Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1857-01-03

THANKSGIVING.

The manner of lis observance is a striking COM
ment on the changes of time; and the stern and
austere old Puritans would shake in their graves
if they could see the fr0licirgs, feastings, junket-
ings, and such carnal amusements as dancing, that
have taken the place of the solemnities that mark
ed the earlier Thanksgiving Days. Sill some
show OF the old formalities is kept up. Not uni
versally, though by many, the chief observance is
OF 0 religious character; and in some instances of
a wo,fold character, the church bells playing their
part during the day, and the bellies that 90 to the
church, playing a more brilliant part during the
night, by way of etiquette called the EVENING"
from the pulpits there are customary
upon our Pilgrim Fathers, while in the
evening the Pilgrim Daughters outrage that Puri-
tan sense of ~propriety that condemned the vanity
OF stepping to the measures Ct music.
The change in the manner Of observing the
Thanksgiving Day, indicates a great change in
the times. Now the day is one of hilarity and
amusement. Holmes song to the punch bawl, is
as popular a Thanksgiving literature as the SOL
emn and sublime hymn of Mrs. Hemans. The
question then arises whether we have refrigerated
or advanced; whether our present New England
society is any improvement on that of two hun
dred years ago? We think it is, at the risk of be-
ing deemed sacrilegious VIC will say why. One
who opposes the prejudices of education. and the
inwrought beliefs of boyhood. has, as the seamen
say, the laboring oar; yet our tenderness for our
ancestors is such that, if we charge them with glar-
log faults, we care but little whether we make out
our case.
The familiar and beautiful hymn to which we
have alluded, impresses upon those who look to its
poetry rather than to its truthfulness, the same
idea that is carried out in almost the whole of our
local literature, an idea of perils and hardships
endured for the cause of free thought and free re-
ligioD.
"The breaking waves dashed high,
On a stern and rock-bound coast,
And the trees against q stormy sky.
Their giant branches tossed"
Hardship, peril, and a savage country, were to
be endured-and for what object2
"What sought they thus ATARI
Bright jewels of the mine,
The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?
They sought a faiths pure shrine"
This is all very pretty as poetry, but wide of tn,
mark as fact. If our forefathers had experienced
persecution in the old world, we are sorry to say
that they did not learn liberation by it; if, then,
their opinions had not been allowed scope and ex-
pre- ,sion, it is to be regretted that they were never
famous for granting the right of religious opinion
to others. The freedom to worship God" which
they sought, they were willing TO allow others, al
ways provided, others worshipped in precisely
their form, and believed as they believed; and when
they did not, the truths of their creed were en-
forced by Punishment, the stocks, ear-cropping
and such like persuasives. The faiths pure
shrine" they sought, was the very exclusive shrine
of a very exclusive faith. Stern and austere
men were the Puritans; yet not wholly
bent on establishing religious rights. Mr..
Lorenzo Sabine, in his report on the American
Fisheries, gives us to understand that 'the wealth
of the seas" was an important consideration with
our pious forefathers. Trade, prosperity and
wealth certainly came next in consideration to the
religious objects of the Puritan exodus, and fish
and W. were not forgotten in fasting and fervor.
1t Would not be esteemed reverential to elabo-
rate upon the shortcomings of the Puritans,-
how in 1861, all Baptists were a~djudged to be a
public nuisance, how the President of time-bon-
ored Harvard was dismissed foT a religious opin-
ion;-how the Quakers were persecuted,--how the
Rev. Cotton Mather taught that Indians had nc
souls, and how the Indians wero cheated and Kill
led. All these things we o~nly.daIe hint at, remem
bering the benefits our fOrefathers did bequeath to
US, our system of popular education, our respect
for religion, our morality, intelligence, and oil that
under various forms. of which Puritanism was the
germ goes to constitute New England society at
it is in our day.
Let us then proceed with the observance of oul
Thanksgiving Day, with all due reverence for
those stern, ~austere, 1--WE will not add illiberal and
%bigotedr) peaked-hatted, rough-5earded old Puri
fans, cherishing what they have left to us that has
terminated into good, and thankful that a more
liberal policy, a larger tolerance Of opinion, has
grown up on the foundation laid in 1920.