Moral Pieces, in Prose and Verse/On Gratitude
ON GRATITUDE.
GRATITUDE is the emotion of a noble and susceptible heart excited by acts of benevolence, and directed towards a benefactor. It is a gentle affection, softening and harmonizing the mind: it is also an active principle prompting to the exercise of the social virtues, and leading to a mutual interchange of good offices. We may learn to estimate it more correctly, by considering the enormity of the vice of ingratitude. We feel a strong mixture of indignation and abhorrence towards a man who has traduced his benefactor; a friend who has injured a friend; or a child who has forsaken a parent. It is an ancient maxim that "if you have called a man ungrateful, you have said the worst, you cannot add to his baseness." In all ages of the world, and even among savage nations, ingratitude has been stamped with abhorrence.
Let us turn from the idea: let us contemplate the excellence and propriety of a grateful disposition, and endeavour to cherish it with assiduity. As the first among our earthly benefactors we must each of us recognize our parents. They have sustained us with kindness in infancy, in childhood, and in youth; they have supplied us with the means of education; they have rejoiced in our joys; in "our afflictions they have been afflicted." Ardent affection should mingle with the remembrance of these favours; and our gratitude should prompt us to study, their wishes, and to advance their happiness by becoming diligent, useful, and amiable.
Let us, also, recollect all who have been in any degree our friends or benefactors. To think of these without affection is ingratitude; to feel gratitude, and not testify it, is forgetfulness, a forgetfulness approaching to neglect. While we thus look around us in search of these benefactors, to whom we owe the homage of a grateful heart, can we forget Him who is the author of all our mercies; our guide in perplexity; our friend in misfortune; our defence in danger? We cannot lift up our eyes without beholding monuments of his kindness, and of his love. Let us rejoice in his goodness, and offer up our thanks for his guardian care. And may not one of us ever deserve the reproof which was once addressed to an offender by a prophet of the Lord: "Him in whose hand is thy breath, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified."