Chapter 10 The Cost and Worth
of Sympathy The true nature of sympathy is not always understood. It is more than tears, which
often lie near the surface and flow easily at the touch of any
external experience. Some natures are wonderfully
sensitive to the expressions of joy or sorrow in other lives. You stand before a cliff, and
in responsive echo every sound that is made beside you comes
back to your ear. If a child cries, the cliff sobs
back. The murmur of a soft song returns
again, like a melody sung by some faraway singer. The notes
of speech come back, echoing through the air. The cliff is
sensitive to every wave of sound, and responds to it. Just so,
there are human hearts that are similarly sensitive to every
touch of human experience that plays upon them. They are so
full of emotion that they respond to every note of joy or sorrow
that strikes their chords. They echo back the merry laughter,
the voice of tenderness, the wail of sorrow. But they're nothing
more than echoes. Only from their surface do they
reflect the tones of other lives. No depths are stirred. They know
nothing of sympathy. Sympathy is more than an echo. Its background is individual
experience. Strength is not enough for this
ministry of sympathy, even the purest, noblest, most majestic
strength. It must have passed through the
fires of suffering or of struggle to attain the fineness and delicacy
required for this sacred work. Moral uprightness and purity
are not enough. Unchastened, even these divine
qualities are too cold to render the service that sad and weary
hearts need in their loneliness and weakness. Even the purest
holiness must be swept through by the thrills of pain before
it can understand the experience of pain in others and be made
capable of feeling with them in their weakness and suffering.
One may have pity without knowing anything of the experience of
the condition which appeals to him, but pity is not sympathy. Holy angels can pity the sons
of men in their sore need, but in their lofty heights of unfallen
purity they cannot sympathize with us mortals. Even Christ
was not fitted to sympathize with men until he had entered
into human flesh and lived an actual human life. One would
say that his divine omniscience certainly qualified him for sympathy. He knew already every phase of
experience, in the sense that his eyes saw into every nook
and cranny of every human heart, and discerned and understood
every play of emotion, every struggle, every pain. Yet his
omniscience did not prepare him for true sympathy. He must become
a man. Nor was that enough. He might
have taken humanity upon him and then passed at once with
it into the glory of heaven. But he must live an actual human
life. His nature must be enriched by
experience. He must know life not merely
by his omniscience, but by having passed through it himself. This
is the background of the precious doctrine of Christly sympathy. Christ was tempted in all points,
and therefore he can be touched by the feeling of our infirmities.
No matter what the phase of trial or struggle on which he looks
down upon the earth, he can say, I understand that. At Galilee,
or at Bethany, or in the wilderness, or in Gethsemane, or on Calvary,
I passed through that same phase of experience. So even the tenderest
human life, the one most responsive to external emotional influences,
cannot truly sympathize with our lives until it has been enriched
by experiences of its own. The young man brought up in a
sequestered home, away from the mad excitements of the world,
cannot understand nor sympathize with the struggles of the man
who's wrestling with the sore temptations of a great city.
The young woman who's never herself suffered, who's never had a wish
ungratified nor a hope thwarted, nor has ever endured a pang or
a grief, is not fitted to sit down beside a sister-woman in
sore agony over a shattered joy or a crushed hope, and really
understand her feelings, or enter into actual sympathy with her. Everyone knows how fruit ripens. There are a thousand influences
that play upon it all the summer through, influences of climate,
of sun and rain, of cold and heat, of darkness and light. Some fruits wait, too, for the
frosts of autumn to come to complete the process of ripening. In some
such way, human life ripens. There are countless influences,
trial, joy, struggle, hardship, toil, ease, prosperity, adversity,
success, failure, and at last the character is mellow and gentle. Elderly people understand this.
Disappointments, bereavements, anxieties, tender joys, the deep
flowering of the heart by afflictions, and all the diversified experiences
of threescore or fourscore years, how they enrich the heart that
is held all the while close to Christ under the warmth of His
love. This is one of the blessed qualities
of a ripe and beautiful Christian old age that we sometimes overlook
or underestimate. How much the aged know about
life, if they have lived it well. What a power of helpfulness such
an enriching puts into their hearts! No ministry in this world
is finer than that of those who've learned life's secrets in the
school of experience, and then go about inspiring, strengthening,
and guiding younger souls who come after them. A heart thus
disciplined is prepared for sympathy in the deepest, truest sense. It needs no labored words of
explanation to enable it to understand the stress and strain of trial,
the bitterness of sorrow, or the burden of infirmity. It has
felt the same, and now is deeply moved by the experience on which
it looks. Sympathy is a wonderful thing.
It has a strange and mighty power of inspiration in it. How strong
it makes us to go on with our work. to know that others care
for us and are interested in us. There's something in the
simple touch of a friendly hand, or the look of a kindly eye,
or the emotion that plays on an earnest face, that sends a
quickening thrill through our souls. When one is in deep sorrow,
How is he strengthened to bear it by feeling the pressure of
a warm clasp, which tells him, better than any words could do,
of sincere sympathy? It cannot bring back his dead.
It cannot restore the shattered idol. It cannot calm the storm
that's raging about him. It cannot remove a straw of the
burden, nor eliminate one line of the chapter of grief. But
there is another human heart close by that feels for him.
There is a loving presence creeping up in the darkness close beside
him. There is companionship. He is
not alone. And this blessed consciousness
makes him strong. A little token of love sent into
your sick room from some gentle hand when human presences are
shut out, telling of a heart outside that thinks about you.
What a messenger of gladness it is! No angel's visit could
be more welcome or more comforting. There is a story of a prisoner
who had received nothing but severity in his prison life.
knew nothing of human tenderness. One day a kindly man visited
him and spoke brotherly words, manifesting a sincere and hearty
interest in him. It was a new and strange experience,
and after the man had gone away he said, I can stay here now. For I know there's one man, at
least in the great world outside, who cares for me and has an interest
in me. And that consciousness cheered
and brightened for many days the gloom of his lonely incarceration. Life is full of similar illustrations. If we would then be fitted for
this blessed ministry, We must be content to learn in the school
of experience. Even Christ learned by the things
he suffered. Angels are not fitted for sympathy,
for they know nothing about human life. In a picture by Domenichino,
there's an angel standing by the empty cross, touching with
his finger one of the sharp points in the thorn crown which the
Savior had worn. On his face there is the strangest
bewilderment. He's trying to make out the mystery
of sorrow. He knows nothing of suffering,
for he has never suffered. There's nothing in the angel
nature or in the angel life to interpret struggle or pain. The same is just as true of untried
human life. If we would be sons of consolation,
our natures must be enriched by experience. We are not naturally
gentle to all men. There is a harshness in us that
needs to be mellowed. Human uprightness, undisciplined,
is apt to be stern and severe, even uncharitable, toward weakness. We're apt to be heedless of the
feelings of others, to forget how many hearts are sore and
carry heavy burdens. We have no sympathy with infirmity,
because we do not know from experience what it means. We are not gentle
towards sorrow, because our own hearts never have been ploughed.
We give constant pain to sensitive hearts by word and act, because
we have not learned that gentle delicacy and thoughtful tenderness
which can be learned only through the careless wounding of our
own feelings by others. These are lessons we can learn
in no school but that of personal experience. The best universities
cannot teach us the divine art of sympathy. We must walk in
the deep valleys ourselves, and then we can be guides to other
souls. We must feel the strain and carry
the burden and endure the struggle ourselves, and then we can be
touched and give help to others in life's sore stress and poignant
need.