Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/117

Rh towards heaven. He “fell through sin,” did he? He fell upward, and by his proper motion has been ever since ascending in laborious flight. It was the tree of spiritual life,

It is amazing how much we need the continual check of failure and disappointment. When the body is over-fed, leanness devours the soul; there is sleekness of flesh, but no great growth of character; the mouth stops the mind. With too many favours we are not thankful. Gratitude is one of the rarest of virtues; the boy does not think so; the man knows it. She comes rather late to the feast of Christian graces, after all that sweet sisterhood have sat down to meat. Gratitude is a nice touch of beauty added last of all to the countenance, giving a classic beauty, an angelic loveliness, to the character. But in our present stage of growth, gratitude to men for their services is by no means common: and thankfulness to God is oftener expressed by the fasting than the feasted. We have a lively sense of favours to come, but humanity is not yet rich enough, nor well enough bred, to be very thankful for what we have in hand. It is only when the well is dry that we appreciate the worth of water, and the first return thereof brings thanks—which soon dry up and perish. How grateful we should be if we could get the bird in the bush; that in the hand is an old thing not worth thinking of. In gaol, Pharaoh's chief butler courts Joseph; but when restored to honour, it is written, “neither did the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgat him.” The boy at college—prosperous, high in his class, welcomed to the society of rich men’s sons, and often associating with their daughters—soon forgets the plain-clad sister at Manchester or Lowell, whose toil gave the poor boy his scanty outfit; he feels small gratitude for that tender hand which pushed his little shallop from the shore, and set him afloat on the academic sea, whether her nightly prayer and daily toil attend his now thoughtless voyaging. But when sick, deserted by the gilded, fickle butterfly, which drew his puerile eyes and idle thought, he falls back on the sisterly heart which beats so self-denyingly for him.