Sympathy

“The heart knoweth his own bitterness: and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy.”- -xiv 10.

THE two extreme experiences of a human heart, which comprehend all others between them, are “bitterness” and “joy.” The solitude of a human being in either extremity is sublime and solemnizing. Whether you are glad or grieved, you must be alone: the bitterness and the joyfulness are both your own: it is only in a modified sense, and in a limited measure, that you can share them with another, so as to have less of them yourself. We speak of sympathy, and sympathy means community of emotions between two human hearts. Doubtless there is a reality corresponding to that attractive name, but the share which another takes is a thin shadowy thing in comparison with the substantive experience of your own soul. A physical burden can be divided equally between two. If you overtake a weary pilgrim on the way, toiling beneath a load of a hundred pounds weight, you may volunteer to bear fifty of them for the remaining part of the journey, and so lighten his load by a full half. But a light heart, however willing it may be, cannot so relieve a heavy one. The cares that press upon the spirit are as real as the load that lies on the back, and as burdensome; but they are not so tangible and divisible. We speak of sharing them by sympathy, and there is some meaning in the words, some reality in the act; but the participation in kind and effect comes far short of the actual partition of material weight. The law of our nature in the last resort is, “Every man must bear his own burden.” The weight that falls upon my body may be divided with you, but the weight that falls on my soul must lie all on my soul alone.

There are, indeed, some very intimate unions in human society, as organized by God, and existing even yet in a fallen world. The family relations bring heart into very close contact with heart, and joys or sorrows that abound in one flow freely over into another. The closest of them all, the two “no longer twain, but one flesh,” is a union of unspeakable value for such sympathy as is compatible with distinct personality at all; but when you estimate this union at its highest value, and take it all into account, there remains a meaning, deep and wide like the ocean, in this one touching word, “The heart knoweth his own bitterness.” The wife of your bosom can indeed intermeddle with your joys and sorrows as no stranger can, and yet there are depths of both in your breast which even she has no line to sound. When you step into the waters of life’s last sorrow, even she must stand back and remain behind. Each must go forward alone. The Indian suttee seems nature’s struggle against that fixed necessity of man’s condition. But it is a vain oblation: although the wife burn on the husband’s funeral pile, the frantic deed does not lighten the solitude of the dark valley. One human being cannot be merged in another.

But the isolation of every man from his fellow in the hour of extremity may become the means of pressing the sufferer nearer another companion, who is able even then to remain. “There is a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” Such is the person of Emmanuel, God with us, that the spiritual life of a believer is not a separate existence, but a part of His. As a branch in the vine, or a member in the body, so is a disciple in the Lord: the Christian is one with Christ in such a way as no human spirit can be with another. When the fangs of the persecutor vexed the life of his little ones, the pain throbbed that moment in the heart of Jesus: the Head on high cried out when the enemy hurt His member, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me ]” Only Christ’s sympathy is real and complete. He who suffered for our sins can make himself partaker of our sorrows. He who went through the wrath of God to make a safe path for his people, is able to keep them company in the swelling of Jordan. Long ago they saw His day, and rejoiced in His perfect sympathy. “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me” (Ps. xxiii. 4).