ankfulness. 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. We have all known malignant hate to be the return for long
periods of lavish kindness.

Ingratitude is robbery. It robs those to whom gratitude is due, for it
is the withholding of that which is justly theirs. If you are kind to
another, is he not your debtor? If you show another favors, does not
he owe you thanks? True, you ask no return, for love does not work for
wages. Only selfishness demands repayment for help given, and is
embittered by ingratitude. The Christly spirit continues to give and
bless, pouring out its love in unstinted measure, though no act or word
or look tells of gratitude.

"If thy true service mounted, in its aim,
No higher than the praise that men bestow
On noble sacrifice, there might be shame
That thou hast missed it so.

"But not for selfish gain or low reward,
Didst thou so labor under shade and sun;
But with the conscious sense that for thy Lord
This weary work was done.

"He asked no thanks, no recognition nigh,
No tender acceptation of his grace,
No pitying tear from one responsive eye,
No answering human face.

"To do God's will--that was enough for Christ,
'Mid griefs that make all agonies look dim.
It shall for thee suffice--it hath sufficed,
As it sufficed for him."

Yet while love does not work for wages, nor demand an equivalent for
its services, it is sorely wronged when ungrateful lips are dumb. The
quality of ingratitude is not changed because faithful love is not
frozen in the heart by its coldness. We owe at least loving
remembrance to one who has shown us kindness, though no other return
may be possible, or though large return may already have been made. We
can never be absolved from the duty of being grateful. "Owe no man
anything but love" is a heavenly word. We always owe love; that is a
debt we never can pay off.

Ingratitude is robbery. But it is cruelty as well as robbery. It
always hurts the heart that must endure it. Few faults or injuries
cause more pain and grief in tender spirits than ingratitude. The pain
may be borne in silence. Men do not speak of it to others, still less
to those whose neglect or coldness inflicts