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Thursday, November 24, 2016

A Gettysburg Thanksgiving

Four score and seven years ago plus another three-hundred eight, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new holiday: conceived in humble gratitude, and dedicated to the conviction that all ‘good and perfect gifts come down from the Father’ in heaven.
Now we are engaged in a great culture war, testing whether that holiday, or any holiday so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.  We are met on a great social network of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that harvest-time as a day for feasting, celebrating, and giving thanks by those who here have tasted the bountiful blessings of Divine Providence that that holiday might live.  It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, most Americans observing this holiday cannot dedicate, they cannot consecrate, they cannot hallow this feast.  The holy men and women of God whose hearts are merry have consecrated it far above the heathens’ poor power to add or detract (Proverbs 15:15;  Ecclesiastes 9:7).  The world will little note nor long remember what we say here; but it must never forget the LORD and what He did here, what He is doing, and what He will continue to do.  It is for us the merry-hearted, rather, to be here dedicated to the unfinished work of setting the table which they who cooked, fried, baked, and basted here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from the Pilgrims we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the first full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these turkeys shall not have died in vain – that this holiday, under God, shall have a new birth of merry observance – and that this festive thanksgiving in Christ’s kingdom, by God’s Spirit, for the Father’s glory shall not perish from the calendar.