Despite being surrounded by unprecedented levels of opportunity and prosperity, we live in a profoundly anxious age, fearful of economic decline and disruption even as we strive to resist idols of status, wealth, fortability.

When observing such a state, many are quick to proclaim that “the market is not enough.” They are correct: We also need gratitude.

“We should bow in gratitude to God for His many favors,” said President Calvin Coolidge in his 1925 Thanksgiving Proclamation, remarking on a similar season of prosperity. “As we have grown and prospered in material things, so also should we progress in moral and spiritual things.”

It was a theme that Coolidge would routinely emphasize in his various addresses to the nation: “The things of the e first,” he said, in a set of reflections on America’s founding. For Coolidge, America had entered an “age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things,” and was thus in sore need of such reminders.

When it came to an occasion such as Thanksgiving, then—a season wherein the focus is often set on material blessings—the theme would continue.

“We have been brought with safety and honor through another year, and, through the generosity of nature, He has blessed us with resources whose potentiality in wealth is almost incalculable,” Coolidge continued in his address. “We are at peace at home and abroad; the public health is good; we have been undisturbed by pestilences or great catastrophes; our harvests and our industries have been rich in productivity; merce spreads over the whole world, and labor has been well rewarded for its remunerative service.”

Coolidge acknowledged the blessings of material abundance and the virtues that inspired it, yet he was just as quick to remind us of the source of it all. “We are a God-fearing people who should set ourselves against evil and strive for righteousness in living, and observing the Golden Rule we should from our abundance help and serve those less fortunately placed,” he continued. “We should bow in gratitude to God for His many favors.”

A year earlier, in his 1924 Thanksgiving address, this was also a primary focus. Coolidge pointed the nation’s attention to the source of economic prosperity, and in turn, the imperative to reorient our hearts and hands toward serving our neighbors and, thus, God. “