The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-11-30
IMPORTANT EVENTS OF THE YEAR.

Thanksgiving Sermon by Rev. r. A. sco-
 i'd at the First NJ. E. Church. he
 Voices of Plymouth R ick and tho Puri-
 tan Fathors-Our Splendid Country-fho
 Great Moral Needs of the Times.
 A union Thanksgiving service of Methodist churches was held yesterday morning at the First M. E. church. A good-sized audience was present and listened to an excellent discourse which was delivered by Rev. F. A. Scoheld of Grace M. D. church. Several of the Methodist clergy were present and as- sisted in the services. Excellent music was rendered by the choir. Rev. MT. Scofield's text and the leading features of the discourse are as follows:
 Proverbs 14: B. Righteousness exalteth n nation, but sin Is reproach to any people.
 It may be interesting for us at the beginning to notice few of the impor- tant events of the year, both at home and abroad. In several respects the year has been unlike any preceding one of our history as a nation. We have been passing through period of ex- ceedingly hard times, there has been a continued stringency in the money market, and no one knows through what a struggle many of our business men have passed.
 During the year the country has wit messed great strikes among the em- ployed, railroads have been tied up for weeks at time. and many manufact- urers were unable to continue. The most serious consequences were feared, and at one time 1t seemed as If an in- ternec.ne war was about to break out; in fact, we have seen the United States troops called out to protect property preserve peace and enforce law.
 We have seen great army of the un- employed-mostly paupers--marching to our national capital without an avowed purpose and many of them en- tirely ignorant of what they were going for.
 We have seen long and tedious ses- sion of our congress, apparently ineffi- cient and unable to cope with the great questions at issue; the world has been startled by the discovery of raEkest corruption among officials in high places, and the cheeks of the nation have tingled with shame as these inves- tigations have gone forward.
 The various commodities of life have been cheapened, so that living expenses have been lower than at any time since before the war, and possibly lower than ever before. Yet withal the past year has given us a magnificent harvest. and never was the harvest moon so large and round and full as this year.
 The church of God has gone grandly forward. both at home and abroad, and many spiritual victories have been won.
 If we glance abroad we see that dur ing the year some great event has come to almost every nation.
 Old mother England has witnessed the retirement of her great statesman and minister Gladstone, perhaps the greatest in the world; France sits with bowed head in mourning for her as- sassinated president, Carnot; Germany has appointed new chancellor in place of the successor of Bismarck, while the great ex-chancellor to-day, in sadness, lives on. We have just witnessed the death of the czar of all the Russias and the crowning of Nicholas the II. with his newly-wed bride, while for the past few months bloody war has waged between the two great nations of the orient.
 Such in brief is the picture of our own and foreign lands
 In the preparation of an address for an occasion like this it is more of a question what to leave out that it is what to put in. It would be interesting to speak of the reformatory movements now going on in our own city, but other and abler men, understanding more perfectly the situation are at this very hour speaking of these things in other places, and their addresses will undoubtedly be published
 It would also be of interest to the young to run back along the lines of our national history and progress, and to listen to the voices of Plymouth Rock and the Puritan fathers.
 We may pause long enough to call your attention to the greatness of the noble men who laid broad and deep the foundations of this republic. They were neither slaves nor savages. AS matter of fact almost every other na- tion, in tracing back their ancestry, will find, if they go far enough, that they were either slaves or savages. Ours never They rank among the great men of their times, and the Declaration of American Independence is the perma- nent evidence of the quality of the men of that day. y
 Our splendid country with it's three and one half million square miles, or nineteen million acres of territory, cap- able of maintaining a population of a thousand millions; with its magnificent scenery from the Atlantic coast past the great lakes, across the broad prairies, over the Rockies to the Golden Gate; with its almost unlimited re- sources of farm, and factory and mine; with its many inventions, frightening labor, and increasing the facilities of travel; with it's asylums, reforTnatories and hospitals; the results of the highest Christian civilization; with its churches, schools, academies and colleges; it's great newspapers, periodicals and grow ing literature, might well claim our at- tentaon and call forth our gratitude at this time. - s-,-l :