Wordsworth wrote:--
"I've heard of hearts unkind,
Kind deeds with coldness still returning;
Alas! the gratitude of men
Hath left me oftener mourning."
However, Archdeacon Farrar, referring to these words, says, "If
Wordsworth found gratitude a common virtue, his experience must have
been exceptional." There certainly are hearts unkind that do return
coldness for kind deeds. There are children who forget the love and
sacrifices of their parents and repay their countless kindnesses, not
with grateful affection, honor, obedience, thoughtfulness, and service,
but with disregard, indifference, disobedience, dishonor, sometimes
even with shameful neglect and unkindness. There are those who receive
help from friends in unnumbered ways, through years, help that brings
to them great aid in life--promotion, advancement, improvement in
character, widening of privileges and opportunities, tender kindness
that warms, blesses, and inspires the heart, and enriches, refines, and
ennobles the life--who yet seem never to recognize or appreciate the
benefit and the good they receive. They appear to feel no obligation,
no thankfulness. They make no return of love for all of love's
ministry. They even repay it with complaint, with criticism, with
bitterness. We have all known years of continued favors forgotten, and
their memory wiped out by one small failure to grant a new request for
help.
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