And suppose, while the children were absent on their errands of justice, as they could not fail to think them, if they compared the hovels they must visit with their own comfortable homes, their elders, touched by a sense of right, should be led from discussion of the rivalries of trade or fashion to inquiry whether they could not impart of all that was theirs, not merely one poor dinner once a year, but all their mental and material wealth for the benefit of all men. If they do not sell it _all_ at once, as the rich young man was bid to do as a test of his sincerity, they may find some way in which it could be invested so as to show enough obedience to the law and the prophets to love our neighbor as ourselves. And he who once gives himself to such thoughts will find it is not merely moral gain for which he shall return thanks another year with the return of this day. In the present complex state of human affairs, you cannot be kind unless you are wise. Thoughts of amaranthine bloom will spring up in the fields ploughed to give food to suffering men. It would, indeed, seem to be a simple matter at first glance. "Lovest thou me?"--"Feed my lambs." But now we have not only to find pasture, but to detect the lambs under the disguise of wolves, and restore them by a spell, like that the shepherd used, to their natural form and whiteness. 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."