Difference between revisions of "1. COMPASSION"

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"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus."

       "I have compassion on the    multitude." — Mark 8:2.


       What a pattern to His people, the tender compassion of    Jesus! He found the world He came to    save a moral Bethesda —    where crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches. The    wail of suffering humanity was everywhere borne to His ear. It was His    delight — to walk its porches, to pity, relieve, comfort, save! The faintest    cry of misery arrested His footsteps — stirred a ripple in this fountain of    Infinite Love.


       Was it a leper — that dreaded    name which entailed a life-long exile from friendly looks and kindly words?    There was One, at least, who had tones and deeds of    tenderness for the outcast. "Jesus,    being moved with compassion, put forth His hand and touched him."


       Was it some blind beggars on the    Jericho    highway, groping in darkness, pleading for help? "Jesus    stood still, and had compassion on them, and touched their    eyes!"


       Was it the speechless pleadings of a widow's tears    at the gate of Nain, when she followed her earthly pride and prop to the    grave? "When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on    her, and said, Weep not!" Even when He rebukes — the rainbow of    compassion is seen in the cloud, or rather, that cloud, as it    passes, dissolves in a rain-shower of mercy! He pronounces Jerusalem "desolate," but    the doom is uttered amid a flood of anguished sorrow!


       Reader! do the compassionate words and deeds of    a tender Savior find any feeble echo and transcript in yours? As you traverse    in thought, the wastes of human wretchedness — does the spectacle give rise,    not to the mere emotional feeling which weeps itself away in sentimental    tears — but to an earnest desire to do something to mitigate    the suffering of woe-worn humanity? How vast and world-wide, are the claims    on your compassion! — now near, now at a distance — the unmet and unanswered    cry of perishing millions abroad — the heathendom which lies unsaved at your    own door — the public charity languishing — the mission staff dwarfed and    crippled from lack of needful funds — a suffering district — a starving    family — a poor neighbour — a helpless orphan — it may be, some crowded hovel    where misery and vice run riot — or some lonely sick-chamber, where the dim    lamp has been wasting for dreary nights — or some desolate home which death    has entered, where "Joseph is not, and Simeon is not," and where    some sobbing heart, under the tattered garb of poverty, mourns, unsolaced and    unpitied, its "loved and lost one."


       Are there none such within your reach,    to whom a trifling pittance would be as an angel of mercy? How it would    hallow and enhance all you possess, were you to seek to live as a dispenser    of Jehovah's bounties! If He has given    you of this world's substance, remember that it is bestowed —    and not to be greedily hoarded or lavishly squandered! Property    and wealth are talents to be traded on and laid out for the good    of others — sacred trusts, not selfishly to be enjoyed — but    generously to be employed.


       The poor saints are the representatives of Jesus — their needs He considers as His own, and He    will recompense accordingly. The feeblest expression of Christian pity and    love, though it be but the widow's mite, or the cup of cold water, or the    kindly look and word when there is neither mite nor cup to give — yet, if    done in His name, it is entered in the "book of    life" as a "loan to the Lord;" and in that day when "the    books are opened," the loan will be paid back with interest!


       "Arm yourselves likewise with the same    mind."

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