Compassion in Christian preaching emphasizes active love and empathy toward those in need, reflecting Christ's heart for the hurting (Matthew 25:35-40). Illustrations often use vivid pictures of practical kindness—feeding the hungry, comforting the sorrowful, and bearing one another's burdens—to show how small acts of mercy embody God's grace and build bridges of reconciliation.
Mutual understanding leads to less conflict and more friendship between people.
If I knew you and you knew me-- If both of us could clearly see, And with an inner sight divine The meaning of your heart and mine, I’m sure that we would differ less And clasp our hands in friendliness; Our thoughts would pleasantly agree If I knew you and you knew me.
--NIXON WALTERMAN, _Epworth Herald_.
A son's self-sacrifice leads a king to abolish cannibalism, showing vicarious compassion.
See COMMUNICATION, PSYCHICAL.
VICARIOUS SACRIFICE
Dr. Turner, in his book on the Samoan Islands, tells the following incident:
The people were cannibals, the King, Mahetoa, leading in the horrible practise. His young son, Polu, hated the heathenish and brutal custom, and one day, when he saw a poor boy waiting to be killed and served as a tender morsel for the King’s dinner, he was touched with pity and said, “Don’t cry; I will try and save you.” So he drest himself in coconut leaves and had himself served just as tho he had been killed and roasted whole. The King came to the table, and looked down at the cannibal dish, saw two bright eyes looking up at him. He recognized his son, and the thought flashed through his heathen mind, “What if it were, indeed, my dear son, whose body had been cooked for my meal!” He was touched, too, by the magnanimity of his boy, taking the other lad’s place, and he abolished cannibalism by law from his kingdom from that day. (Text.)
Mrs. Fish’s courteous visit to a poor woman shows social strategy mixed with compassion.
Not all the strategy of life is on the fields of diplomacy or war.
An official tells a good story of the time when Hamilton Fish was Secretary of State. It had been said that Mrs. Fish sometimes carried her high ideas of courtesy too far--that it was Quixotic.
One of her rules, for instance, was to return every call she received. Her husband was continually holding public receptions, and to these, out of courtesy, many women would come who had no desire that Mrs. Fish should call upon them--who were in no position to receive her properly if she did call.
One such woman attended a Fish reception, left her card, and a little later was duly honored by a call from Mrs. Fish. The Fish equipage dashed down the narrow street and halted before the woman’s shabby little house. The footman opened the carriage door and Mrs. Fish descended.
The poor woman of the house was in a dreadful predicament. She was, alas, kneeling on the sidewalk beside a bucket of hot water. Her sleeves were rolled back. She had a scrubbing-brush in one hand and a cake of soap in the other. She was scrubbing the front steps.
Bending graciously over her, Mrs. Fish asked politely:
“Is Mrs. Henry Robinson at home?”
And Mrs. Henry Robinson replied: “No, mum, she ain’t,” and went on scrubbing.
Kindness contrasts harshness with compassion toward a suffering mother and crying baby on a train.
Several passengers on a hot day in June entered the train on the Columbia and Augusta Railroad. Among them were several young college boys who were on the way home from their summer vacation. They were stylish, well-drest lads, and were gay and happy, as boys usually are who have put books aside.
A party of merry girls already occupied the car, and in a little time the train seemed flooded with youth and sunshine. A very lean woman, with an ample lunch-basket, divided her time between eating chicken and boiled eggs and fanning vigorously with a turkey-tail fan, while a stout man in the corner mopped his face with a red bandanna, and remarked, by way of emphasis, “Hot, very hot!”
The girls and boys took in every incident, laughing and tittering all the while. Just across the aisle, opposite the boy, sat a woman holding a baby. A pale, tired, despairing look was on her face, and her eyes were full of suffering. The little one was fretful and cried piteously, but the young mother was too exhausted to try to quiet the baby.
“Oh, just listen to that young one. I think crying babies ought to be put out of the cars,” one of the girls said pertly.
“Yes, my head begins to ache,” said another, while the boys laughed; and the louder the child cried, the more merriment it caused among the young people; while the lean woman and the fat man scowled and complained.
“I do not see any cause for ridicule,” said Fred Weston, as he arose; and to the amazement of all the passengers, he crossed to where the woman sat, and with a courteous bow, extended his arms. “Please let me hold your baby a while,” he said; “I have a little sister just her age and she loves me dearly. You look so tired, ma’am.”
The child opened wide her big brown eyes and gazed into the handsome, bright face of the boy, as without hesitation she sprang forward into the outstretched arms. She ceased crying, and her lips puckered into a plaintive sob.
Motherly love comforts and soothes even orphaned animal cubs, showing deep compassion.
Louis Albert Banks tells of a man who killed a she bear and brought her young cubs home to train up as pets:
When they got to camp the motherless pets were put in a box and given something to eat; but eat they would not and yelp they would, making a distressing noise. He took a switch and whipt them, but they only cried the louder. At first every one was sorry for them; but by and by, as the crying was continued, everybody began to scold on account of the noise. He thought that on account of the noise they made he would have to kill them. At length, however, he brought the mother-bearskin, and covering this over something, he put it in a corner of the box. The men stept back so that they could see without being seen, and pretty soon each little cub had smelled the motherskin and had nestled up close to it as contented as could be, and soon they were sound asleep. (Text.)
True sympathy shows compassion for the lonely and rejected, like a motherless boy.
A little boy was riding in a street car, and, observing a kindly looking woman, he snuggled closely up to her, and unconsciously rubbed his dusty feet against her dress, when she leaned over to a woman on the other side of the little boy and said shortly, “Madam, will you kindly make your little boy take his feet off my dress?” The other woman said, “My boy? He isn’t my boy.” The little fellow squirmed uneasily, seemed to be greatly distrest, and looked disappointedly into the face of the woman who had disowned relationship to him. The woman whose attention had thus been called to the little boy presently observed that the child’s eyes were fastened upon her with a peculiarly wistful expression, and she said to him, “Are you going about alone?” “Yes, ma’am,” he replied, “I always go alone; father and mother are dead, and I live with Aunt Clara, and when she gets tired of me she sends me to Aunt Sarah, to stay as long as she will keep me; but they both tire of me so soon, I keep changing from one to the other; they don’t either of them care for little boys like me.” The woman’s heart was drawn to the motherless boy, and she said, “You are a very little boy to be traveling alone like this.” “Oh, I don’t mind,” said he, “only I get lonesome sometimes on these long trips, and when I see some one that I think I would like to belong to, I snuggle up close to her so that I can make believe I really do belong to her. This morning I was playing that I belonged to that other lady, and I forgot about my dirty shoes. But she would not let me belong to her. Do you like little boys?” The pitifulness of that appeal overcame all restraint of the woman’s feelings, and regardless of a car full of spectators, she put her arms around the tiny chap, hugged him close, and kissing him, said, “Yes, and I only wish you wanted to belong to me.” The boy looked at her with rapturous content, and replied, “I do.” And she said, “You shall,” and she adopted him.--JAMES T. WHITE, “Character Lessons.”
Modest generosity can be a quiet, personal act of kindness remembered long after.
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There is a beautiful incident connected with the fall of the stronghold of the Cumberland which General Grant was too modest to include in the “Memoirs.” Many years after the event, General Buckner, speaking at a Grant birthday gathering, said: “Under these circumstances I surrendered to General Grant. I had at a previous time befriended him, and it has been justly said that he never forgot an act of kindness. I met him on the boat (at the surrender), and he followed me when I went to my quarters. He left the officers of his own army and followed me, with that modest manner peculiar to him, into the shadow, and there he tendered me his purse. It seems to me that in the modesty of his nature he was afraid the light would witness that act of generosity, and sought to hide it from the world.”--Col. NICHOLAS SMITH, “Grant, the Man of Mystery.”
Following Christ’s example means generous forgiveness and restoration beyond mere fairness.
See ACKNOWLEDGMENT; HUMOR AND GENEROSITY; TACT.
GENEROSITY, CHRISTIAN
If business men generally followed the Golden Rule, after the example of Mr. Frank Crossley, the great promoter of London missions, as indicated below, what a different world this would soon become!
One unfortunate man who had put in one of Mr. Crossley’s engines, and found it too small, but was unable to replace it, and was threatened with bankruptcy, found in him a rare benefactor, who not only replaced the old engine by a new and larger one without charge, but actually made up to him the losses in his business which had resulted from his own blunder. That man said to a friend, “I have found a man who treated me just as Jesus Christ would have done!” (Text.)--PIERSON, “The Miracles of Missions.”
Friends secretly pay Henry Clay's debt, illustrating kindness and generosity in action.
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Henry Clay was at one time considerably distrest by a large debt due to the bank. Some of his friends heard of it, and quietly raised the money and paid off the entire indebtedness, without notifying Mr. Clay. In utter ignorance of what had been going on, he went to the bank one day, and addressing the cashier, said, “I have called to see you in reference to that debt of mine to the bank.”
“You don’t owe us anything,” was the reply.
Mr. Clay looked inquiringly, and said: “You don’t understand me. I came to see you about that debt which I am owing the bank.”
“You don’t owe us anything.”
“Why! how am I to understand you?”
“A number of your friends have contributed and paid off that debt, and you do not owe this bank one dollar.”
Tears rushed to Mr. Clay’s eyes, and, unable to speak, he turned and walked out of the bank.
Christian love and care can soften even the hardest hearts toward faith.
On one of the battle-fields of South Africa a young chaplain found a Highlander sorely wounded and with life ebbing quickly away. He asked him to allow him to pray, but the soldier said gruffly, “No, I don’t want prayers. I want water.” The chaplain secured, with great difficulty, some water, and then asked the refreshed man if he might read a psalm. “No,” said the soldier again. “I am too cold to listen to a psalm.” The chaplain instantly stript off his coat and wrapt it tenderly round the wounded soldier. And then, touched by the chaplain’s sympathy, the man turned and said, “Chaplain, if religion makes men like you, let’s have that psalm.” When Christians prove themselves loving and considerate for the sick and suffering, even the hardest heart melts.
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