Page:The Daughters of England.djvu/196

Rh our moral being is derived from that agent more than from any other.

How just then, and how true is that development of youthful gratitude which looks back to these early days, and seeks to return into the bosom of parental love, the treasures of that harvest which parental love has sown!

And it is meet that youth should do this—youth, whose very nature it is to be redundant with the rills of life, and fruitful in joy, and redolent in bloom, from the perpetual flowing forth of its own glad waters—youth, which is so rich in all that gladdens, and exhilarates; how can it be penurious and niggardly in giving out? No, nature has been so munificent to youth, it cannot yet have learned the art of grudging; and gratitude, the most liberal, the most blessed of all human feelings, was first required of us as a debt, that we might go on paying according to our measure, through all the different stages of existence; and though we may never have had money or rich gifts, the poorest amongst us has been able to pay in kindness, and sometimes in love.

In the cultivation and exercise of the benevolent feelings of our nature, there is this beautiful feature to be observed in the order of divine providence—that expenditure never exhausts. Thus the indulgence of gratitude, and the bestowment of affection, instead of impoverishing, render more rich the fountain whence both are derived; while, on the other hand, the habit of withholding our generous affections, produces the certain effect of checking their growth, and diminishing the spontaneous effusion of kindness.

The habit of encouraging feelings of gratitude towards our fellow-creatures, of recalling their friendly and benevolent offices towards ourselves, of thinking what would have been our situation without them, and, in short, of reckoning up the items of the great debt we all have incurred,