Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1894-12-14
OUR THANKSGIVING SERMON.

OUR THANKSGIVING SERMON.
Though the customary Thanksgiving day
has passed couple of weeks, and the usual
Thanksgiving sermons have been preached, a
Notwithstanding sermon, we opine, is not too
late yet.
We could not see that there was anything out
of the ordinary for which to give thanks. For
genuine blessings we should ever give thanks,
and not set apart particular day.
While we are thankful for those things which
Natures laws, supplemented with our own et-
forts-seed time and harvest, and labor and
test-have been given u.s. and then, cheering
sunlight, and the early and the latter rain
there are many things all around us-things
which could be prevented-for which we are
not thankful, and to say we are would be akin
to blasphemy.
We are thankful that there is a certain de-
gree of peace, strained though it be, throughout
the nation; that the deep rumblings of discon-
tent at the outrages committed in the name OF
Justice and good government, in which brutal
force and despotic practices were too prominent,
have not eliminated in an internecine strife {;
but we are. not thankful that the trend of our
courts is to place greater value upon property,
and give greater protection to it than to human
life. We are not thankful that human life is so
cheap in time of peace; that through the av-
righteousness of corporations, as many lives are
annually lost as were given up in any one OF
many of Our great battles We are not thank
full that men elected to positions of emolu1nent
and trust, upon the most sacred pledges, and
who, as soon as fairly in possession of their
trusts, have violated every pledge, and then, in
spite of their perfdy, see their dupes turn round
and reflect them. We are not thankful that
our laws have been so manipulated that few
men have the power for veal or woe over this
nation. We are not thankful to see the great
BODY of men toll from year to year for bare
subsistence, and the few who never do an hon
est hours labor gathering in the net proceeds of
that toll. We, are not thankful at beholding
protesting Christians grinding their fellow men
in the mill of rackrents and interest gathering.
We are not thankful when we read Of charity
balls and soup.houses, of starvation, and mis-
cry, and woe, and want; of champaign Hastings
and riotous living-the major portion of which
is the direct result of Goddess greed-of mans
inhurnanity to man. We are not thankful that
men who masquerade as gentlemen and humane
men blacklist their fellow men, and thus pre-
vent Them from earning living for themselves
and their little ones. We are not thankful that
these same whited sepulchres are given front
sseat in Our fashionable churches, from which
thew talk glibly of their christian lives, and
thus travesty the life of the Man of Sorrows,
whose disciples they profess to be. We are not
thankful that, though humanitarians have, for
centuries, been preaching the Fatherhood of God
and the brotherhood of man, there is as much
superlative diabolism abroad in the world as
when, eighteen centuries ago, the money power.
of Jerusalem cried out, "Crucify Him cruelty
Him. We are not thankful when we consider
the multiplied and multiplying wrongs in the
land, !, and we enter Our protest to submission to
the avoidable ones to hear the hypocrtical can't,
"Eyen so, Father, for it seemeth good in Thy
sieht.n We are not thankful when the memory
is forced upon us that, in this year of grace
1904, there is as pronounced corruptionist and
denagogue in the presidential chair as ever
brought disaster on any nation. We are not
thankful that, reasoning from the lessons of the
past, the hope of Justice receiving her share of
the fruits of good government without con-
Aict of force does not appear very clear.
These ale some of the things for which we
are not thankful, and cannot be--yea, will not
be such hypocrite as to go to church and go
through the form of rendering thanks to ben
e6cent God that conditions are as they are, for