Editorial November 27, 1902 Issue

The Acceptable Thanksgiving

Our appreciation of the common kindnesses of neighbors and friends impels us to make due and loving acknowledgment and a return of kindred favors when opportunity offers, but gratitude for higher and nobler gifts. especially for intellectual and spiritual quickening. finds its true and legitimate expression in responsiveness and receptivity of heart. a consecration of life to the ends for which our benefactor stands.

Thankfulness thus comes to mean, practically, the glad appropriation, assimilation, and ever-enlarging use of added blessings. It means growth, a broader culture, an increased capacity, an expanding usefulness.

The plant answers to the rain in its deeper penetration of root, its putting forth of leaves and branches, its opening of flowers; and in thus fulfilling a larger life and service it directly magnifies its need of more rain, its possible utilization of yet richer conferments of sunshine and of shower. So too the earnest student yields his every awakened power to the control of the Master's thought. Every increase of conscious indebtedness stimulates his zeal and intensifies his loyal and enthusiastic devotion to his instructor, and his gratitude is expressed in the fuller reflection of the philosophy or system of thought which the teacher represents. as well as in the alacrity with which he returns for deeper draughts from the fountain of his inspiration. It is thus that we naturally and practically appropriate all that we really love, and in the highest, most serviceable exercise of our acquirements, we best evidence our gratitude for them.

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The Acceptable Thanksgiving

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