The Clergyman's Wife and Other Sketches/Count your Blessings

by Anna Cora Mowatt

COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS.

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ount your blessings! "Mine are soon counted," answers a discontented voice, "I have so few—or, rather, none to count!" And that voice is the echo of how many complaining hearts!

It is startling to note how seldom people are conscious of their actual, indisputable blessings. Not that they are ignored through positive and perverse ingratitude, but partly from sheer want of reflection, partly because custom steals the value from the boon which we habitually receive. And yet, how bountifully those simple daily blessings are showered down upon the poorest, humblest, saddest of us all! And what loud lamentations we send up, to beat against the pearly gates, when the least heeded, the least prized, the very commonest, is denied!

Those who groan under the burden of multiform sorrows, are usually so absorbed in their personal afflictions, that they let the scales God placed in every human hand (to show his benefactions over-weigh man's self-sprung woes) drop from their nerveless grasp, and forget to balance the good gifts granted, against the seeming evil permitted.

Those who have no highly exciting joys, and yet no heavy griefs, often lose the sense of priceless blessings, in the stupefying movement of a monotonous existence.

Those upon whose heads the golden rays of prosperity descend in unbroken floods, who have few wishes, and no needs, ungratified, are frequently less cognizant than all others of the opulent store of benefits poured out upon them.

Yet can any of us call to mind a single being so superlatively miserable that in his saddest past, most sorrowful present, most menacing future, he can count up no blessings which demand the uncostly, quiescent, easy gratitude of mere recognition?

It is a heart-expanding practice, daily to sit down and ponder over, and sum up, the manifest blessings which have been accorded us, and which we could not unmurmuringly forego. How great will even those who cry out that they have received few, or none, find their allotted share! Try the experiment, doubter, and see if this be not so!

That which we would miss, if we did not possess, that which we would find fault if we were deprived of, that which we enjoy, even though unconsciously, justice commands us to class under the head of blessings. Instance a few of the least rare. If the day is bright, the air is bracing, or balmy, are not those blessings? Do you not rebel when they are denied? If pleasant sleep has visited your pillow, is not that a blessing? Would you not have murmured if you had tossed on your couch all night in slumberless unrest? If you are free from mere bodily pain, is not that a blessing? Would you not complain if you suffered? If you are spared mental anguish, is not that a greater blessing? would you not make a piteous plaint if it had to be endured? If you have food and shelter for the day, and some hope of it for the morrow, are not those blessings? lacking them, would you not be wretched? If you have parents, or children, wife, husband, lover, friend, to make you rich in affection, is not love a blessing? would you not be miserably poor in spirit without? If you feel the refreshing charm of a good book, a noble poem, a delicious piece of music; if you have listened to an eloquent discourse that has made some grand truth clear to you; if you have enjoyed the society of a pure-hearted or intellectual person; if you have received a passing token of kindness from a friend, a letter from some beloved but absent one, a helpful admonition from some wise counsellor, are not those undeniable blessings, though such trivial, every-day occurrences? If you have been permitted to serve some needy brother, to comfort some suffering sister, or if you have simply accomplished the work which was set for your hands upon that day to do, are not those higher blessings still 1 And yet they are but a few, a very few, of the myriad blessings which might be enumerated as so common, and so liberally dispensed, that we seldom think of giving them their true name, and, every hour of our lives, pass them by without thanks, without thought, without recognition.

Oh! then, you who would escape the sin and penalty of ingratitude to Heaven, resolve that it shall be one of the daily duties of your life, one of its indispensable employments, to seek out and sum up each day's blessings, and grave them ineffaceably upon your memory. The very habit will multiply their number, will increase their value, will wake some grateful pulse in the most thankless heart, and draw down some ray of light through the darkest gloom that can encompass the most troubled spirit.