, but we be brethren — brethren of one com- mon Lord, children of one common Heavenly Father. Thank God for that ! 1. We make mention of God's goodness in giving abundant harvests. HE HATH DONE GREAT THINGS. 319 Since the days of Joseph, the iron duke of Egypt, when "the earth brought forth by handfuls," we have not heard of such an abundance of the cereals as we have now. For every roan, woman, and child in these United States and Territories there are stored away in granaries or banked up in well-hooped barrels ten bushels of wheat, to say nothing of corn, oats, rye, rice, and other kinds of grain. Gaunt Famine, we defy thee to try to stalk abroad in our land ! Whatever else may come, of stringency of money, of cold, chill, disease, yet our Heavenly Father has assured us of " our daily bread " for a twelvemonth to come. "With the poet we can sing : " For me the mine a thousand treasures brings, For me health gushes from a thousand springs ; Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise ; My footstool, earth, my canopy, the skies." 2. We praise God that our people have been spared the visitation of " the pesti- lence that walketh in darkness, and the destruction that wasteth at noonday." 3. Let us rejoice, too, that we have seen the nation pass through political conflicts so safe and so peacefully. Our political Aceldamas have been mostly on paper, having sprung from the inflamed brain of newspaper 320 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. reporters and the fervid imagination of stump orators, having literally an ephemeral exis- tence. They are gone — really they never came. 4. Turning our thoughts for a moment from the political to the theological realm, let us be thankful that we find so much soundness here. There is an increasing demand for the " old paths," and a welcome to him who relates the "old truths." The overwhelming verdict of the denominations is this : " Having drunk the old wine upon which our fathers fed and were nourished, strengthened, sustained, they do not desire the new vintage, saying, ' The old is better.' " True enough, stars are now and then break- ing away from their orbits and wandering in theological space, but how quickly they are blotted from the firmament by their sister orbs ! If men will insist on drinking from the poisoned wells of French philosophy and Ger- man rationalism, and then watering with these streams their pulpits and congregations, thank G-od they are short-lived and their end is sure ! If men will persist in lifting their heads along this line, then the Christian consensus has the nerve to apply the heroic treatment, and am- putation, yea, decapitation, quickly follows. HE HATH DONE GREAT THINGS. 321 While the denominations differ widely on many minor subjects, yet there is an elbow- touch, as the French say. Many hearts and one beat concerning the great doctrines of the inspiration of the Scriptures, salvation by grace, the everlasting punishment of the lost, and atonement for sin through the death of Jesus Christ. 'Tis "the old ship of Zion" that is so popular, and " her Captain, Judah's Lion," in whose line the people want to sail. Our fathers made the voyage in this stanch old craft, and our grandfathers ; and we, the grandchildren, take passage too, rather than risk ourselves in the balloon of some nebulous aeronaut as he sets sail for the aerial regions " where lie the desolated heavens of the oblit- erated gods." The limits of this occasion forbid that I con- tinue longer the enumeration of the favors of a beneficent Father. It only remains to be urged that while we enjoy these blessings to the full — blessings of health, wealth, peace, free- dom, civil and religious — and are glad, let us not forget to give practical, substantial proofs of our gladness. While we look with satisfac- tion at our bank-accounts, our well-loaded tables, the glow of health upon the cheeks of our sons and daughters, our bodies clad in silks, broadcloths, and furs, our cellars well 322 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. stored with fuel, let us not forget the poor — God's poor. " Freely ye have received, freely give." " He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord." " The poor ye always have with you, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good." This is a day in which to do them good. My brother, a barrel of flour, a ton of coal, a strong pair of shoes, a warm overcoat, a few dollars in money, a fat turkey with the concomitants, will cause the widow's heart to sing for joy, and she with us will catch up this refrain of the text and join in the chorus with gladder voice than we: "The Lord hath done great things for us ; whereof we are glad." TIMELY THOUGHTS. Our Benefits. — Every hour, every circum- stance, brings some lesson, some benefit, from God. Every hour, every circumstance, there- fore, should carry with it some tribute of our gratitude. Peculiar mercies should receive peculiar acknowledgments. Every morning's comforts should draw forth every morning's praise. Every evening's mercies should excite every evening's gratitude. Every day should be a thanksgiving day. Our whole life should be a life of praise. — Stevenson. TIMELY THOUGHTS. 323 The Glory of the Country. — It is the glory of our republic that in it the Bible lies open, and the churches and schools are so nearly free that no one is necessarily deprived of their advantages. If we aspire to be still more glorious as a country in the future, we must guard our Sabbaths, our Bible, and our schools. If we guard the churches and the schools well we need not " Heed the skeptics hands While near the school the church spire stands, Nor fear the blinded bigot's rule While near the church spire stands the school." Let us, by the help of God, try to make great and successful efforts to establish right- eousness everywhere through this fair land. If our people live according to the divine philosophy of life this great republic will not only increase in numbers, prestige, and power, but will become a greater blessing to the hu- man race in the future than it has been in the past. — J". G. Oakley, D.D. Thoughts for Thanksgiving Day. — Thanksgiving is the flower of gratitude which has its roots in love. There is such a thing as thanksgiving in words only ; but this, be- ing a dead form observed in obedience to com- mon customs, may proceed from the lips of one whose heart is a stagnant pool of ingrati- 324 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. tude. Thankful speech is not necessarily thankfulness. It may be the language of mere thoughtlessness, or it may be the expression of conscious or unconscious hypocrisy. In such cases it fails to benefit the character of him who offers it, and since it takes the name of God in vain, it must, like Cain's sacrifice, be offensive to the God of all mercies. To be profitable to the worshiper and acceptable to the Unseen but All- seeing One, thanksgiving must be the expression of a heart swelling with those grateful emotions which nothing but love can beget. " Love," says a quaint old divine, " makes all our services acceptable ; it is the musk that perfumes them." — Selected. Giving Thanks always for all Things. — Is it saying too much to affirm that this pre- cept contains the key to a joyous Christian life ? It suggests a* habit both of the mind and heart — a mind trained to perceive a gift of God in everything, a heart quick to praise God for whatever the mind sees as coming from him. Living in this spirit one's life becomes a con- stant hymn. Every mercy, no matter how commonplace, becomes a note in the music of the heart. A night of peaceful sleep free from pain ; a home protected from disturbance ; the morning's meal; order in the household; the strength to labor ; safety on a journey — every- TIMELY THOUGHTS. 325 thing, in short, as events succeed each other through the day, awakens thought, yea, more than a thought — a consciousness of the divine presence, and that thought calls up a grateful " I thank thee, Lord, for this mercy." He who lives thus keeps perpetual thanksgiving day ; and the day of national thanksgiving finds him already possessed of its spirit and prepared to extend the range of his thoughts from his own personal mercies to those which are national. More than this, such a man has the spirit of the life that is to come, and death to him will only be a transition from singing the Lamb in hymns below to singing of his glory in a nobler strain in the choir above. — Christian Advocate. Patriotism and Religion. — Patriotic sen- timent is good ; religious fervor is better. Al- legiance to native land is praiseworthy ; alle- giance to God is unspeakably more worthy of praise. We love our country, for we enjoy under her protection the liberties which make us a great and happy people ; but let us not forget that we owe to God every blessing — even our political liberties. Noble is it for men to take their stand bravely for the right in times of peril ; the highest possible nobility is reached when we stand fearlessly in a selfish world for God and his righteousness. — J. A. Lippincott, JD.B. 326 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. Two Thanksgivings. — The beginning of the history of this world was a song ; the end- ing will be a doxology. Between these two thanksgivings was a paean of praise over Beth- lehem's plain that sweetly coupled together the old and the new dispensations. The secret of all rational contentment is thanksgiving ; and " godliness with contentment is great gain." . . . Eejoice to-day; there are clouds and tears, but there is also a bow. Be still ; be thankful, cheerful, and glad. ..." His name shall en- dure forever : his name shall be continued as long as the sun : and men shall be blessed in him : all nations shall call him blessed. Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things. And blessed be his glorious name forever : and let the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen, and Amen." Thanksgiving? Surely! Garlands of grati- tude and banners of blessings let us wave be- fore him ! Why ? For everything give thanks. Praise ye the Lord. — The King's Messenger. Bible. — " give thanks unto the Lord ; for he is good: for his mercy endureth forever. O give thanks unto the God of gods : for his mercy endureth forever. give thanks to the Lord of lords : for his mercy endureth forever. Who remembered us in our low estate : for his mercy endureth forever. And hath redeemed SUGGESTIVE THEMES. 327 us from our enemies : for his mercy enduretli forever. O give thanks unto the God of heaven : for his mercy endureth f orever." (Ps. cxxxvi. 1-3, 23, 24, 26.) — Stevenson. SUGGESTIVE THEMES. Seed-time and Harvest. Matt. xiii. 3. Past Mercies a Pledge of Future Good. Psalm cxv. 12. Abundant Provision. Psalm cxlv. 16. Divine Forces in Human History. Psalm xcvii. 1, 2. Christian Civilization. Prov. xii. 26. The Divine Conditions of Nationality. Ezek. xx. 6. Heavenly Gifts. Psalm cxvi. 13. David's Thanksgiving. 1 Chron. xxix. 10-19. Kestoring the Years which the Canker-worm has Eaten. Joel ii. 25. The Glory of the Country. Ezek. xxv. 9. A Kingly Year. Psalm lxv. 11. The Goodness of God in Little Things. Psalm xxxiii. 5. God's Great-heartedness. Matt. ix. 13 ; Hosea vi. 6. Politics for Christians. Matt. xxii. 21. A Lesson for Harvest. Hosea ii. 21, 22. The Sin of Ingratitude. Luke xvii. 17. Rebuilding Waste Places. Isa. liii. 12. The Wonderful Works of God are to be Remembered. Psalm cxi. 4. Happy Homes. Luke ii. 51. The Commandment with Promise. Exod. xx. 12. Repairing Breaches. Isa. liii. 12. National Blessings. Psalm cxlvii. 20. Temporal Prosperity Follows Duty. Isa. lviii. 14. The Lord's Dinner. John xxi. 12. The Nation Strengthened. Zech. i. 16. Gladness of Completed Work. Isa. ix. 3. 328 THANKSGIVING SERMONS. SUGGESTIVE TEXTS. All are yours. 1 Cor. iii. 22. The Lord is good to all : and his tender mercies are over all his works. Psalm cxlv. 9. I am a citizen of no mean country. Acts xxi. 39. He hath not dealt so with any nation, etc. Psalm cxlvii. 20. Come and dine. John. xxi. 12. I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth ; and the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil. Hosea ii. 21, 22. Thou openest thine hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing. Psalms cxlv. 16. The Lord reigneth ; let the earth rejoice ; let the multitude of isles be glad thereof, etc. Psalm xcvii. 1, 2. Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, etc. Psalm cvii. 8. Thus saith the Lord; I am returned to Jerusalem with mercies, etc. Zech. i. 16. Happy is that people, that is in such a case : yea, happy is that people, whose God is the Lord. Psalm cxliv. 15. My soul desired the first ripe fruit. Micah vii. 1. Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send, etc. Neh. viii. 10. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise : be thankful unto him, and bless his name. Psalm c. 4. Thou art good, and doest good. Psalm cxix. 68. Thy kingdom come. Matt. vi. 10. Thou crownest the year with thy goodness. Psalm lxv. 11. The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, etc. Psalm ciii. 17. My Father is the husbandman. John xv. 1. Delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth. Isa. lviii. 14. The glory of the country. Ezek. xxv. 9. SUGGESTIVE TEXTS. 329 I desired mercy, and not sacrifice. Hosea vi. 6 ; Matt. ix. 13. He hath made his wonderful works to be remembered. Psalm cxi. 4. They joy before thee according to the joy in harvest. Isa. ix. 3. O give thanks unto the Lord ; for he is good : for his mercy endureth forever. Psalm cxxxvi. 1. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit. John xv. 8. The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. Psalm xxxiii. 5. Behold, a sower went forth to sow. Matt. xiii. 3. A land that I had espied for them, flowing with milk and honey, which is the glory of all lands. Ezek. xx. 6. The Lord hath been mindful of usj he will bless us. Psalm cxv. 12. Now therefore, our God, we thank thee, and praise thy glo- rious name. 1 Chron. xxix. 13. He hath not dealt so with any nation. Psalm cxlvii. 20. High above all nations which he hath made in praise, and in name, and in honor. Deut. xxvi. 19. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, etc. James i. 17. STUDY IN PEDAGOGY, A— By Bishop John H. Vincent, D D. f LL D. (2mo. cloth, 73 pp. 60 cents. 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