A Thanksgiving Sermon, Preached January 1, 1808
Absalom Jones1808
The sermon preached by Absalom Jones in St Thomas’s African Episcopal Church, Philadelphia, on the day the United States’ ban on the African slave trade took effect. Its title page names him rector of that church.
Jones preached on Exodus 3:7–8, the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, and applied it to the ending of the legal slave trade by Congress. He asks his hearers to keep the first of January each year as a day of public thanksgiving and to give thanks, among other things, for the privilege of worshipping God in churches of their own. The vestry of St Thomas’s asked for the sermon to be printed. It is cited for Jones’s own words and for his office as he states it in 1808.
Cited in
- 1787 to 1816, estimated date