There are others I could ask.  Each has his answer.  But Thanksgiving has a special meaning for us.  It is the Harvest time.  I have here an apple.  Isn’t this a beautiful apple?  What color!  Who mixed the paints, who handled the brush to give such color to this apple?  God.  He, in his infinite love and wisdom, has provided, through the unfailing laws of nature, for the growth, sweetness, coloring and beautifying of all the products of the fields.  This apple is but one of many kinds of fruits.

Praise, then, is the great meaning of Thanksgiving.  God, our heavenly Father, sends us every good gift.  From his bountiful hand come our daily and nightly mercies.  We should praise him every day.  But the day for the united chorus of praise is Thanksgiving.

MEMORY VERSE, Psalm 150:  6

    “Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord.  Praise ye the
    Lord.”

MEMORY HYMN [717]

    "Come, ye thankful people, come."

MARBLES IN THE POCKET

Do you know what a Missionary Box is?  Well, I will tell you.  It is a box or barrel sent from a missionary society in a city or town to a missionary family or school on the frontier.  The box contains clothing, bedding, and sometimes toys, dolls and picture books if there are children at the frontier end of the journey.

In a certain city one Christmas season the children of the Sunday School brought gifts to fill a box.  Some brought clothes they had outgrown.  Some who had two coats decided they could give one.  Others brought books.  One little girl brought a beautiful doll.  She had other dolls, and this one she dearly loved, but she said, “I want some other little girl to be happy, and I think I can get along without this doll, though I shall miss her dreadfully.”

One day the committee came together to sort the gifts and pack the box.  One woman picked up a boy’s coat.  She felt something, hard in one of the pockets.  Another woman said, “Better look all through those pockets; you can never tell what a boy will use his pockets for.”  So she went all through the pockets.  In one of them she found a soiled handkerchief tied in a knot.  With much pulling, for it was a hard knot, she loosed the little package, and there she found five marbles.  With the marbles was a note scrawled in a boy’s hand—­

    “DEAR BOY WHO GETS THIS COAT,

    I have eight marbles.  First I put in four for you.  Then I put in
    another one.  I hope you will like the coat, and the marbles.

    From your friend,

    JOHN MASON.”

Now what do you think of that?  Isn’t it glorious?  To give more to the other fellow than you keep for yourself, especially when that other fellow is some one you have never seen, is Christlike.

MEMORY VERSE, Matthew 7:  12

    “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye
    even so to them.”