May 19

For he is kind to the unthankful and to the evil. - Luke 6:35.

INGRATITUDE is the blackest of all crimes. “The ungrateful are like the grave, always receiving and never returning;” but nothing can equal our ingratitude if we refrain from speaking in our Saviour’s praise. We have no claim upon his benevolence; we are unworthy of the least of all his mercies. Nay, we are not only unworthy, but we are undeserving, ill-deserving, and hell-deserving creatures; we have sinned ourselves completely into the hands of his justice; and he could both righteously and easily have destroyed us.

Let us think also of the number and magnitude of the benefits which he bestows. Without going over the field of nature, or examining the dispensations of Providence, though in reference to them we should “abundantly utter the memory of his great goodness,” we will notice only those which refer to the Saviour’s coming “to seek and to save that which was lost;” “to deliver us from the curse of the law;” to save us from the “wrath to come;” to emancipate us from the “bondage of corruption;” to make us the “sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty;” and to entitle us to an immensity and an eternity of blessedness and honour insured to us and even begun in us here. And then let us add the expensiveness of the medium.

We sometimes do good, but it may be without design, or to gain advantage or reputation, or it may be owing to some pressure, or to deliver ourselves from some importunity, or without any self-denial. But we “know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who though he was rich yet for our sakes became poor.” We know that he laid aside the form of the sovereign, and took upon him the form of a servant. He was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief .” We have seen him in the manger, agonizing in the garden, and bleeding on the cross. And can we see this, without every feeling of our soul inducing us to exclaim-

“Let him be crown’d with majesty

Who bowed his head to death,

And be his honour sounded high

By all things that have breath.”