persecution. Conscience is free. We have learned to endure and to hope. The forests are full of game. Let us thank God and take courage to car ry on.” And we today may indeed thank God for that first day of thanksgiving in America. As the nation maintains a guard of honor at the grave of the Unknown Soldier “while the Repub lic shall last,” so we should build a memorial with a perpetual endow ment to this unknown soldier of faith who endured hardships and yet maintained his faith and courage with a paean of praise and a song of thanksgiving. Today, we are being driven anew to rea lize the essentialities of the Spirit of God. It is in Christ that all things remain unchanged — consist. Out of the character that has its source in Christ there arise courage, confidence, faith, love, loyalty, un selfishness, altruism. In America the things that count are the contribu tions that can be attributed to Christ. It is in Him and in the message of His gospel that we find whatever measure of honesty there is in public and private life, obedience to and reverence for law, and the unsoiled ermine of judicial integrity. Let us thank God that the nation still has a legacy of truth preached by the church. In the very time when the nation has turned away from Christ and His church, the nation lives on the reserve balance of character the church has laid up for it. Without those in teg rities which inhere in Christ, the nation cannot exist. Any adequate view of the world must compare humanity’s problems with Job and his problem of pain, Elijah and his problem of perplexity, and Isaiah with his problem of chaos. And it must take into account God, speaking to Job from the whirlwind, to Elijah in the still small voice, and to Isaiah in his vision of God. Hu manity’s cause is the cause of God, and He alone holds the answer to mankind’s need. As we think of all the mercies of God that enrich our lives at' this Thanksgiving season, we find that our supreme reason for thankfulness centers in the Lord Jesus Christ. His wondrous work at Calvary on our behalf, and His gracious empowering of us for our daily walk “ in him” lead us to ask: “What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits to ward me?” As we realize our human insufficiency, we can only reply: “ I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord.” Yes, “We will rejoice in thy salva tion, and in the name of our God we will set up our banners.” END.
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our supreme reason for
by J. C. Massee
G iving of thanks to God is connect ed vitally with all spiritual ex perience. It recognizes God as the source of all good, and thus it con fesses God to be the source of benefits received. He it is who sends the rain upon the fields, makes fertile the soil, maintains the seasons, gives seedtime and harvest. He gives and sustains sanity of mind, the impulse to labor, the wisdom to plan, the ability to achieve. It is He who plants in our souls those essential virtues upon which homes are built, society es tablished, and life is made stable. All these and more are directly de pendent upon the goodness of God.
To the Christian, the origin of our national Thanksgiving Day is of profound interest and significance. “The Log of the Mayflower” dis closes that in the beginning of that awful fall, when 51 per cent of the memt ;rs of the first Plymouth Col ony 1ad died, when every leader of the c deny had suffered loss of wife or other member of his family, when crops had failed and the little band was confronted by a new winter of terrors, it had been agreed “ to hold a day of complaint to God.” Some unknown hero of faith pro posed instead a day of thanksgiving: “We are alive. We are free from
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