“If thou art blest,
Then let the sunshine of thy gladness rest
On the dark edge of each cloud that lies
Black in thy brother’s skies.
If thou art sad,
Still be thou in thy brother’s gladness glad.”
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 far-away singer. The notes of speech come back echoing through the air. The cliff is sensitive to every wave of sound, and responds to it. 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 are 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 get 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 other, 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.
“Not pity gazing from a height
In shining and immaculate light,
Can touch the sorrow-stricken soul,
And make it glow with warmth again;
But love—’tis love can ease the pain,
‘Tis love can make the heart feel whole.”
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