"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."
Second Day.