Thanksgiving when prayer is answered.
Men are much more ready to pray than to give thanks; to express their desires than to recognize the response made to their desires. Men fail in gratitude rather than in petition. Therefore do the apostles specially urge this grace, and require its cultivation by the Christian disciples (see Philippians 4:6; Colossians 4:2; Hebrews 13:15). The call to thanksgiving is the refrain of the palm. Man is seen to gain no blessing save through the ministry of him who is the "Author and Giver of every good and perfect gift." And man's sin is seen to be restraining his lips, and failing to make due recognition of "grace abounding." A life full of God's benedictions should be a life full of God's praise. In this text the general duty is presented under two figures.
I. THANKSGIVING AS A SACRIFICE. The peculiarity of a sacrifice is that it is a silent act. It is something a man does which has its own voice, and need not be accompanied with any words. When the old Jew brought his animal to the priest, according to the rules of the Mosaic ritual, he did not need to say anything by way of explanation. The priest perfectly understood what he meant. Some act of Divine mercy was filling him with thankfulness, and his offering found for it expression. Philip Henry puts this sharply: "Thanksgiving is a good thing, thanksgiving is a better." The self-offered in sacrifice speaks our gratitude to the listening ear of God. A man can show himself grateful by his manner of life. Bouar prays—
"Fill thou my life, O Lord my God,
In every part with praise,
That my whole being may proclaim
Thy Being and thy Ways.
"Not for the lip of praise alone,
Nor e'en the praising heart,
I ask but for a life made up
Of praise in every part."
"I beseech you therefore that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice;" so says St. Paul. And it is to be a sacrifice of thanksgiving.
II. THANKSGIVING AS A TESTIMONY. "Tell out his works with gladness." Here thanksgiving is a voiceful act. "I will not refrain my lips, O Lord, thou knowest." "Praise is the only employment in which self finds no part. In praise we go out of ourselves, and think only of him to whom we offer it. It is the most purely disinterested of all services."—R.T.