In 1864, Folliott S. Pierpoint (1835–1917) published his hymn “The Sacrifice of Praise” for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper or eucharist (from the Greek eucharistia for “thanksgiving”). It would become the quintessential Thanksgiving Day hymn, known best under the title drawn from its opening phrase, “For the Beauty of the Earth.”[1]
As the story goes, the beauty of the English countryside captivated Pierpoint as he walked along the Avon River near his hometown of Bath. Its beauty was before him not as the work of his own hands but as a pure gift wrapped by another’s power and in another’s glory. Even his ability to take it in with sight and sound was a gift. And like any gift, these could only truly be received and enjoyed in one way and one way only—with thanksgiving. For what could he give in return for such gifts beyond his earning or exerting? All he could do, and all that these gifts were meant to lead him to do, was to “raise” a “hymn of grateful praise” to him who fashioned and freely gave them, to the “Lord of all” (verses’ refrain), from whom, through whom, and to whom are all things (Rom. 11:36).
Pierpoint had opened before him God’s “beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God” (Belgic Confession 2). The brimming beauty of this single page led Pierpoint to read on so that he became gratefully aware of the untold gifts that come to him and all people every day from the Lord of all. Whether things seen, like “the glories of the skies,” or things unseen, like “the love which from our birth, over and around us lies” (v. 1), we are ever anew recipients of the goodness of God. For he is “the overflowing source of all good” (Belgic Confession 1).
Whether “hill and vale, and tree and flow’r” or “sun and moon and stars of light” (v. 2), or “the joy of ear and eye” or “the heart and mind’s delight” (v. 3), or “the joy of human love, brother, sister, parent, child, friends on earth and friends above” (v. 4), all are the Lord’s and at his disposal to freely give. They are not the products of our own hands but gifts of inestimable worth that can only truly be received and enjoyed with thanksgiving. So, like Pierpoint, all we can do, and all that these gifts are meant to lead us to do, is to raise a hymn of grateful praise to him who freely gave them, to the Lord of all.
But how can we sing such a hymn from the heart? In Adam, mankind became implacably and hideously ungrateful. Fallen man ceased to honor God as God or to give him thanks (Rom. 1:21). In his sin and rebellion, man made the gifts of God ends in themselves, refusing to ever raise a hymn of grateful praise.
But the good news is that Jesus Christ came for such ungrateful people, as we once were. He bore all our ugly ingratitude on the cross and was raised on the third day to enter through the gates of righteousness with thanksgiving for us (Ps. 118:19). Whoever believes in him is united to him by the power of the Holy Spirit in his death and resurrection.
In Christ, we are filled with his Spirit of thanksgiving by whose strength a hymn of grateful praise can again be sung to the praise and glory of God. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Col. 3:16). And in Christ, the gifts of God are restored to their proper use, no longer ends in themselves but means to thanksgiving. “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer” (1 Tim. 4:4–5).
Pierpoint leads us in this new and better way of gratitude by beginning each stanza with the preposition for. With this little, yet powerful word, each stanza begins with a subordinate clause that awaits the chorus for a sense of rest. The for awaits a to. The gifts await the Giver. “For the beauty of the earth . . . Lord of all, to thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise” (emphasis added). Pierpoint subordinates all the good gifts of God as means to an even higher end. By them we are sped along the highways to Zion that in Christ, the truly thankful one, we may “enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise!” (Ps. 100:4). Gratitude could not drive us elsewhere but there. For more than his gifts of beauty, glory, joy, and love, the Lord of all has given us himself, “best gift divine” (v. 5), indeed.
This is the deeper Protestant conception of the Christian life: new obedience motivated by gratitude in the deepest depth of our heart because the Lord is our God, and we are his people by his grace alone. “The person who receives this grace owes and gives eternal thanks to God alone” (Canons of Dort III/IV.15).
[1] Hymn #249, Trinity Psalter Hymnal (Trinity Psalter Hymnal Venture, 2018).
