The Sick-Room of Humanity

Could ye not watch with me one hour?” — Matthew XXVI. 40.

It is one of the surprises of Jesus; He marvels at man’s inhumanity to man. I take the idea to be what would be represented in our day by one nurse asking the co-operation of another. I do not think Christ regards Himself as the patient. The patient is humanity. Christ is watching by the bed of humanity; He is the head nurse in the great Hospital of Time. He asks the disciples to share in His watching. It is rather sympathy with His cause He desires than pity for Himself. It is not because He is personally weary that He asks their co-operation; it is because the patient is sick. He wants them to have a share in the duty, because the duty is in His sight a privilege. It is to Him a miracle that man does not feel the privilege. There is no violation of law so miraculous to Him as the violation of human sympathy. The miracle in our world is a man walking on the sea. The miracle in His world is a man not walking on the sea, not in sympathy with the sorrows of his kind. What He asks is in the meantime simple sympathy, nothing but watching. There are times in the sick-room when we can do nothing but watch the patient. So was it with the Son of man in the hour of His flesh. His heart was broken by the torrent He could not stem. He could only pace the wards, and feel the pulse of the sufferer, and ask, with breathless interest, “Watchman, what of the night? ‘”

There was none to answer Thy question, O Lord. There was no fellow watcher to give the response. The guardians of the sick had fallen asleep; Thou wert treading the hospital alone. Am I not responsible for Thy loneliness! I was put to watch beside Thee, and I fell asleep. If the spirit had been more willing, the flesh would have been less weak. I had not love enough to keep awake, not interest enough to conquer drowsiness. Revive my love, revive my interest, O Christ! Give me the sense of relationship to the patient, Thy sense of relationship. Let me feel that he is a member of my body as he is of Thine! It is the sense ot being a hireling that makes me sleep; I am paid for so many hours, and I want to get them through. Give me that thing which no hire can satisfy — love! Give me that which sleeps not when its object is in peril! Give me that which makes the night even as the day in time of trouble! Give me that which all the flowers of the garden cannot tempt me to forget! Give me that which could impel even Thee to be emptied of Thy majesty and take a servant’s form! So shall I sleep not in the crisis hour; so in the wards of trouble shall I watch with Thee.