Saturday, December 09, 2017

Humane love


I've never read anything that explains the feelings of compassion that Christ graces the heart with like this piece. Words have always failed me when trying to explain the movements of compassion within us; but this piece puts those godly emotions to words as well as mere mortals can.

Compassion

  "There is a humane love, which constitutes the humblest and most frequent form of unselfish feeling. It finds its objects among the miserable, and attaches itself to them in proportion to their woes. 
In human pity there is a strange combination of repulsion and attraction, which it is the paradox of philosophy to explain, and the mercy of God to ordain: it cannot endure the sight of wretchedness, and yet can never leave it. To no ear are the cries of anguish so piercing; yet it hovers within the circle where they wander, and flies to the center whence they come. To no eye does manhood struck down in its strength and wasting on its bed, or the child decrepid with hunger and neglect, or the wife deserted and broken beneath the burden of life, present a sight so sad; but this compassion is fascinated to the spot, and lives amid the haunts it dreads. To stop that ear, to shut that eye, would seem to give an easy promise of relief; nor is there anything to hinder except that they would cease to be the organs of humanity, and would be degraded into the instruments of selfishness: and so, it is no more possible to get them closed, than to persuade the sobbing child to put aside the story that draws forth its tears." James Martineau.



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