Compassion
Compassion
I found this little old book in a dusty corner of a used book store in
Bangor, Maine. It is a treasure and I have never seen another copy. I
couldn't help but want to share it. My favorite line is, The faintest
cry of misery arrested His footsteps-
The Mind of Jesus by Anonymous "Compassion" c. 1855
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 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
widows 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 Savior find
any feeble echo and transcript in yours? As you traverse in thought
the wastes of human wretchedness, does the spectacle 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, 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 love 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 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." |