Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 532
“You crown the year with Your goodness. And your paths drop fatness.” Psalm 65:11.
POSSIBLY objections might have been raised to a day of thanksgiving for the abundant harvest if it had been ordered or suggested by Government. Certain Brothers and Sisters are so exceedingly tender in their consciences upon the point of connection between Church and State that they would have thought it almost a reason for not being thankful at all if the Government had recommended them to celebrate a day of public thanksgiving.
Although I have no love to the unscriptural union of Church and State, I should on this occasion have hailed an official request for a national recognition of the special goodness of God. However, none of us can feel any objection arising in our minds if it is now agreed that today we will praise our ever-bounteous Lord and as an assembly record our gratitude to the God of the harvest. We are probably the largest assembly of Christian people in the world and it is well that we should set the example to the smaller Churches.
Doubtless many other Believers will follow in our footsteps, and so a public thanksgiving will become general throughout the country. I hope to see every congregation in the land raising a special offering unto the Lord, to be devoted either to His Church, to the poor, to missions, or some other holy end. Yes, I would have every Christian offer willingly unto the Lord as a token of his gratitude to the God of Providence.
I had almost forgotten that today we have to ask your contributions for the support of two ministers of our own body laboring in Germany. It is well that it so happens, because it furnishes an object for the practical expression of the thanks which we feel to Almighty God. While as the sum required for this object will at once be raised, our beloved college will be a worthy object for friends at a distance to assist with their free will offerings.
Without any preface, we will divide our text as it divides itself. Here we have crowning mercies calling for crowning gratitude. And in the same verse, paths offatness, which should be to us ways of delight. When we have talked upon these two points, we may meditate for a few moments upon the whole subject and endeavor, as God shall help us, to see what duties it suggests.
I. First of all, we have here CROWNING MERCIES, SUGGESTING SPECIAL AND CROWNING THANKSGIVING. All the year round, every hour of every day, God is richly blessing us—both when we sleep and when we wake His mercy waits upon us. The sun may leave off shining, but our God will never cease to cheer His children with His love. Like a river His loving kindness is always flowing with a fullness inexhaustible as His own Nature, which is its source. Like the atmosphere which always surrounds the earth and is always ready to support the life of man, the benevolence of God surrounds all His creatures—in it, as in their element—they live and move and have their being.
Yet as the sun on summer days appears to gladden us with beams more warm and bright than at other times, and as rivers are at certain seasons swollen with the rain, and as the atmosphere itself on occasions is fraught with more fresh, more bracing, or more balmy influences than before, so is it with the mercy of God—it has its golden hours, its days of overflow when the Lord magnifies His Grace and lifts high His love before the sons of men.
If we begin with the blessings of the nether springs, we must not forget that for the race of man the joyous days of harvest are a special season of excessive favor. It is the glory of autumn that the ripe gifts of Providence are then abundantly bestowed. It is the mellow season of realization, whereas all before was but hope and expectation. Great is the joy of harvest. Happy are the reapers who fill their arms with the liberality of Heaven. The Psalmist tells us that the harvest is the crowning of the year.
What if I compare the opening spring to the proclamation of a new prince, the latest born of Father Time? With the musical voices of birds and the joyful lowing of herds, a new era of fertility is ushered in. Every verdant meadow and every leaping brook hears the joyful proclamation and feels a new life within. The little hills rejoice on every side. They shout for joy. They also sing. Throughout the warm months of summer the royal year is dressing itself in beauty and adorning itself in sumptuous array.
What with the plates of ivory, yielded by the lilies, the rubies of the rose, the emeralds of the meads and all manner of fair colors from the many flowers, we may well say that, “Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” No studs of silver or rows of jewels can vie with the ornaments of the year. No garments of needlework of divers colors can match the glorious vesture of Time’s reigning son. But the moment of the coronation, when earth feels most the sway of the year, is in the fullness of autumn. Then it is when the fields are covered with a dose of gold, and fruits are glowing with the rich hues of ripeness, and the leaves are burnished with inimitable perfection of tint and shade.