href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@28507@[email protected]#Twenty_ninth_Day" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">Love of Unity

COMPASSION.

“I have compassion on the multitude.”—Mark, viii. 2.

What a pattern to His people, the tender compassion of Jesus! He found the world He came to save a moral Bethesda. The wail of suffering humanity was every where 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 bow 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 Saviour 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 sufferings of woe-worn humanity? How vast and world-wide the claims on your compassion!—now near, now at a distance—the unmet and unanswered cry of perishing millions abroad—the heathendom which lies unsuccored 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 neighbor—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.” 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 almoner of Jehovah’s bounties! If He has given you of this world’s substance, remember it is bestowed, 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 are the representatives of Jesus, their wants 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 usury.

“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”

RESIGNATION IN TRIAL.

“Not my will, but Thine be done!”—Luke, xxii. 42.

Where was there ever resignation like this! The life of Jesus was one long martyrdom. From Bethlehem’s manger to Calvary’s cross, there was scarce one break in the clouds; these gathered more darkly and ominously around Him till they burst over His devoted head as He uttered His expiring cry. Yet throughout this pilgrimage of sorrow no murmuring accent escaped His lips. The most suffering of all suffering lives was one of uncomplaining submission.

“Not my will, but Thy will,” was the motto of this wondrous Being! When He came into the world He thus announced His advent, “Lo, I come, I delight to do Thy will, O my God!” When He left it, we listen to the same prayer of blended agony and acquiescence, “O my Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me! Nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt.”

Reader! is this mind also in you? Ah, what are your trials compared to His! What the ripples in your tide of woe, compared to the waves and billows which swept over him! If He, the spotless Lamb of God, “murmured not,” how can you murmur? His were the sufferings of a bosom never once darkened with the passing shadow of guilt or sin. Your severest sufferings are deserved, yea, infinitely less than deserved! Are you tempted to indulge in hard suspicions, as to God’s faithfulness and love, in appointing some peculiar trial? Ask yourself, Would Jesus have done this? Should I seek to pry into “the deep things of God,” when He, in the spirit of a weaned child, was satisfied with the solution, “Even so, Father, for so it seems good in Thy sight”?

“Even so, Father!” Afflicted one! “tossed with tempest, and not comforted,” take that word on which thy