Well, now, remember what I have told you about the Jewish feasts, or rather take your Bibles and look for yourselves, whether I tell you the truth, when I say, that our feasts are just such feasts as those which you read of there. The feasts of the Jews were all either feasts in remembrance of the dedication of the Temple, or of thanksgiving for the good gifts of God, or of commemoration for some great national deliverance.
And ours are the very same. Do not think I am dealing unfairly with you in comparing our country feasts to the great national feasts of the Jews. It is not unfair to compare small things with great: families, parishes, nations, must stand or fall by the same laws. A society cannot do evil or good without reaping the fruits thereof, whether it be very small or very great. Do not think that I ought to speak of the great Christian festivals, Christmas and Easter; they are better understood and kept, though very badly as yet. I believe I am taking the right way to make you understand and keep these world-wide Christian feasts properly by bringing you down to these common insignificant feasts of ours, which we, the members of this parish and congregation, have power over; which we can make good or evil; for the use or abuse of which we shall be called to account by God.
For “thus saith the Lord,” to us as He said to the Jews, “these are _my_ feasts.” They are his, my brethren, whether we like it or not; they are his, though we may try to make them ours, and so make them the devil’s. There is no neutral ground, no escape from the hard fact. Let us see now if we cannot accept them, and use them as his. Let us see whether they will be less or more to us if we do so. We shall find the trial worth making, I think, in the end.
They are his feasts: how, then, can we come to them as his guests--guests who will be pleasing to him, who will use his feasts as he would have us? For if we go to a man’s feast, the first thing we have to do is to go in such a temper and such a dress as will make us acceptable guests; and shall we do less as the guests of God?
The first thing, then, we have to consider is the temper, the state of mind in which we should go to our feasts; and here, as I said before, the Bible tells us all we want to know. The temper which he required of the Jews, he will require of us. At his feasts we have specially two things to do, to remember and to rejoice. To remember the loving-kindness which he has shown to our fathers and to us, in delivering us many a time from the hand of enemies who were stronger than we; in giving us a Church, where for many hundred years the prayers of generation after generation had gone up to him, the God of all truth; in giving us the rich increase of his earth, year after year. Remembering these things, then, we are to keep the feast in humility, for our own unworthiness; in thankfulness, for his tender care and unbounded love.