Nor let us think want of gratitude a light sin, or one which we may safely overlook. The same proud, thankless spirit which leads us to forget our obligations to man, is at the root of our unbelief, our indifference, our coldness towards Him who is the giver of all good. We receive our blessings as rights; we think little of the mercy which bestowed them, or we should scarcely dare to murmur and repine when the smallest is taken away from us. When Flora accused her sister-in-law of ingratitude, she little thought how well the charge might have been retorted on herself. Had she not been loaded with mercies--granted health, strength, all the comforts of life, opportunity of benefiting others, and power of pleasing--the love of her friends, the deep tenderness of a mother--and, above all, innumerable spiritual blessings, the means of grace, and the hope of glory! And yet, with all this, the heart which the world deemed so pure, the heart whose depths she had never yet fathomed, was now filled with a bitter, almost a rebellious spirit. Flora had worked--was well pleased to work for God, but it must be in her own way; she could make sacrifices for religion, but the choice of the sacrifice must be her own. It was as though the soldier who for years had glittered on parade, and performed the routine of daily duty with faultless regularity in time of peace, had started back when the war-trumpet sounded, had turned from the sterner obligations before him, and murmured because he was called upon at last to "endure hardness," and to face trial in a holy cause. Flora was still ready to sit by the sick, to visit the dying, and to teach in the school; she was still willing to give freely to the poor, looking for a plenteous reward hereafter, and receiving in the present the interest of human gratitude, admiration, and love. But she was not ready to be "_kind to the unthankful and the evil_," to "_let patience have its perfect work_," to strive to reclaim wilful and unruly children, with the prospect of awakening the jealousy of their parent, but never of rousing her to a sense of obligation. Flora’s religion was not "the love of Christ" which "_constraineth_," therefore in the time of trial it failed her.