November, 1937
T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
422
Photo by Harold M. Lambert, Philadelphia
"Praise Ye the Lord"
Each using a different angle of approach, three pastors urge upon Christians an exercise of the grace of gratitude
Why Give Thanks? By J. C. MASSEE* Winona Lake, Indiana
G IVING of thanks to God is con nected vitally with all spiritual ex perience. It recognizes God as the source of all good, and thus it confesses God to be the source of benefits received. He it is who sends the rain upon the fields, makes fertile the soil, maintains the sea sons, 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 established, and life is made stable. All these and more are directly dependent upon the good God and the goodness of God. T o the Christian, the origin of our na tional Thanksgiving Day is of profound interest and significance. “The Log of the Mayflower” discloses that in the beginning of that awful fall, when fifty-one per cent of the members of the first Plymouth Colony had died, when every leader of the colony had suffered loss of wife or other member of his family, when crops had failed and the little band were confronted by a new winter of terrors, it had been agreed “to hold a day of complaint to God.” Some unknown hero of faith proposed instead a day of thanksgiving: “We are alive. We are free from persecution. Con science is free. We have learned to endure and to hope. The forests are full of game. Let us thank God and take courage to carry on.” And we today may indeed thank God for that first day of thanksgiving in Amer ica. As the nation maintains a guard of * Evangelist, teacher, conference speaker.
honor at the grave of the Unknown Sol dier “while the Republic shall last,” so we should build a memorial with a per petual endowment 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 thanks giving. Reasons for Thanksgiving in 1937 Today, we are being driven anew to realize 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, unselfishness, altruism. In America the things that count are the contributions that can be attributed to Christ. It is in Him and in the message of His gos pel 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 in tegrity. 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 bal ance of character the church has laid up for it. Without those integrities which in here 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 prob lem 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.
Humanity’s cause is the cause of God, and He alone holds the answer to man kind’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 toward me?” As we realize our human insufficiency, we can only reply: “ I will take the cup of salva tion, and call upon the name of the Lord.” Yes, “We will rejoice in thy salvation, and in the name of our God we will set up our banners.” II. Thankfulness In Darkening Days By LOUIS S. BAUM AN * Long Beach, California I S THE old world headed for chaos?” asks the writer of a remarkable arti cle in the Los Angeles Times of Sep tember 26, 1937. He develops his theme thus: “ The condition in which the world finds itself at this moment causes even the layman to pause and consider whether or not we are headed toward *Pastor, First Brethren Church.
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