They, more than other men,
know how small is any personal part in our labours and our wages alike.
But in all men life comes to be felt to be, in itself and its
instruments, this gift, this debt; to continue to live is to contract a
greater debt in proportion to the greatness of the life; it is greatest
in the greatest.
"This spontaneous gratitude is a vital thing. He who is most sensitive
to beauty and prizes it, who is most quick to love, who is most ardent
in the world's service, feels most constantly this power which enfolds
him in its hidden infinity; he is overwhelmed by it: and how should
gratitude for such varied and constant and exhaustless good fail to
become a part of the daily life of his spirit, deepening with every hour
in which the value, the power and sweetness of life, is made more plain?
Yet at the same instant another and almost contrary mood is twin-born
with this thankfulness,--the feeling of helplessness. Though the secret
and inscrutable power, sustaining and feeding life, be truly felt,--
'Closer is He than breathing and nearer than
hands and feet,'--
though in moments of life's triumphs it evokes this natural burst of
happy gratitude, yet who can free himself from mortal fear, or dispense
with human hope, however firm and irremovable may be his confidence in
the beneficent order of God? And especially in the more strenuous trials
of later ages for Christian perfection in a world not Christian, and
under the mysterious dispensation of nature, even the youth has lived
little, and that shallowly, who does not crave companionship, guidance,
protection.
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