Thanksgiving : memories of the day, helps to the habit

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Introductory : Memories and Habits 3

Home 57

II. Exuberant Goodness

In the eighth chapter of the Book of Proverbs we have a most lively personification of Wisdom. The poetry of all languages furnishes nothing more spirited or pleasing. Before the mountains were settled, and the hills brought forth j when there were no fountains and no depths ; when as yet the earth and the fields and the firmament were not ; " then," says Wisdom, " I was with the Almighty as one brought up with him ; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him. Rejoicing in the habitable part of the earth, and my delights were with the sons of men." In this most animated description there is one sentiment too beautiful to lie concealed in an imperfect translation. It occurs in that word which represents Wisdom as rejoicing in the presence of the Creator and throughout the world which he has made. In the original the image is that of a child playing in excess of glee and sportive ness, in the company of its own parent. That is the word — playing ! Some translators, aiming at great exactness, have rendered it " dancing," and " laughing j " but the authors of our English version, deeming the literal translation unsuited to the dignity of the personification, have contented themselves with the more quiet word — rejoicing; but the image which the word presents is that of a child, the object of parental delight, leaping and running in exuberance of spirits, unable to express all its overflowing pleasure. And this is the figure which represents the creative power by which the world was made ; the pleasure of the Almighty when he swept the graceful curves of the globe, sloped the swell of the hills, wove the tresses of the woods, and gave to the sea its easy swing. This is the form which descends also to the habitable parts of the earth, as if it could not find room enough for its illimitable delights, playing — we must retain the word — like the sweet-flowings of the air all over the world it would bless, and making expressions, in every way, of its own boundless pleasure. The only living and true God is not like Brahma, cold, indifferent, and passionless, sleeping upon the stars; the ocean is not so full of currents as is the heart of our Maker with delight, in the contemplation of his own works.

Dr. Paley has constructed an admirable argument in proof of the goodness of God, from the evident design of what he has made. Excellent for its own purposes as the treatise is, its only defect is that it is set to a key too low. It is necessarily scholastic, and, to a certain degree, frigid. It might have had more of poetic fervor without impairing its logic, or diluting its sound and wholesome sense. The lenses of the eye and the articulations of the bones furnish, indeed, a resistless proof of the Divine goodness ; but mere utility does not describe the principles on which the Almighty has employed his creative skill. Delight was in his own mind, and how much has he done to confer delight upon others. He has transcended all the conditions of a bare and frigid necessity. Ten thousand things has he made, ten thousand things has he given, which were never necessary at all, the expressions of his own superabundance, and the proof that he seeks our special pleasure. The genius of Jeremy Taylor, exuberant as a vine spreading all over the courts of the Lord, was better suited to discourse on such a theme than was William Paley, even though the excellent Dean was the embodiment of all cheerfulness and good humor.

Mr. Carlyle has somewhere said, that a man should put himself at zero, and then reckon every degree ascending from that point as an occasion for thanks. Precisely on this scale do the Scriptures compute our mercies. Demerit places us at the very nadir. Every step we take frcm the point where conscious unworthiness would consign us, should call for an offering of gratitude, whatever envied heights may tower, unreached, above us. " It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed." " Why should a living man complain ? " So begins the anthem of thanks, at its lowest note of all, " We are alive — we are not consumed." We are all of us far, far above the extremest point ; therefore, let each, from the place where he stands, strike in with his own melody, till the accumulated song rises higher and higher, like the lark circling towards the skies. " Bless the Lord, O my soul, who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction, who satisfieth thy mouth with good things, who crowneth thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies."

Standing on the very lowest conditions of contentment, in possession of life, food, and raiment, every reason have we for gratitude ; how much more when we consider the acts of God's goodness which are over and above all that is necessary, designed solely and expressly for our pleasure.

The point to which we look, is not so much the pleasure which God enjoys in the exercise of his own powers, the expression of his own goodness ; though this were a noble theme by itself. Great delights must have thrilled the heart of Raphael when he had finished his immortal picture of the Transfiguration ; Canova and Thorwaldsen must have felt a joy beyond all the pleasures of sense, when they had brought out from the marble block the statues of the great and good : but this satisfaction was as a drop to the sea, compared to the delight of God when he created such minds as Milton and Newton and Pascal and Fenelon and Melanchthon and Herbert, or when he made manifestation of himself in the gospel of Jesus Christ, waking the harmonies of the skies, sweeter and louder than on the morning of creation. This would be a glorious theme by itself, and useful withal, since it would correct the theology of those who misunderstand the saying that God made all things for his own glory, as if that were ignoble, forgetting that what is the vanity of display in man, in God is but the expression of Infinite Love, and the pleasure which attends its exercise.

This, however, is not our theme just now, so much as its sister and counterpart — the manifold objects which God has made for our pleasure merely, above all the demands of necessity. The goodness of a parent is justified when he provides all that is useful and indispensable for his child ; but how many things he bestows upon that child, for his special gratification, which are not needful at all. If we set out upon this course of thought, language will confess its inadequacy to measure the "miracles of this infinity." " The little drops which run over, though they be not much in themselves, yet they tell that the vessel is full, and can express the greatness of the shower no otherwise but by spilling, and in artificial expressions and runnings over." * Our cup runneth over. Sometimes we fall into depression, when we can hardly see that anything good remaineth ; we travel from Dan to Beersheba and say that it is all barren, but if we only had an eye to discern what is good and beautiful, we should be astonished at the exuberance and profusion with which our Maker has furnished and decorated the world we live in. There are some people, good in their way, who never hear the word " beauty " without a revulsion, and taste is something to be looked upon with suspicion. It is, indeed, greatly to be lamented that beauty and taste have so often been perverted by irreligious associations ; but did it never occur to persons of such a temper to wonder why God has lavished such profuseness of beauty in all his works ? He has not left the walls and the rafters of the earth bare and sightless, but has decorated them all over with divine skill, and the attributes of our Maker seem not to have reached the region of highest joy till, passing the rugged acts of necessity, they disport in the free play of affluent generosity.

Let us not imitate Baillie Jarvie, who could not look upon a sparkling lake without pronouncing it a pity that * Jeremy Taylor.

so much good soil should lie useless under the water ; who never could see a wood, without computing how much lumber it would make ; or a moss-covered rock, without forecasting how much building stone it would turn out ; or a cataract like Terni or Niagara, without satisfying himself how much water-power it would supply for manufacturing. It is scarcely credible how few people, even in what are called the educated classes, enjoy anything. A recent writer in the London Quarterly tells the story of Lord Melbourne and a young guardsman going with some ladies to an entertainment. Next day the guardsman complained that the evening had been stupid, and that there had been nothing to see. " Nothing to see ! " exclaimed the good-tempered nobleman. "Were there not the lobsters in. the fish-shops to look at as we went along ? " Melbourne was one of the few men who knew how to enjoy ; and if every man would only educate his eye to discern beauty in common objects, and when he had detected it would take his wife and children to see it too, this world would be very different from what it now is.

There are the flowers, wee things, clad in glory which shames the robes and regalia of kings. There was no necessity for their brilliant beauties, or their luxurious perfume ; but God has scattered them with a liberal hand all over the earth, precisely as you hang a gem on the person of your child, simply and solely for her special gratification.

God might have made the earth bring forth

Enough for great and small, The oak-tree and the cedar-tree,

Without a flower at all.

We might have had enough, enough

For every want of ours, For luxury, medicine and toil,

And yet have had no flowers.

The ore within the mountain mine

Requireth none to grow, Nor doth it need the lotus-flower

To make the river flow.

The clouds might give abundant rain,

The nightly dews might fall, And the herb which keepeth life in man

Might yet have drunk them all.

Then wherefore, wherefore, were they made,

All dyed with rainbow-light, All fashioned with supremest grace,

Upspringing day and night :

Springing in valleys green and low,

And on the mountains high, And in the silent wilderness

Where no man passes by ?

Our outward life requires them not —

Then wherefore had they birth ?

To minister delight to man,

To beautify the earth."

Distrust and despondency there cannot be, when one has taught his eye to read the beautiful lesson of the flowers ; for thus it runneth : " He that careth enough for me to bestow such inimitable luxuries, surely will not withhold what is absolutely necessary."

So of the fruits, so pleasant to the eye and to the taste. God might have withheld them all, and yet no imputation be cast upon his generosity. The commonest esculent necessary for subsistence cannot grow without its blossom ; as if beauty invariably waited on utility. The homely potato cannot begin its under-ground usefulness till it has sent up into the air a flower of delicate hue, to promise its coming ; and the corn hangs out its tassels of softest silk, and when the southwest wind plays through its tresses and banners, they wave and flaunt as if they had delight in the grace of motion. But when all the sober and honest vegetables and grains which we are accustomed to regard as the necessaries of life are bestowed, above and beyond them all are the fruits, which, for the delight they afford our every sense, must be esteemed as designed to afford us a special pleasure. How grateful to the eye in their varied forms and colors, hanging from the vine, pendent on the tree, half hid in the leafy shrub, cluster, berry, pulp, juice ; red, golden, russet, scarlet, and all the shades between, as if all the colors of the sky and all the sweetness of the earth had agreed together to fashion something which could tell the child of God how much his Father delighted to please him.

Plainly enough the ear was constructed most curiously for the transmission of sound j and it might have subserved all the necessities of life without ever having caught one of those strains of music, one of those sobs of the sea, one of those plaintive cadences of the wind, which now diffuse through the sensitive frame the delicious sense of melody. The conformation of the organ, its cells and tubes and drum, would have attested the skill of our Maker as well, if it had served only to report those dull sounds which relate to needful work ; but we begin to

Exuberant Goodness. ^rj

think of something more than skill, even of goodness playing in its own exuberance, when, as Milton writes in style suited to the theme, we are

Lapped in soft Lydian airs Married to immortal verse, Such as the meeting soul may pierce, In notes, with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out, With wanton heed and giddy cunning The melting voice thro' mazes running, Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul cf harmony.

He who can sing, or he who can feel the thrill of song, as Milton did at the organ, has an argument for God's superabundant goodness before which infidelity should flee away.

" Beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying fowl," objects introduced by name in one of the sacred lyrics, are invited to join in the chorus of universal praise. All these might have met the ends and offices of their existence, according to any scheme of utilitarianism, even if they had been made to plod or sleep through a joyless existence ; while in truth, the gambols of the whole animal creation are forever expressing how much of pleasure belongs to their lot. It is a morning in the spring, warm and sunny ; the air is all alive with insects, sporting in jocund life, whose existence seems to us nothing but pleasure ; and the birds — those teachers whom Christ has placed beside the lilies, whose brilliant plumage and graceful shapes often remind us of the flowers, endowed with life and motion — fairly shriek out their delight, as they skim and sail and shoot about, as if making fun of all the laws of nature. " The poppies and the corn-blades," as we read in Sir Philip Sydney's Defence of Poesy, " might chide the lark for flying so high, striving and straining after mere air, losing its time, and bringing back nothing but weary wings and an empty stomach," but her sweet voice and soaring wings belong to God, and she goes up circling higher and higher to pour out her jubilant song at the very gate of heaven ; and the " Bobolink," that jolly favorite of boyhood, would have performed its office as well in clearing the ground and trees of noxious grubs, if it had been unfurnished with those liquid notes which come trilling out of its throbbing throat, when seated on that slender top bough which is even now " tilting up and down with his effort in that last joyous cadenza."

See the lambs on the hill-side, walking up together so soberly, like a company of children making a business of play, and then of a sudden wheeling short about and scampering down so full of glee ; they would have supplied joints for your table, and fleeces for your coat, without that exuberant joy. The trout in the stream would subserve the use of man for food just as well if it had been made stiff and shapeless as a stick, instead of springing through the sparkling stream, in the fulness of elastic life ; and the brook itself could have turned a mill-wheel or watered a meadow, if it ran more straight and grave like an artificial canal, instead of winding about at its own sweet will, falling every now-and-then over the rocks, and, like a child, laughing at its own tumble, composing itself to a more decorous deportment, and tripping away among the grass with so many musical murmurs. The clover might have been just as succulent for pasturage, if it had not been half so fair and fragrant as it new is ; and the sky might have served as well for a canopy, if it had been. one cold, melancholy blue instead of an ever-shifting panorama of royal colors, with sun-rising and sun-setting of imperial splendors, and sparkling by night with all the glory of the stars. We begin now to comprehend why, in one of the Psalms, the sun and the moon, the waters and the stars of light, snow and hail, and wind and vapor, hills and trees, heights and depths, are summoned to the act of praising their Maker, for they all are but different expressions of God's exuberant delight.

He who discerns with a well-trained eye what abundance of beauty is in all the works of God, will acknowledge the method by which we may cultivate the art of being happy. Playfulness of spirit is an expression very likely to be misunderstood, because we put an ill sense into good words ; but the true idea denoted by this expression is grand and holy. The life of God is one of delight ; and man, with all his culture and attainments, falls short of his proper nature if he does not reach a positive pleasure. A disposition to find delight in all things is akin to high-toned religion. The beauty which pervades the works of God is but an image of the higher beauty of His moral kingdom, the harmonies and ravishments of that Redemption which reconciles man to a lost felicity. Man reaches the true life of the soul when, emerging from the necessary conditions of penitence, discipline, restraint, his heart plays freely and joyfully in the midst of all that is fair, and generous, and noble, and 3 good. Humor is a gift of nature : it should be controlled and used, not destroyed. It is the oil of the machinery which otherwise would grate and wear. To be thoroughly trained and remain thoroughly natural, like a child, is the rare greatness of a man. He who knows how to enjoy, will find so much pleasure in the simplest and the commonest objects, that he will never feel the need of an artificial stimulus.

One argument against theatrical entertainments is, that they are elaborate imitations of nature. They are called the playy but in fact they are a toil. Of pomps and masquerades Goldsmith has well said that

toiling pleasure sickens into pain,

And e'en while fashion's brightest arts decoy, The heart, distrusting, asks if this be joy ?

There is something incongruous in the idea of playing to fulfil a contract ; of working up the spirits by an artificial process for which one must pay as for services rendered. Play must be simple and natural, and if we paid more attention to those innocent instincts with which Creative Wisdom has endowed us ; if tastes were simpler and pleasures less artificial, and our senses were quicker to catch the beauties which God has created so profusely, there would be far less difficulty than has been imagined in the attempt to reconcile true pleasure and religious obligations.

Home is the proper centre of all innocent delights ; and that man is vastly to be pitied who has any pleasures greater than those which meet him in his own dwelling — that play-ground of the affections. What a t> OF TBI /\e

Exuberant Goodness. /(TJJfl VBHS'l'lt »j

power has she who presides over the aboo5^1&d^«*e**»y V\ \>* of its beautiful tastes, whose office it is to make us good by means of our pleasures ! What profound wisdom, dressed in poetic form, in the advice of old Roger Ascham to Lady Jane Grey, concerning her husband — " Do thou talk with him, ride with him, play with him, be his fairy, his page, his every thing that love and poetry have invented ; but watch him well, sport with his fancies, turn them about like the ringlets on his cheeks, and if he ever meditate on power or ambition, go toss thy baby to his brow, and bring back his thoughts into his heart by the music of thy discourse."

The Puritans — it would be hard to discuss such a subject without lugging them in — have been accused of being unnaturally severe and stern, and implacably hostile to all that was playful and beautiful. Those who make this charge invariably overlook the one main fact of their history. The struggle in which they were engaged, being for the right of personal liberty, they were compelled, by the necessities of their case, to suppress and crucify many an innocent and educated taste, for the very purpose of showing their proud defiance of despotism. When that lubberly fellow, King James, issued his royal commands, requiring Christian men to frequent Bear Gardens on the Sabbath, and obey the "Book of Sports," be not so shallow as to impute it to hypocrisy, when such men drew their faces into extraordinary length and gravity, and with a good will and purpose gave a nasal twang to conventicle hymns ; for their object was, by the boldest contrast, to express their resolute antagonism to tyranny. You would have done the same, even if you, like some of them, had been bred in the best universities, in the finest culture. You would have sacrificed your best tastes, as Jephtha did his own daughter, had it been necessary to defy the enemies of liberty. If despotic power prescribed something else, you too would do as did they — offensive as it was to taste — call your own fair daughters by the uncouth names of Patience, Perseverance, Effectual Calling, and Great Tribulation — your purpose, like theirs, being to show in the face of courts and cavalier frivolity, and royal enactments, that they gave no secondary place to religious liberty. The struggle ended, it was needful that nature should have its way, and reassert its rights. The sun will shine on the snows of winter, and throw its rays into the densest forests. Even so the long suppressed tastes for the playful and beautiful, which belong to our nature, gleam every now-and-then through the rigid severity of Puritan character.

A good part of those feats which were ascribed to witchcraft in Massachusetts can be accounted for without the necessity of imagining any supernatural agency. It would be nothing extraordinary if aged men and women, of uncommon gravity, should complain of the sensation of pins sticking into their flesh, and unaccountable noises rumbling in the chimneys, if boyish spirits were again put under the pressure of a forced and unnatural seriousness. The fountains of nature, repressed in one place, will break out in another. Instead of destroying by violence, or exciting by toilsome stimulants, it is better to guide our impulses into the channels of a more quiet and simple, yet real enjoyment.

When we have recalled what God has given us in excess of all necessity, for the purpose of pleasing us, let us remember that we have taken but the first and lowest step leading up to a vast and glorious subject. If God has done so much for us here on the earth, what will he not do for us hereafter in heaven ? If God is so generous now, what will he be in the world to come ? The eye looks forth upon the streams and meadows and trees, and up to the skies, all so full of beauty, and reports that these material images are employed to describe that better country which is reserved as our eternal home. That heavenly world is not described in the dull lines of didactic prose. All the pleasant things in the universe are made to complete the promise of that ultimate enjoyment Now is it a landscape — green pastures, still waters, the tree of life with leaf and fruit — every image of contentment and delight. Now rises an imperial city — its gates of pearl, its foundations of precious stones, its streets of gold, and all the nations pouring their glory into it. Now is it our Father's house with many mansions ; a festive board, with unmeasured plenty ; with songs of joy, and garlands of gladness upon the head. The true end of existence is "FULNESS OF JOY," and " RIVERS OF PLEASURE" at the right hand of God.

HOME.

For there is a yearly sacrifice there for all the family.

III. Home

Absent, on a certain occasion, from the table of Saul, and knowing that his absence would be noticed and misrepresented by the jealous king, David directed his friend Jonathan to say, when inquiry was made for him, that he had gone down to Bethlehem to a family gathering. " For there is a yearly sacrifice there for all the family."

It would appear from this that there existed in the family of Jesse a time-honored custom of observing a yearly festival, when all the children met in their father's house. Though mention is not made of the fact, we are led to infer that at this time Jesse, the father, was dead ; for it is recorded of him, in a previous chapter, that he went among men for an old man in the days of Saul ; and subsequently, when Saul saw that David's place was empty, and passionately demanded the reason of his absence, Jonathan answered, " David earnestly asked leave of me to go to Bethlehem, and he said — Let me go, I pray thee, for our family hath a sacrifice in the city, and my brother (he saith not his father), he hath commanded me to be there ; and now, if I have found favor in thine eyes, let me get away, I pray thee, and see my brother." 3*

Though their father and mother were in the grave, yet so long-established was this usage of an annual gathering, that the scattered children were summoned by the eldest son to meet at the accustomed time, in the old cottage in which they were born, to celebrate their domestic festival.

Among the many associations connected with the day of Thanksgiving, none are more vivid or delightful than those which are attached to it as a season for gathering together family connections, and drawing closer again the many hearts which the separate interests of life are continually tending to divide. Such occasions exert a most beneficial effect upon the character, and are indeed absolutely necessary to counteract the chilling influences of a frosty world. It is a beautiful coincidence, which, by insensible affinities, from remote generations, has led those with whom this day has been most generally observed, to make the season of joyful Thanksgiving to the common Father of us all the occasion of uniting friends and kindred, quickening every fond association, and kindling every affectionate sympathy.

So it has occurred that the very season of the year which has invariably been consecrated to this observance, has its appropriate influences to deepen the flow of domestic delights. When the earth is decked in its embroidered robes of green and gold — when the trees are decorated with blossoms or richer fruits — when the birds are blithesome, and the air is all balmy and serene — then are we attracted abroad. But when the birds have fled to a warmer clime, and the frost has locked up the streams, and the trees are bare of their foliage, and the harvests are garnered, and the fields are shrouded with the snows

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of winter — then the affections come home for food and shelter, and from the nakedness and cold of the world without, we seek a covert at our own altars, and find our delights in the warm sympathies of domestic life.

" O Winter ! ruler of the inverted year, I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st, And dreaded as thou art.

I crown thee king of intimate delights, Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness, And all other comforts that the lowly roof Of undisturbed retirement ever knew."

In quiet times we drop upon a quiet theme — home and its many blessings — as the occasion of devout thanksgivings to Almighty God. But what shall I say ? When our hearts are full of joy and good-will at the remembrance of home ; when we reflect upon the nature of our enjoyments abroad, and cast them up and find them so few, and then turn home again, and see that its pleasures are countless, it may be thought that we could speak and write of them without ceasing. But it is not so. " Though the feeling of home never wearies, because kind offices, and the thousand little ways in which home attachments are always uttering themselves keep it fresh and full in its course \ yet the feeling itself, and that which feeds it, have a simplicity and unity of character of which little is to be told, though they are always with us." * Like the light and air of Heaven are these domestic influences : so accustomed are we to their daily presence, that we pause not to pronounce upon their vital necessity.