feel that something is wrong in his heart. Ingratitude we name among the
most hateful feelings that ever darken the fallen heart of humanity. It
is the parent of innumerable vices. It is a cold, Satanic mood of mind,
suggestive of numberless forms of evil. And yet, unless I greatly
mistake, there is much ingratitude in all our hearts. We eat, and forget
the Hand that feeds us. We wear, and heed not the Adorner of our
persons. We admire our bodies, and offer not an emotion of praise to the
grand Architect of the universe and its beauty. We rejoice in our
strength and comeliness, scarcely thinking that we owe it all to the
Divine love. We delight in our domestic relations and affections, and
often grow eloquent in praise of the sweet emotions of delicious joy
which rise within us, half forgetting that they are all gifts from the
gracious Divinity.

We grow proud in the might of our minds, and vain of our works, bloating
often to the bursting point, claiming all the glory to ourselves,
awarding little or none to God. This is lamentably true to an alarming
extent. It is true of youth as well as manhood. Though youth is brimful
of good impulses and quick affections, it is sadly deficient in
religious gratitude. It is right that young people should enjoy the good
things of life and the world, should make merry with each other, and
even be gay amid the profusion of natural gaiety about them, but in
doing so they need not and should not be unmindful of their good Father
in heaven. First in their affections, highest in their joyful adoration
should He stand. God is a parent. In this light should He be regarded.
To be grateful to a parent for favors received does not interfere with
the natural buoyancy of the heart. To love a parent does not make less
active and cheerful the love we bear others, nor gloom our lives with
one single cloud. The young woman who loves her father with an earnest
affection, will not love any body else less, but more. The young man who
loves his mother with his whole soul, who at all times and places, amid
all pleasures and amusements, retains her image in his heart of hearts,
and turns to her ever as the refreshing fountain of his sweetest joy, is
none the less capable of loving all his fellow-men. On the contrary, the
love he bears his mother will be the seed from which will grow a grand
tree of love, the branches and freshness of which will fill his whole
heart and beautify his whole life. If a young m