The Cass County Republican. [volume] (Dowagiac, Mich.) 18??-1880, 1858-11-25

THANKsGIvING.-To-day is the day
set aside by the Governor of this State, day
of general thanksgiving-a day for the people of
this State to assemble in their several places of
worship, and make public and grateful acknowl-
edgement of the goodness of Divine Providence,
which has brought us safely through another year
with blessings innumerable" The festival of
Thanksgiving is of New England origin-establish-
ed by those great men who were not ashamed to
ask favors of Divine Providence, and who acre
thankful for them after they had been vouchsafed.
And but little had those sturdy, but sorely tried
Puritans to be thankful for if compare the bles
sings which we enjoy, with those for which those
hardy of TOLL knet at the altar, and returned
heartfelt thanks. 1t was for scanty harvest for
home rude and unadorned, for privileges, the
value of which, we are in position to estimate,
that the Puritan thanked his God. ) His jubilee
was indeed negative one. His heart outpoured
his gratitude, and his lips sent up their jubilant
offering of song and prayer, because his fields had
not been utterly blighted; because Famine had not
done its perfect work. and left in his cabin sole
corse with but one to bury it, because sorrow and
bereavement had not utterly broken his spirit, and
utterly shaken his confidence in Jehova; because
he had not been awakened in the watches of the
still night by the yell of the savage, and had not
the wife of his bosom, and his children dying
around him. But it was not, we must re member
only for earthly favors and for the preservation of
the body, that he publicly worshipped 1t was for
the protection which the Omnpotent had vouch-
safed to his fath-it was because upon these rug
ged shores the wandering witness had not been
wholly cut of, but remained testimony to the
world of the power and kindness of God
Yet, all stated festivals must in time lose some
thing of their significance As the great event
grows dim in the twilight of the ages its consecra
ton becomes less and less aperceptble element of
its observance and it lapses into rigid Journalism
a careless and customary recognition. Wemay,
however, well believe that the hold which Thanks
giving Day has taken of the New England heart,
and, through New England influence, of the ma
tional heart, owes something of its strength to a
perennial recollection of the services of the Pu-
ritans and in this selling and buying besotted age,
to a reverence for the Eternal Right. Upon one
point we may, indeed be reasonably certain
That form ofworship will not to-day be wholly for
gotten, and contains within itself the guaranty of
its own sincerity, which is clearly exhibited in
the home love and tenderness which can never
grow old-in that yearning which so few of us,
thank God. outgrow, for old scenes, for the re-
newal of old influences, for the purity of childhood,
for the eager courage and the indomnitable con-
science of youth-for glimpse, if it be only
glimpse, at the sunrise of life, and at the pure
pleasures Of that hour, which, alas never
return. And, while we kneel to day, to thank God
for the innumerable blessings which he has vouch-
safed to us, in his kindness, let hope that this
Thanksgiving Day may be worthily kept, and that
leisure be not signal for license.