And for this present day appointed for Thanksgiving, we may say that if we know of so many wrongs, woes, and errors in the world yet unredressed; if in this nation recent decisions have shown a want of moral discrimination in important subjects, that make us pause and doubt whether we can join in the formal congratulations that we are still bodily alive, unassailed by the ruder modes of warfare, and enriched with the fatness of the land; yet, on the other side, we know of causes not so loudly proclaimed why we should give thanks. Abundantly and humbly we must render them for the movement, now sensible in the heart of the civilized world, although it has not pervaded the entire frame—for that movement of contrition and love which forbids men of earnest thought to eat, drink, or be merry while other men are steeped in ignorance, corruption, and woe; which calls the king from his throne of gold, and the poet from his throne of mind, to lie with the beggar in the kennel, or raise him from it; which says to the poet, "You must reform rather than create a world," and to him of the golden crown, "You cannot long remain a king unless you are also a man."
Wherever this impulse of social or political reform darts up its rill through the crusts of selfishness, scoff and dread also arise, and hang like a heavy mist above it. But the voice of the rill penetrates far enough for those who have ears to hear. And sometimes it is the case that "those who came to scoff remain to pray." In two articles of reviews, one foreign and one domestic, which have come under our eye within the last fortnight, the writers who began by jeering at the visionaries, seemed, as they wrote, to be touched by a sense that without a high and pure faith none can have the only true vision of the intention of God as to the destiny of man.
We recognized as a happy omen that there is cause for thanksgiving, and that our people may be better than they seem, the recent meeting to organize an association for the benefit of prisoners. We are not, then, wholly Pharisees. We shall not ask the blessing of this day in the mood of, "Lord, I thank thee that I, and my son, and my brother, are not as other men are,—not as those publicans imprisoned there," while the still small voice cannot make us hear its evidence that, but for instruction, example, and the "preventing God," every sin that can be named might riot in our hearts. The prisoner, too, may become a man. Neither his open nor our secret fault must utterly dismay us. We will treat him as if he had a soul. We will not dare to hunt him into a beast of prey, or trample him into a serpent. We will give him some crumbs from the table which grace from above and parental love below have spread for us, and perhaps he will recover from these ghastly ulcers that deform him now.
We were much pleased with the spirit of the meeting for the benefit of prisoners, to which we have just alluded. It was simple, business-like, in a serious, affectionate temper. The speakers did not make phrases or compliments—did not slur over the truth. The audience showed a ready vibration to the touch of just and tender feeling. The time was evidently ripe for this movement. We doubt not that many now darkened souls will give thanks for the ray of light that will have been let in by this time next year. It is but a grain of mustard seed, but the promised tree will grow swiftly if tended in a pure spirit; and the influence of good measures in any one place will be immediate in this province, as has been the case with every attempt in behalf of another sorrowing class, the insane.
While reading a notice of a successful attempt to have musical performances carried through in concert by the insane at Rouen, we were forcibly reminded of a similar performance we heard a few weeks ago at Sing Sing. There the female prisoners joined in singing a hymn, or rather choral, which describes the last thoughts of a spirit about to be enfranchised from the body; each stanza of which ends with the words, "All is well;" and they sang it—those suffering, degraded children of society—with as gentle and resigned an expression as if they were sure of going to sleep in the arms of a pure mother. The good spirit that dwelt in the music made them its own. And shall not the good spirit of religious sympathy make them its own also, and more permanently? We shall see. Should the morally insane, by wise and gentle care, be won back to health, as the wretched bedlamites have been, will not the angels themselves give thanks? And will any man dare take the risk of opposing plans that afford even a chance of such a result?
Apart also from good that is public and many-voiced, does not each of us know, in private experience, much to be thankful for? Not only the innocent and daily pleasures that we have prized according to our wisdom; of the sun and starry skies, the fields of green, or snow scarcely less beautiful, the loaf eaten with an appetite, the glow of labor, the gentle signs of common affection; but have not some, have not many of us, cause to be thankful for enfranchisement from error or infatuation; a growth in knowledge of outward things, and instruction within the soul from a higher source. Have we not acquired a sense of more refined enjoyments; clear convictions; sometimes a serenity in which, as in the first days of June, all things grow, and the blossom gives place to fruit? Have we not been weaned from what was unfit for us, or unworthy our care? and have not those ties been drawn more close, and are not those objects seen more distinctly, which shall forever be worthy the purest desires of our souls? Have we learned to do any thing, the humblest, in the service and by the spirit of the power which meaneth all things well? If so, we may give thanks, and, perhaps, venture to offer our solicitations in behalf of those as yet less favored by circumstances. When even a few shall dare do so with the whole heart—for only a pure heart, can "avail much" in such prayers—then ALL shall soon be well.
CHRISTMAS.
OUR festivals come rather too near together, since we have so few of them; thanksgiving, Christmas, new year's day,—and then none again till July. We know not but these four, with the addition of "a day set apart for fasting and prayer," might answer the purposes of rest and edification, as well as a calendar full of saints' days, if they were observed in a better spirit. But thanksgiving is devoted to good dinners; Christmas and new year's days, to making presents and compliments; fast day, to playing at cricket and other games; and the fourth of July, to boasting of the past, rather than to plans how to deserve its benefits and secure its fruits.
We value means of marking time by appointed days, because man, on one side of his nature so ardent and aspiring, is on the other so slippery and indolent a being, that he needs incessant admonitions to redeem the time. Time flows on steadily, whether he regards it or not; yet unless he keep time, there is no music in that flow. The sands drop with inevitable speed, yet each waits long enough to receive, if it be ready, the intellectual touch that should turn it to a sand of gold.
Time, says the Grecian fable, is the parent of Power; Power is the father of Genius and Wisdom; Time, then, is grandfather of the noblest of the human family, and we must respect the aged sire whom we see on the frontispiece of the almanacs, and believe his scythe was meant to mow down harvests ripened for an immortal use.