Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, November 25, 1900, Page 15

Thanksgiving Day--Legacy of the Pilgrims HANKBGIVING DAY is the legacy of that devoted band of Christian people who for the right to worship God in freedom of con- science braved sea and savage and the wilderness of a new world, and when the first harvest was gathered assembled their families for social festivi- ties and religious worship. Today the spirit of the Pilgrims permeates the continent. A nation has grown up around that little nucleus of nearly 300 years ago. Where once rang the whoop of the savage is heard the whistle of the plowboy and the song of the dairy maid. I'ields of grain supplant the wilderness. The rail- road enters every corner and canyon and bears the products of farm and mountain, of mine and manu- factory, to the marts of the world, and by the light- ning's flash Atlantic and Pacific, the lakes and the gulf chant in unison of peace, plenty and progress, Thanksgiving has become a national institution and we a mighty people. Like the I'east of the Passover to Israel, our national festival is a day of moral measurement and education in piety and patriotism. It is well to recount how God has led us and reflect upon that principle of perpetuity, “Righteousness exalteth a nation.” The descendants of such ancestry can hardly do less than to feel gratitude and responsibility to God and to seek His will and righteousness. While we, as a nation, seek such ends, our course can be but onward and upward and will never cease. We are rich in material resources, rich in moral resources, in schools, churches, newspapers and a self-reliant, self-respecting progressive citizenship. Home, country and God are the dearest words in our language, and to these Thanksgiving day naturally lends itself. Happiest Day in the Year. Next Thursday will be the happiest day in the year for this nation. The day brings the scattered tamilies together. Neighbors and triends will form social groups. The day will be dedicated to that which is sweetest and best in domestic life. No ties are like those of the home. We meet in the family circle on terms of frankness, mutual contidence, friendship, fraternity, affection, as nowhere else. There the world’s temptations are shut out. There the purest ideals are set before us. There we are confirmed in our best resolutions. There mean- ness drops its pretty mask and becomes a grinning skeleton. Let us treasure the day, first of all, as our home day. Our country is made better by every family festival. Its cornerstones are laid on our hearthstones. Never will country lack a high. minded citizenship, never defenders to face her foe, as long as there are homes that gather the wan- derers once a year and remember there with thanks- giving the Hand that first set up a government in the wilderness; that has led us through days of trial and darkness to the glory and light which are ours today. God bless, then, that feature of Thanksgiv- ing day which finds expression in the home festival. But there is another phase of Thanksgiving whose importance, I fear, is on the wane. That is the public expression of thanksgiving to God. I'rom the experience of at least a decade the worship of the day is on the wane. We are called as a nation by our chief magistrate to assemble in our accus- tomed places of worship to recall our national bless- ings and give God thanks. It is with God we have to do. This year has been the greatest in American history in material prosperity. Our crops have been abundant, our manufactories have been speeding at their highest capacity, our mines have yielded their riches without stint—-it is high tide of prosperity. The census, just finished, shows a steady national growth, until we can look forward confidently to 100,000,000 population in the near future. No great plague has swept away our riches or our people. Our fighting force on sea and land in a distant world has brought us no shame. A great presidential contest has not deadened our business activities. = Momentous issues were before the people. The contest was gamely and chivalrously fought, and when it was over the whole people quietly acquiesced in the result. It is true a great disaster fell upon one of our magnificent and beloved cities, but the storm that destroyed Galveston furnished opportunity to the nation to show how truly we feel “if one member suffers all members suffer with it,” and property and lives are not lost in vain, which reveals such unanimity of sympathy, such generous impulses of humanity and charity, as found expression from one end of the land to the other when the revels of the storm king became known. Entering Untried Paths. Today, as never before, our country should seek the favor of God. Our feet are entering new and untried paths. No one can read the future. We are all looking westward—Dbetter that we look up- ward. Watch God—then move the flag to His standard. We search the scriptures, for we think in them is revealed through holy men, guided by the spirit, the will of God. We do well. But has God nothing to say to men for the last 1,800 years? We read his- tory and find Providence. Shall we not also strive to read the signs of the times? Nothing is so fascinating as a word from God, and that word is not all expressed between the covers of the book. New chapters are being added day by day and God breathing into men the power to discover His will. This we must strive to know, for no nation can stand against God. We are slow to recognize in progressive life a new word from God. Every age REV. EDWIN HART JENKS—PASTOR OF THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, OMAHA. has its prophets. Copernicus and Galileo, in giv- ing us a greater cosmogony, have given us a greater God. Kepler and Newton and Darwin, in discovering nature’s laws, have revealed an infinite wisdom—a righteousness “which cometh down from the IFather of Lights, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” Guttenberg, Steven- son, I'ulton and Morse by invention have illustrated grandly the brotherhood of man. Cyrus Iield, Eli Whitney, Thomas Edison, are all agents of the Al- wighty in bringing to pass the will of God in the coming of His kingdom. The progressive enlight- enment of the race should furnish a growing under- stayding of the plans and purposes of the Almighty as truly as scripture, and he is not wise who will not read. The scripture bids Christians to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel.” But the flying spindle and the loom sings it. The mighty print- ing press chants the same refrain. The iron horse shouts it from ocean to ocean and the steamship bears the word around the world. God Still Reigns. History cannot be divided into sacred and pro- fane. God makes it all. We blind our eyes to His methods. Truth never changes, methods may. Men think God ought to rule one way and He rules another. But He reigns. The Macedonian left his path of blood to the Indus and men prayed God to stop him. He spread devastation, but also scat- tered broadcast the Greek language, and God used it to give the gospel to the world. Rome grew great upon the ruin of other and virtuous peoples. God used it to teach law, the spiritual headship of Christ and universal empire of peace. Rome supplanted barbarism with civiliza- tion, and her eagles guarded the missionaries of the cross as they went forth to reclaim and uplift the whole wide world. The Moslem crossed the Helles- pont and placed the crescent above the cross at the (tolden Horn. Men lifted up their hands and cried: “Oh, Lord! How long, how long!” But the schol- ars of Constantinople gathered up their manuscripts and scattered all over Europe. They became the teachers of the people, and behold “The revival of Jetters,” “The renaissance in art,” “The reformation in religion,” maritime awakening, and Columbus discovered a new world. About 100 years ago a cobbler in England com- wmenced to pray that the world might be given to Christ, He dropped his hammer and took up his bible and went forth to preach. Men laughed at William Carey, but the church awakened to her duty and prayed for the opening of the world to the gospel. China was walled about, Japan’s ports closed, India in the grasp of a commercial company, Africa inhabited by fierce blacks who ate their e¢nemies, the islands of the sea no better, but worse. The way was opened. How? Through the neces- sities of the commercial world for markets. At the cannon’s mouth Japan let in the Christian trader and the missionary followed. England forced her opinion upon China and the Christian teacher fol- lowed. And so in every case the fight of the higher civilization against the lower has been triumphant for the higher, and the lower has been steadily rising to new and better conditions. Even “the wrath of man shall praise Him.” Witness in Japan the great possibilities of the nations in darkness. Advance of Civilization, This was the century, too, when the great utilities of the age were brought forth. Steam and electric- ity annihilated time and space. Labor-saving ma- chinery enabled Christendom to produce manifold mere of the products of civilization than possible for her own use and demanded a market for its dis- posal. Thus the products of civilization teach the world the need of higher living. And then the printing press, scattering its pages of the world's ascertained truth and thought, stimulated a desire and furnished the means to know the reasons for the wonderful superiority of the world’s dominant races. The results are beginning to be seen, as illustrated by Japan. Are these things but the cvolved issues of civilization? We are blind not to sce the Power which guides them to lift all His children to the heights of better things. Two years ago our nation was peaceful and bappy. 'I'wo seas bounded our greatness, and we said it is enough. Let us keep ourselves to our- selves and be satisfied. But within a hundred miles of our shores a great nation oppressed a weak one. Men died for freedom and we held our peace. But the word came that women and children were starv- ing by the hundreds of thousands and our hearts were stirred. An act of treachery, a message from the silent lips of an Omaha lady, whose eyes had scen and whose heart broke at the horrors of the reconcentrados of Cuba and our country, said, “Thus far we will go, they shall be saved.” No one wanted a war—no one foresaw the consequences. The guns we expected to hear from the east thundered from the west. Dewey had taken the Philippines. Two months later and Cuba was ours. Two squadrons of the enemy destroyed and our decks ‘almost clean of blood. Do these things mean nothing? Captain Philip of the Texas, after fighting at Santiago, called his men to the quarterdeck and all joined in prayer. With the smoke of battle curling upward in the sky he said, “I believe in Almighty God.” These facts and the results which followed make clear to us that a destiny has ruled us, whether we would or no. And such chapters read in the higher light call us to feel that God has mapped out for us a great destiny. We shrink from the un- known, we dread the involved and untried issues, we fain would have lived with limited horizon. But we cannot, we ought not if it is true that the Al- mighty has laid this task upon us and said “Go on!” Baser motives may rule men. Higher purposes enimate God. Let us give thanks that we have been counted worthy and go on. Keeping our own motives in righteousness and in righteous undertaking, through trial and sacrifice, we shall march to a place in glory of which future peoples and nations shall sing and write, REV. EDWIN HART JENKS,