THE MOTIVE POWER OF GRATITUDE.
THERE is no greater sin than ingratitude. It is well called monstrous, fiendish, treasonable. The sympathetic heart wonders in amazement at the story of the ten lepers. We can hear the vows and promises which their agony-wrung lips uttered previous to their healing; but not one grateful word came back to the Healer from nine of these; and yet their case is typical of millions who are as truly ungrateful. Are we like the Samaritan one, or the professedly Israel nine? Gratitude is a desire to be kind or beneficial, together with a lively sense of the benefits received. It combines the three elements of humility, truth, and justice. Humility is a realization that we are nothing in ourselves; truth teaches that all that we have came from God; and justice teaches that we ought to render to the Giver all in our power for what He has bestowed. True gratitude keeps in mind God's received goodness. Its language is: “Bless Jehovah, O my soul;
And all that is within me, bless His holy name.
Bless Jehovah, O my soul,
And forget not any of His benefits.
It is He who forgiveth all thine iniquities,
And who healeth all thy diseases;
Who redeemeth thy life from destruction;
Who crowneth thee with kindness and mercy;
Who satisfieth thy mouth with good,
So that thy youth is renewed like an eagle’s.”
In its recognition of God's goodness its question is: “What shall I render unto Jehovah
For all His benefits toward me?”
All our bounties, all benefits, all blessings, which have ever touched our lives are from the Giver of all good, the purchase price of the blood of Christ. He is an all-merciful Giver to an undeserving receiver. The life, and honor, and glory of Heaven's Best was laid upon the altar of sacrifice that God's enemies, slaves of sin, traitors to His government might be saved. O, does not such love awaken within our hearts more than a mere sense of duty? Does it not make the heart tenderer, more responsive to the needs of others? Ought not gratitude to God for all that He has given us call forth from us the highest, holiest consecration to His service in labor for the poor and needy in body and soul? Well has Thomas Gibbons written of the two classes: “That man may last, but never lives,
Who much receives, but nothing gives;
Whom none can love, whom none can thank.
Creation's blot, creation's blank.
But he who marks from day to day,
In generous acts his radiant way,
Treads the same path his Saviour trod,
The path to glory and to God.”
Gratitude must be guided by wisdom. Its exuberance must not always control. Like the healed demoniac of Gadara we may wish to sit at the feet of the Master, or like Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration we may wish to build houses and remain in the blessed Presence; but true, wise gratitude will give heed to the Master's directions to go to the needy ignorant who have known us in sin, or those in the possession of Satan in the very shadow of the mountain of glory. See Mark 5:15–20; Matt. 17:1–9, 14–16.