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i

1

PUBLIC CAUSES TOR GRATITUDE.

1
A '
|
1; j; SERMON
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PREACHED 01*
THANKSGIVING DAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1S47,
i
IN THE WEST CHURCH, BOSTON.
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| By C. A. BARTOL,
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' JUNIOR MINISTER.
PUBLISHED BY THE
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ID est parish, Association.
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BOSTON:
LEONARD C. BOWLES.
1848.
I
PUBLIC CAUSES FOR CRATITUDE

SERMON

PREACHED 0 I*

THANKSGIVING DAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1847,

IN THE WEST CHURCH, BOSTON.

By C. A. BARTOL, 'S

JUNIOR MINISTER.

PUBLISHED BY THE

tlhst $artsl) Associa&knt.

BOSTON :
LEONARD C. BOWLES.
1848.

SERMON.

2 Chronicles xxix. 31. Come near, and bring sacrifices and thank-offeringa
into the house of the Lord.
It is the day of our annual thanksgiving, a day appointed
by our forefathers in a little spot, but becoming widely cele
brated throughout the nation, of which they laid the founda
tions, and were themselves the corner-stone. To-day, with
a singularly unanimous consent, a common consciousness of
obligation, the people of this country, through the great majori
ty of states, have come with reverential gratitude " into the
house of the Lord."
It is a public occasion, a union of civil and religious au
thority in one act ; and I shall therefore dwell on the public
grounds for thankfulness, omitting now the reasons, which we
often in our regular worship consider, respecting God's par
ticular providence to individuals, and the spiritual experience
of the private soul.
Public causes for gratitude, then, is my subject. But this
statement might suggest a doubt in some minds.
Public causes for grateful rejoicing in the spirit of a happy
festival at such a time as this ! the sky of our political
horizon red and lowering with the flame and smoke of an

unhappy, guilty war ; the accursed institution of slavery,
with man's and heaven's frown upon it, striving to stretch out
its already overgrown bulk into new regions of conquest, and,
like the canker-worm, consume the greenness and eat out the
fertility of other soils besides those it has already exhausted ;
and sharp contention on these subjects souring the temper and
sundering the kindly relations of our own citizens, the strug
gles and blows of whose internal alienation send a jar to the
pillars, and bring a strain on the arch, of our own temple of
freedom ; is there not cause rather for mourning, lamentation
and wo, than for glad feasting and jubilant praise ?
I say not that there are no reasons, general and individual,
for humiliation and repentance ; but I say there are great
causes, too, for public gratitude to God, and I propose to dwell
on these, i" will not, whosoever may, turn our Thanksgiving
into a Fast.
And we have certainly, in the first place, a plain cause of
thanksgiving as a people, in the abundance of our harvest.
This was originally the Feast of the harvest, and the harvest,
the fruits of the earth, should always fitly come into our ac
knowledgments and songs, while surely never did a good
Providence make this special occasion of confession and praise
larger or more striking.
In the last and the present season how plentiful the provi
sion for our wants, — so that the superfluity of our bursting
granaries has flowed across the sea, into the regions of barren
ness and famine ; while, amid all the fluctuations arising from
extraordinary distress abroad and embarrassed trade, the vessel
of our prosperity has hardly rocked on the wave, or, while
starvation has taken the sexton's spade, widened graveyards,
and kept the door of the tomb unlocked in other regions,

hardly a single soul among us has pined for bread. Il is al
most as though the conscious earth had travailed here to bring
forth an atonement for her penurious gifts elsewhere.
It is all from God. His hand is in it. He has made " the
grass the mountains crown, and corn in valleys grow." He
has whitened upland and meadow with the waving grain, his
paths have dropped fatness, he has come down like the dew
upon the mown grass, and his smile warmed our fruits into
ripeness. He alone hath carried on the marvellous process, —
miracle it would be but for its constancy, — by which the
" circuit of the waters," steaming up from the ocean for the
early and latter rain, hath been fulfilled, through the cloudy
chariots and subterraneous streams, back to the parent sea, —
and the sun has mixed his beams therewith in the great labo
ratory of Nature, and the dust under our feet has added its
combined agency with a divine chemistry subtler than the
man of science with all his investigation knows, to ma"ke the
seed bloom over the landscape into thirty, sixty, and an hun
dred fold. Thank God for the harvest ! and, by a wise and
just distribution, may it keep off whatever exposure to famish
ing may still exist among the children of men.
But, in addition to this outward productiveness of the sea
son, let us note another cause of thanksgiving, in the inven
tions of the human mind.
Perhaps the most marked phenomenon of our present civili
zation is the wonderful progress that has been made in me
chanical art and physical science, — the improvement of agri
cultural utensils, — the substitution of a narrow pipe, filled
with gaseous vapor, for the weight of a river or waterfall, in the
various branches of manufacturing industry, — the making of
better hands than those of the human body, out of wood, iron,

and steel, to spin a thread, to tooth a card, to make a nail, to
turn a sheet of copper into the smallest tacks, or to seize hold
of red hot bars of metal and wield them with unfailing preci
sion to the purpose for which they are to be wrought, — the
hydrostatic and atmospheric pressure so cunningly applied to
human help and convenience, — the Northern loom that turns
into so cheap a garment the cotton of the South, — " the witty
invention," I confess, beyond all my powers of comprehen
sion and analysis, that weaves with hair-breadth exactness the
many-colored figures of a carpet, inserting a line with each
successive rapid blow, as though matter had grown more in
telligent than the human mind ; the features of a man drawn
with the pencil of the sun's rays ; — the very thoughts of the
heart claiming kindred with the lightnings of heaven to
go with their speed and instantaneously span the widest in
tervals by which friends or commercial negotiators are dis
tanced, and, as they multiply their airy lines, seeming likely
to turn the earth itself, not into a whispering-gallery, but into
the very sensorium of the human brain ; and, to add to these
selected cases the most specifically merciful discovery of all,
the ethereal antidote to pain, the inventive merit of which
unquestionably belongs to one of our fellow-citizens and fel
low-worshippers in this house ;* these things, and such as
these, give ample occasion for festal rejoicing before God.
And one thing I have reserved for separate mention, on
account of the mighty consequences with which it is preg
nant to the human family, the railroad. In this quick agent
of passage between the widely severed sections, especially of
our own country, I see the uniter of interests, the corrector
* Dr. Charles T. Jackson.

of misunderstandings, the healer of old discords and breaches,
and preventer of new ones, the quickener of the circulations of
acquaintance and friendship, and brightener of the chain of
sympathy, the bondsman to liquidate our dislikes, and one
of the faithful endorsers, I trust, of our debts of silver and
gold, the binder in iron hoops of our national Union, the ma
terial priest, in fine, that ties the knot of our mutual good-will
and long wedded prosperity.
The Chinese Junk, making her slow, ponderous way from
a land, that seems stranded some centuries back in the stream
of time, may have ploughed her bulk into the waters of our
harbor, to present an illustration, by visible contrast, of the
vast inventive progress of the human mind, as she clumsily,
by dull orders, turns her prow within hearing of the daily
screams of a hundred locomotives.
I would not minister to our self-complacency, or to mere
speed in our outward motions, or to haste in our flattering
anticipations. There may be reason for foresight and pru
dential guarding against excess, in carrying on these very im
provements. It would be strange if some evils, after all, should
not be developed in connexion with such palpable benefits.
If a determination of the mind to mere outward improve
ment, an over-prizing of worldly success in the rising gene
ration, a worship of Mammon, whose service is " the love of
money," a neglect of private duty, the construction of so
many places of business and halls of merchandize as to leave
no room or time for the closets of meditation and prayer, — if
these incidental consequences should come out of the rapid
striding of our peculiar and distinguishing advantages, there
would be ground for melancholy reflection and repentance,
indeed. The query has already repeatedly suggested itself to

8

my mind, whether there were not too much travelling on the
part of many, who had better be at home, minding their
affairs, conducting their industrial operations, attending to their
wives and children. But these things are but dangers or par
tial drawbacks of a great good. The cause for thanksgiving
is prominent and undeniable.
Nay, have we not forming under our eyes one of the most
conspicuous proofs of this, in the foundations laid solid as the
globe, of a spring of living water, to flow from the heart of
our city, wholesome and refreshing, to the lips of rich and
poor at every extremity of our peninsular home, — a work in
itself indicating the immense advance of the mechanic arts,
by its superiority above those Roman aqueducts, to which our
mayor alluded in his late eloquent and touching address, — its
superiority, I say, by the substitution of a small channel un
der ground, for the cumbrous workmanship of huge cost, in
former times thought necessary. Soon may the law of nature,
that water will rise to its level, receive another illustration, as
the transparent Cochituate, so long pent in from its best use,
shall travel safely mile after mile along the track laid for it,
and bubble up into the firm reservoir, and thence run forth
again in the pure and sparkling waves, that shall be as " a cup
of cold water in the name of a disciple " to millions of thirst
ing men, women and children, in the successive generations
of our growing and heaven-blest town.
All these inventions and improvements, I say, are cause for
gratitude to God. Men are apt to magnify themselves on
account of them, as though their searching thoughts had de
vised, and their strong sinews and supple muscles alone exe
cuted, the plan. But is it not the overruling Wisdom, that
puts the human mind on the scent, and lays open the track

before it ? And as it frequently has happened, in this chase of
useful invention, for a number of minds to be on the point of
making the grand discovery, only one anticipates another by
a little while, must we not religiously believe that God fore
saw, foreordained the whole, and his unseen guidance led
to the disclosure, and fixed the time of the final consumma
tion ? Was the steam-engine, think you, that was to revolu
tionize the world, and build up nations on the banks of inte
rior seas and rivers, made without his Providence ? Was the
relation of lunar eclipses to navigation overlooked in his cre
ation ? or of the cotton plant to the clothing, any more than
of rice and wheat to the feeding, of the human family ? Was
not the magnet, the telegraph, the ether, his gift ? Indeed,
who constituted the adaptations of things in nature making
such results possible ? And who provides the materials suited
to every purpose, without which all created strength is weak
ness, and all human wisdom practical folly ? And who holds
fast in His own strong right hand, the laws of the universe,
the failure' of which would interrupt midway every purpose,
or crush to ruins every accomplishment of our skill ?
There is but one answer, that we can speak or think of, —
God ! Our light is but a spark of his wisdom, — our power
but a drop of his might, — our progress the impulse of his
furtherance, — and our success but the grant of his benedic
tion. Thanks for all to the constant Friend, the Omnipotent
Father !
But there is a nobler progress than all this, a loftier ground
for thanksgiving than has yet been mentioned, in the great
development given in our age to Christian benevolence, to
moral conscience, and philanthropic reform. It can have es
caped the attention of no close observer, that the fraternal
2

10
spirit between man and man has been much quickened, the
spiritual relationship of all to God, and consequent immortal
brotherhood of all with each other, perceived and acknowl
edged more widely, if not more distinctly, than ever before.
True, great and overshadowing evils still exist. But these
evils do not pass unquestioned, as they once did. They are
looked in the face, they are challenged as enemies that have
dared defy the armies of the living God. Their nature is
inspected, their strength is measured, their ramifications are
assaulted, and their germs in the human heart felt for, by
those resolved, with the deepest and most persevering purpose,
God helping, to remove them, root and branch, from the world.
This quickness of the moral sense, this enterprise of the
moral will against all iniquity, private or instituted, spiritual
or embodied, furnishes a reason for profound gratitude to Him,
who is not only the Giver of every good and perfect gift, but
the holy Inspirer, also, of the human soul. War and slavery
still somewhat maintain their ground. They are not driven
clean out of the earth, and some are so excited by their exist
ence and mischiefs, as not only to oppose them, but to do it
with the contracted force of an indignant conscience, which
can hardly see any other evil or recognize any good. The
purpose and direction, even of such, I honor, though they
appear to me sometimes in danger of overstepping the lines of
wisdom, piety, and truth.
There is no reason for this excess, but, like Paul before
Festus, for speaking forth " the words of truth and sober
ness," — the only words God can own and bless. Nay, there
is reason for grateful acknowledgment and solemn blessing
to Almighty God, that large and increasing numbers in the
community are so alive and sensitive to the wrongs and woes
of their fellow-creatures.

11

There is no such contented sleeping over American slavery,
as there was over Greek slavery, and over Roman slavery. It
would be hard, I think, to find such admissions and declara
tions in any speech ever made in the " eternal city," or in
Athens, " the eye of Greece," as were recently made by a dis
tinguished statesman, inhabitant of a slave state, and himself
a slave-holder, respecting slavery itself.
Nor do I know of any modern book, or any respectable pub
lication, containing such eulogies on war, as I lately read in a
volume of Cicero, — the greatest of classic authors, — eulogies
placing the talent for destroying enemies, in the fore front and
first class of honorable abilities, deserving titles, and glorious
accomplishments. Now, mere necessity and national defence
are the only pleas for fighting, which, justly or unjustly, con
sistently or inconsistently in any case, men presume to main
tain, and the warrior is constrained, by a moral law, to spare
the wanton effusion, once so freely made, of human blood.
His sword bends in sign of deference to the sense of mercy
in the human breast.
Who does not feel, in short, that war and slavery have been
arraigned as criminals at the bar of the human mind, at the
bar of God and Jesus Christ, let me say, in the human mind,
and been convicted and sentenced there, only waiting now to
have their doom carried into effect, whatever temporary reasons
of state may be pleaded in any particular case for a delay of
execution. That delay can never amount to a reprieve or par
don to the sin, though, sin destroyed, God's mercy and salva
tion we may hope will reach every sinner, every one who
repents and prays and turns.
Everywhere are indications of the gain made by the bene
volent sentiment. The poor, the prisoner, the blind, and lame,

12

and dumb, the stranger, the insane, — I have only to mention
the words, to convince you by the associations instantly rising in
your own minds, that Christian goodness is warm and rife and
active now, and that this cheering fact is a cause for cordial and
united thanksgiving to Him, of whom Jesus said, in a rapture of
devout thought, " T%ereisnone good but One, that is God."
I will set forth but one more, and that, perhaps, the highest
cause for thanksgiving, — I mean the present tendency among
Christians of various names, to a more harmonious understand
ing and exposition of religious truth.
Truth, sanctifying truth, is the hope of the world. It is the
basis of all real advancement of individual character and social
well-being. Apprehended by faith, and resting in the deep
convictions of the soul, it is the source and inspiration of all
the noble sentiments even, of which human nature is capable.
Piety and philanthropy are but the twin streams, that can flow,
clear and refined, from no other fountain than God's truth.
Error diverts and pollutes them ; doubt is the barren sand that
swallows them up. The perception of this holy truth of God
has, in time past, been much obscured by the antagonism of
many creeds, by the wrestling with each other and mutual ex
communications of the several sects. It is a blessed sign, when
we see this sectarian strife, notwithstanding some new divi
sions, (and a multitude of true and free divisions of opinion
breaks monotony and produces harmony,) on the whole decided
ly moderating ; the disposition to assail each other's error giving
place to a willingness to recognize each other's truth, in the
lull of the whirlwind of contention the soft breezes of charity
arising to fan us, and common agreement attracting more atten
tion than special difference. And the diverse denominations thus
approximate to each other, because they all gravitate towards

13
the central substance of the Gospel. Some in our times
have gone over into historical scepticism, rejection of the
miraculous accounts in the New Testament. But they have
been like the car, unhitched to slide down the precipice, while
the rest of the train moves back united into the ways of safety.
Among the great body of believers, supernatural faith was never
more prevailing, intelligent, and invincible than now. What
are called the Liberal Christians have begun to retire, as by
common consent, and almost in a body, from some dangerous
extremes to which they were approaching ; and what are
called the Orthodox have shifted their ground from the old
untenable form of many dogmas, to meet this countermarch
of their long separated brethren. This may be denied by
some persons, but one, who has never identified himself with
either party, may be permitted, in the pulpit of an indepen
dent Christian church, independent always, to state now a
fact which the philosophical historian will hereafter impar
tially narrate. The doctrines of total depravity, irresistible
decrees, unconditional election, infant damnation, (pardon is
almost needed for uttering that phrase,) everlasting torments,
with all their affiliated conclusions, are very much withdrawn
on the one side, while those of hereditary bias, inward re
generation, the atonement, and the influence of the Holy Spirit,
are more positively accepted and earnestly maintained on the
other. The rationalist himself cries out for " conversion," and
the companion of the revivalist for " Christian nurture." Let
the words of the creed or confession of faith stand as they may,
Christ is neither called "very God" so much on the one hand,
nor regarded simply as a man so much on the other. The
Trinitarian looks upon him more in his subordinate relation to
the Father, aud the Unitarian less in his separateness from,

14

and more in his oneness with God. The Universalist preaches
retribution reaching beyond the grave, — and his opponent,
pausing before the dim veil which Scripture itself hangs over
the particular discipline of the future state, is not so swift or
stout to maintain that it will be infinite, unmitigated, and end
less. A sense of the superior and alone essential importance
of Christian principle has even lodged itself in the heart, and
is spreading through the church that stands most strongly
upon outward forms. And throughout the Protestant world at
least, wherever priest, bishop, or teacher is persuaded to take
a single step on the line of spiritual and evangelical truth, the
people instantly follow, if, indeed, in his laggard slackness,
they do not, most of them, march before him.
There begins at length to be a real revelation indeed, of the
unity of Christ's body. The parted garments, for which the sol
diers cast lots, seem coming back in the restoration of his reunited
doctrines of love. The process is not complete. The dissolving
of the old partial and fragmentary schemes of belief is going
on, and furnishing ever more elements to recombine into the
glorious whole. I see, in vision, a new theology, built more
closely on the realities of Scripture and the human heart, em
bracing within its frame the best and strongest minds from
every existing belief, to stand as a tower of refuge, a fort of
defence, and a magazine of formidable and resistless weapons
against all the citadels, erected, or that may be erected, of error
and unbelief. It is a theology, which shall be the intellectual
body of the very soul of religion. I behold a divine wisdom,
which has yet lain nowhere without a shade, save in the mind
and speech of the Master, — coming forth incarnate and com
plete in the band of his disciples. I discern them moving
through remaining mists of misunderstanding, across a narrow

15
strip of cloud-land, towards the spiritual Canaan flowing
with milk and honey to the soul, where all sincere believers
shall feel that they belong to one Christian Commonwealth
on earth, and are bound to one immeasurable inheritance in
heaven. And no sect or leader of a sect, no church or com
bination of churches, can resist this movement, borne on, as it
is, by the same hand that turns the earth on its axis.
But it is not the spiritual rest, or glad harmony, or even immor
tal prospect of this reunion, that chiefly affects my mind. It is
rather the power which Christ's followers will have, through
their consent of faith and spirit, to move and save their fellow-
men. For this Jesus came, and to this all believers are the
living means. The end is the uplifting and redemption of
the world. Christianity gives the position outside the world,
from whence this end is to be reached. The famous problem
of Archimedes, — Give me a place to stand, and I will move the
world, is to be solved by the application of the Gospel. That
is the lever ; the spiritual world, from which it came, is the
stand-point. Christ, under God, handles the mighty, irrefra
gable instrument ; but all his disciples lay hold with him.
And when they fairly unite in their convictions and corres
pondent exertions, the world, the old, heavy, sunken world,
will start from its ancient seat of sin, — it will be aroused from
the evil customs in which it has been so long imbedded, and,
leaving its shame behind it, spring along the track of purity
and everlasting life. War and slavery themselves, being but
the shadows cast by moral evil in the heart, the foliage put
forth by poisonous roots there, will vanish before the spread
of regenerating truth, and leave the soul for a seed-plot to that
" Sower " who " went forth to sow." Is not every preliminary
and approach, such as I have noted in the points of Christian

16

union, towards the grand result, to be hailed with fervent,
cordial, united thanksgiving to God ?
Here I close, not at the end of my subject, but with the
introduction of that important subject to your thoughts.
" Bring sacrifices and thank-offerings," not words alone of
supplication or song ; but, like the congregation of Israel,
substantial gifts ; not, as in the old dispensation, of birds and
bullocks, of cakes and wafers, to the altar; — but let your
offering be labor of life and heart for God's truth. Let your
sacrifice be se£/-sacrifice. Let your unleavened bread be sin
cerity, and the blood you devote as a token, be your own
heart's blood shown, while you live, in the overflowing of
love to God and man. This will be the thanksgiving of
every day alike, effectual, accepted.