The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-12-01
THANKSGIVING.
What Our People
Have To Be Crate
full For.
REV. E. NJ. CHAPMAN TELLS.
Dignity and Response
bilities of Individ-
uals.
REV. E. NJ. CHAPMAN TELLS.

casion Of the sort, gathered yesterday
morning to listen to the special union
Thanksgiving service. Members of the
congregations of Union, Central, Park,
Summer Street, First Universalist
churches, Church of the Covenant and
Church of the Unity, attended.
Much credit is due Rev. DR.. John e.
futile and Henry Dixie Sleeper, pastor
and organist of Union church, who
looked after the details of the service.
The music proved an especially strong
feature. Rev. DR.. Almon Gunnisor
closed the service.
Rev. E. NJ Chapman, who is to end
his duties as associate pastor of Cen
trail church in the near future,
preached the sermon, taking for his
subject, 1.-The way of greatness.
"But whosoever would become great
among you shall be your minister; ana
whosoever would be first among you
shall be servant of all.
I am fully aware of the multitude Of
matters that, as this year Of prosperity IN
the extreme old age Of this century OF
progress draws to its close, Glamour for
grateful recognition. l would not Tor
moment forget them or ignore their inn
mediate claims We should be ungrateful
-miserably and contemptibly ungrateful-
if we were not humbly glad today for the
vast sum of material advantage that mas
come to us as a people, and to not lew
among us as individuals, within twelve
month. There probably never has been
year since men began to labor when the
average mans honest toll brought MN
more adequate return. first in the things
that make life possible, then in the Things
that make it tolerable, and finally in the
things that make it comfortable, than this
year of grace 1899 Our thanksgiving Tor
all this will be very hypocritical and I'M
worthy, however, if it lead us to forget
the great number of homes Whsre refer
ences to goodStimes come with kind OF
irony, as men shake their anxious heads
and say: I'VE have not seen them: for
the prosperity of the average man by no
means connotes the prosperity OF every
man. Still. the fact remains that in the
way of supplying the needs of the world
by the toll of head and hand we are doing
more than we ever did before. We are
reaping larger advantage from 1t. Our
ships are thick along our coasts and on
our inland waterways, bustling from port
to port upon our errands. Innumerable
ships that are not ours are plough1ng
every sea. laden with our merchandise.
Monuments-some of them great and en-
during monuments-to our industrial eff
cheney and ability to master intracttble
circumstances, rise in far distant lands
Inc very river OIL Egypt pays lOLldS6 "
our prowess as she receives the waters Of
great tributary which have passed under
yoke of American iron.
While the ancient east waking from the
slumber of immenorial years, knowing
that a new day has dawned through which
she cannot sleep, yet puzzled and well
nigh distraught as she contemplates the
inadequacy of her old equipment to the
new industrial demands, is stretching out
her helpless hands for the tools that our
mines and mills produce, and is submit
ting tradition and prejudice in at least
some measure to the influence of our prac-
thanksgiving If you be wise man. And
if you be a fool, as abundant cause for
Boosting as any fool need ask.
Further than this We have demon
strated our ability, although we common
" think of ourselves as a peaceful people,
to raise a great army without any APP
proach to CONSUMPTION, to equip that army
for foreign service, to send 1t to the far
Their side of the world and to make 1t eff
fective there under conditions Tor WRlcn
two years ago we were totally unprepared
because we had never considered them as
possible. And we have done all this with
of the great body of the people sufficiently
heavy to make them really conscious OF
it. OF course, we have differed among
ourselves as to the wisdom of this. There
has~been some high and purposeful de-
bate upon it, and a great deal of very
small and petty scolding. But upon the
whole there has been considerable evil
dence that the mass of our people were
honestly DESTROYS of seeing to their duty
in the matter, and of doing 1t, whether 1t
cost them dollars or cost them pride,
have no especial charter to speak for the
mass of the people, but | know that in
what l have Just said l voice the convic-
ton and purpose of great multitude
among them; and such conviction and
purpose are subjects for thanksgiving.
We have come recently to a position of
flaa
the earth. Not that we had been ignored
before. But in the larger affairs of the
world it has been understood that we pre-
ferred not to be reckoned with too def
nitely. For better, for worse, that is
thing of the past. The veriest braggart
ought to be content today with the place
that American opinion and American pur-
poses hold in the counses of the nations.
There probably never was a year before
in which so many people thought about
us; in which so many people hated us-in
some cases with perfect hatred. hope
there was never year before IN which so
many people loved us. All this may be
subject for thanksgiving. For both love
and hate are likely to prove incidents of
greatness. A large place in the public eye
is too often a concomitant of greatness.
But greatness inheres In none of these
things. The greatness of a man is quite
removed from the recognition which the
many people in Worcester today, for in
stance, know who Jeffries Wyman was?
Who on the contrary dare deny that he
was worthy of Lowell s fine sonnet, begin
ming:
THE wisest man could ask no more of fate
Than to be simple, modest, manly, true,
Safe from the many, honored by the few
To count as naught In world, or church, or
state,
But inwardly, in secret, to be great"
That was one of the truths that Jesus
was always emphasizing in the realm of
the individual and corporate life. BY pre-
cept and example ne was ever telling men
that service was the true measure of their
life's worth, and that the favor or dis
favor of men was but an incident, and by
no means an especially significant incl
dent. The real life-stuff that was TO make
q man a power while he wrought with his
fellows and after his earthly course had
been finished could be expressed only in
terms of usefulness.
In rather faint and h1lf-hearted man.
ner We are beginning to recognize the
truth of all this in the sphere of the indi-
vidual life. But still we hesitate to admit
That seems so impersonal. 1t is so pro-
verbally constituencies. A noun of null
titude need not, of course, have an i'm
moral significance, but We rather like to
moral; and If the thing for which it
stands one day prove to have a soul capa-
BILE of high things, we wonder at II as
though II were some special act and mani
festation of unaccustomed grace. How
quick we are to scan the census returns
for instance, to see by how many hun
dreds or thousands the population of a
city has been AUGMENTED in a decade? BUT
I 81 REH a. a