Editorial November 23, 1929 Issue

Thanksgiving

Albert F. Gilmore

In a masterly exhortation to righteousness, Paul calls upon the Christians at Ephesus, in recognition of God's bestowals, to speak to themselves "in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,... giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." Thus did the apostle emphasize the necessity of recognizing God as the source of all good, and the obligation of the recipients of His bounty to acknowledge it in appropriate terms. This habit of thanksgiving is a most important one to establish, for it turns our thought to God and to the contemplation of divine beneficence, in itself a valuable experience. But its benefits go much farther. The custom of recognizing the divine source of our blessings and expressing our thanks therefor uncovers a well of gratitude in the voicing of which thought is opened and the channels are broadened through which divine Love blesses us. We are thus doubly profited by the experience.

At this season of thanksgiving when the people of the United States in accordance with the ancient custom are again called upon to gather in their usual places of worship, there to render thanks to the Father for the bounteous blessings of the past year, there is more than the usual reason for grateful hearts to sing their hymns of joy and voice their prayers of thanksgiving. During the twelve months now closing there has become manifest in the hearts of men more distinctly than ever before the true spirit of brotherhood. The Prince of Peace has again touched the hearts of men and quickened them to a keener sense of brotherly love, awakening anew a sense of obligation one to another which finds expression in an affirmative answer, clear and strong, to the traditional query, "Am I my brother's keeper?"

This newly awakened spirit, so aptly taught and perfectly exemplified in the life of the Nazarene, promises the coming of a new day, the noontime of which will see the nations of earth living in lasting peace, in amity and good will, with the prospect of international strife forever relegated to the realm of the impossible. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty," declared the apostle; and none the less is the concept of brotherhood which precludes the possibility of international warfare the handmaid of the spirit of Truth. Christian Scientists have special occasion for thanksgiving at this season, for they recognize in this era just at the dawn exemplification of human consciousness touched by the transforming Christ. The truth recognized and made effectual in human experience through righteous prayers is bearing fruit, fruit of the Spirit grown upon the tree of brotherly love. Horror and inexpressible suffering, the inevitable aftermath of war, are the fruits grown upon the tree of evil, the trunk of which is material sense, the branches ambition, jealousy, hatred, and egregious selfishness. These bearers of bad fruits are now falling under the incessant blows of the sword of the Spirit, and friendship, good will, and brotherhood are supplanting the old evils which have from the dawn of human history dominated mankind.

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