BLESSINGS:
REMEMBRANCE OF

Bernard of Clairvaux speaks somewhere of a “perfume compounded of the remembered benefits of God.” Such fragrance is too rare. Every follower of Christ should be redolent of such perfume; for have we not all received more from God’s kindness than our imagination could have conceived before we knew Him and discovered for ourselves how rich and how generous He is?

That we have received of His fullness grace for grace no one will deny; but the fragrance comes not from the receiving; it comes from the remembering, which is something quite different indeed. Ten lepers received their health; that was the benefit. One came back to thank his benefactor; that was the perfume. Unremembered benefits, like dead flies, may cause the ointment to give forth a stinking savor.

Psalm 103:1–2; Luke 17:17; John 1:16

Of God and Men, 154.