Morning journal and courier., 1891-09-28
HARVEST FESTIVAL.


 pr1ately Commemorated at Christ Church-An Able Discourse by Rev. G. Brinley Morgan.
 The annual harvest festival at Christ | church, Broadway, was celebrated yester- l day in an appropriate manner. The edifice l was beautifully and becomingly decorated with flowers and fruits. Large eongrega- tions were present at all the services. At the morning service the rector preached an able discourse on tsThankfulness to God" His text was Colossians i:12. He said as follows:
 Among all those noble qualities which enriched the heart as well as the mind of St. Paul, none is more pervading and none more quiet and unobserved than the active thankfulness and gratitude and thanksgiving into which his words of counsel, of instruction, even of sorrow break out. It seems as if an element of thankfulness enclosed like an atmosphere, all else that he thought and felt. Even indignation and regret, much more en- couragement seem to be floating, as it were, within 8 thankful air. Other things he feels intensely but there is a limit to them. They reach certain dis
  They pour down upon certain evils and certain weaknesses, but beyond all, out running all, embracing all, limitless until it breaks in joyful waves around the foot of the throne of God, there is the ever rolling sea of his thankfulness.
 Take St. Paul's letters. Turn them over, glance at few lines of each and though the topics are wide and numerous, though some are written to churches
 
 worthy in themselves and others to those which had failed to rise to full sense of their responsibilities yet almost every one before it comes to the subject matter of the occasion breaks out in it's thanks giving hymn.
 To the Christians of Rome he begins: First, thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all; to the men of Corinth, I thank my God always on your behalf; of Ephesus, cease not to give thanks for you; of Philippe, thank my God for every re- msmbrance of you; to the Church of Colossae, we give thanks to God and the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you The first time he writes to the Thessalonians: We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, and the second time, we are bound to thank God always for you as it is meet. And who cannot recall the burst of thankfulness to his best beloved and most affectionate love in the faith: 1T thank God whom serve from my fore fathers with pure conscience, that with out teasing have remembrance of you in my prayers, day and night.
 The truth is implied in all these pass ages from St. Paul's epistles that there is scarcely anything to be more thankful for than the possession or the attainment of a thankful spirit. It cannot be very con- mon in the world. One hears so much of | ingratitude, of benefits forgotten, of long kindness repaid with coldness and neglect that the ordinary commonplaces of l such talk are sufficient evidence that thankful spirit is very usual pos session. But when it is possessed there is 1 more happiness. A man has found 6 regards as blessing given by an Almighty Father. The gift calls out his gratitude and he is very happy over it. Let mar thus learn to feel gratitude for the com honest blessings of life, and nothing happens so small in the way of comfort o1 l pleasure but that it kindles this thankful feeling, which is the very key and talis man of happiness. The man lives in tht constant and ever deepening conviction, al life goes on, that God is good to him. H, traces the evidences of his fatherly care ant sees how his mercy has followed him al his life long. He prays, give us this day our daily bread, with an ever deepening realization of his entire dependence ol God as the source from whom all blessing
 flow. He cannot help being thankful. HI
 sees how his hand has given all that h. has received. His heart is like never fail ing spring which the cold of winter can not freeze or the summer sun dry up. I is kept warm by the ever fresh glow O
 thankfulness for new blessings which dro] into mans daily life. And somehow hi
 happiness will run over, it cannot be kep
 to itself; it is like some old melody witt
 which the heart keeps music for while
 ever and anon it will escape the lips. I
 cannot be pent up. It flows out into othe
 lives. It thaws the hearts of other men
 The face of really thankful man is to tn
 hearts of those around as the air int
 lungs. But beyond all this there is
 witness in this mans life that God him
 self rejoices in his being happy. There i
 the warm consciousness of the father
 love. There is the feeling that his fathe
 is employing his happiness as 8 means o ! making him better. It draws him close
 studies nothing so much as to make u
 better and to draw us nigh to him is sur
 to draw the thankful in this way, givin
 them ever fresh occasions for thankful
 ness, ever fresh happiness that they ma
 come nearer and nearer to him. Just a those who will only go to him in sorrow
 who forget him in joy and only retur
 when they are in trouble, will assuredl find trouble upon trouble, sorrow upo sorrow coming to them because God ha
 no other end for any one of us than thi
 that whether through joy or whethe
 through grief we may at last be his and h , will give us in his providence just thos endless complications of event and circun stance which best suit our character.
 l But let us take the few words of our tex propriateness of the word father in thi case. Giving thanks to the father. Tn ], permanent sense of thankfulness to
 father is different from that which we ca feel to another, and any approach to ths , we describe by the strongest term we ca
 use by calling it fatherly kindness. Any J one who has experienced this in his you'll , who knows the evils from which it ker him, the confidence with which h could confess sins to him, the assuranc
 that nothing which concerned him woul knows how the heart of that father wa 7 over opened toward him and how he he turned back in thankfulness for unlocked for, unexpected gifts and arrangements find that the father had never once imae ined that he was doing anything but whs , came quite naturally to do-such or knows what is meant by giving thanks the father. He thanks him not alone fc some great blessing which marked cris in his life, but for the commo blessings of every day-for food, fc
 drink, for raiment, for shelter. Yet ho disconnected the religion of most men from any thought of thankfulness fe :, these great and good gifts. We take the1 quite as matters of course until we al
 hungry and thirsty and naked and hom less. Then we pray to God to give I : these things with zest unknown befor, This prevalent feeling receives a practic
 illustration in a service like this whic
 brings us together to-day. In how man
 minds does there not seem a certai - incongruity in introducing into tn
 church in connection with 8 public servit F. the sound fruits of the grounds I ca
 suppose some person here quite amused i f secret at the introduction into this churc V of such common things as squashes al
 tomatoes and corn. And whya Becau o it seems to him ludicrous thing in col ,. nection with religion-because thankfu l. ness for such a common blessing as foe a is not interwoven- with his religion ar
 forms no part of it. If it did it wou n seem to him most natural and appropria to connect in this way the gathering of u ' harvest with an act of public worship, ar
 thus to have placed wildly before the @, ! oE Id s,,