Of all the virtues, can there be found one more prolific of quiet, peaceful happiness, more overflowing with love and kindness, than gratitude?
This subject has been frequently in my thought, and more especially so since last summer. When on my vacation, one Sunday evening it was my privilege to hear a learned bishop of the Episcopal Church deliver a sermon to a class of young people who had just been confirmed. In his address he stated that in his old parish, in one of the large eastern cities,—a parish that contained some of the best Christian workers he had ever known,—on the reading desks in the church were the old prayer-books that had been there for over a century, they were still kept on the desks, but were not then being used, more modern ones having replaced them.
One day the thought came to him to look over these old books, and see what prayers to God had been most frequently used. First he turned to the prayers for help for the sick, for the safety of those at sea, and for the many other blessings mortals so urgently desire; all these prayers were black with finger-marks, showing at once how much they had been used. He then turned to the prayers of thanksgiving to God for the blessings specially vouchsafed unto them and he was amazed, he said, to find that these prayers of deep gratitude were as clean as any pages in the book, showing, also at once, how little they had been used. There was every evidence to show how constantly they had prayed to God for what they desired, but there was no evidence to show that they had expressed any gratitude for the blessings received.
