The following quote has been very difficult for me to understand, but as I re-read it and considered it, I drew from it my conclusions. I will paste my interpretation of it first, and then post the original quote by James Martineau. I found it very insightful.

 How does God work in us to heighten our concern for the poor, oppressed and suffering world? Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, "While we perpetually aim at the attainment of sated and contented feelings, we must be conscious that these belong to the lowest condition of the mind; that they unite us with the drowsy state of inactivity of animals that have only to eat and be filled; and that in our inability to realize this aim, of being filled with contentment, we realize disappointments ever renewed, thoughts and affections ever transcending all our possibilities, and it causes a noble unrest which leads us to the progressive goodness, the immortal capacities, of our nature, interpreting in us the moral creature of God.

By assigning to us the hard conflict with various necessities, by filling us with conceptions that press with vehement and often agonizing protest, against the limits that confine them, by giving us an understanding that wanders beyond the allotted light, a moral sense that overpasses all practicable achievement, a mutual love that reaches further than the longest term of human years, God has taken the solid ground of rest from beneath us, and dropped us into the midnight immensity in which he dwells."

Here is the original quote, you may come to a different conclusion, but either way, it will make you think. 

   "While we perpetually aim at the attainment of sated and contented feelings, we must be conscious that these belong to the lowest condition of the mind; that they ally us to the drowsy quiescence of creatures that have only to eat and be filled; and that in our inability to realize this aim, in disappointment ever renewed, in thoughts and affections ever transcending all our possibilities, consist all the noble unrest, the progressive goodness, the immortal capacities, of our nature, rendering it the creator of poetry, and the moral creature of God. By assigning to us the hard conflict with various necessities, by filling us with conceptions that press with vehement and often agonizing remonstrance, against the limits that confine them, by giving us an understanding that wanders beyond the allotted light, a moral sense that overpasses all practicable achievement, a mutual love that reaches further than the longest term of human years, God has taken the solid ground of rest from beneath us, and dropped us into the midnight immensity in which he dwells."