The Clergyman's Wife and Other Sketches/Kindness

o do a kindness kindly, to confer a favor with such tact and delicacy that the recipient will not be oppressed by a sense of obligation, is an art. Wherefore is it one so little cultivated by the kind spirits of this world?

There are persons who are quick to execute praiseworthy actions, who take pleasure in works of beneficence, yet who always perform them in a hard, cold way, as though impelled by the promptings of compulsive duty alone.

Individuals of another class bestow their good gifts more graciously, but evidently expect a due acknowledgment; they have the air of requiring "so much for so much," and their undisguised demand for a full measure of thanks often annihilates the very existence of gratitude. You see, at a glance, that they are laying their kind deeds out at usury, and hope for a large income of reward; perhaps in the shape of a wide reputation for goodness; perhaps from the return of some greater benefit than the one conferred; perhaps ​through the gratification of assuming an air of superiority in the character of benefactor.

The kindness of another order of temperaments is impulsive, whimsical and spasmodical; the effervescing exuberance of a pleasant state of mind; a transient excitement which quickly exhausts itself. Wearied of well-doing, these uncertain friends soon exclaim, "I've done enough!" Enough! as if a poor, feeble mortal, though he use his best energies for the promotion of his neighbor's welfare, can ever arrive at a period when, through the greatness of his deeds, he may fold his hands and say, "I've done enough!"

There is an old proverb which warns us that the last person from whom we should expect to receive a favor is the one upon whom we have liberally bestowed favors. And it is not unusual for persons to experience a positive aversion towards those who have done them great services; an aversion they struggle against, they are ashamed of, they despise themselves for entertaining, and yet are ever keenly conscious of feeling. Is not this very often the consequence of the manner in which the services have been rendered?

Nothing so thoroughly destroys the beauty of an act of kindness as the desire for, or even the expectation of, gratitude. And yet nothing is more common.

The poet Rogers tells us that "to bless is to be blest;" and true kindness instinctively communi​cates to those whom we are permitted to benefit, a consciousness of the happiness we ourselves derive from the power of benefaction placed in our unworthy hands, makes them sensible of the blessedness which springs from that power's exercise, reveals to them the indebtedness we cherish towards those who are the recipients of its use.

Kant, in the spirit of veritable charity, declares that the way to love the neighbor is to do good to him first, and we shall love him after as the consequence of having done good to him. When kindness is genuine in the soul, when it strikes deep roots and is nourished by a holy source, there is always an increased sense of affection experienced towards those who have needed and received kindnesses at our hands.

Effectual, widely-extended kindness, does not alone consist in the performance of tangible and undeniable services to others. Kind looks, and words, and gentle, kindly ways may be of incalculable benefit. Natures grow hard and rough through the absence of a surrounding atmosphere of permanent kindness, and are softened and humanized by the influence of habitual, persistent gentleness and consideration. When the angel of kindness enters a heart where it can take up its abode, it looks through the eyes of the man, and speaks with his voice, and moves with his motions, and guides his hands and his feet, and stretches out his arms to clasp the whole world in charity's ​warm embrace; and this, every day of his life and every hour of his day. Good works become the delight of his existence, and the very idea of remuneration, of reward in any imaginable shape (save that of internal satisfaction) would diminish the happiness he enjoys.

"Ye are not your own!" said St. Paul. If God demanded from us at any moment all that he has given, what should we have left? What physical, mental, spiritual attributes would remain? Would not our very existence cease? Can the truth of the apostle's assertion need a stronger demonstration than is found in the answer to these queries? If we are not "our own," the power to serve, the capacity to comfort, the faculty to "be kind," are not "our own," but are among the precious gifts entrusted to us by the great Giver, as the ten talents were placed in the keeping of the faithful servant. What right have we then to claim the return even of gratitude, since we are using that which is not "our own," but our Master's? since we are only the media chosen for dispensing that Master's beneficence? since we must render up an account of the equitable and liberal distribution of all that has been placed in our hands? With the conviction that we are not "our own," ever present, who could ask a return for the kindnesses he is Heaven-commissioned to bestow, and which are not "his own," albeit they are distributed through his agency? If a thought ​of gratitude, a hope of compensation, once spring up in the mind, the kindness with which they are associated is spurious, and its true name is interest, gain, whim, or self-love. How many of the acts, upon which we complacently bestow the appellation of "kind," will not suddenly change their shape and title beneath the touch of that Ithuriel-like test?