The Root of Sympathy

“For if any be a hearer of the Word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass. For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.” — James i. 23, 24.

I UNDERSTAND St. James to be speaking of the life of ministrant charity. Remember his definition of pure religion! — to visit the fatherless in their affliction. He says that what prevents a man from doing this is the forgetfulness of his own yesterday. He forgets what his own face was like before it was beautified. If he could keep in his eye the first vision of himself in the glass, he would be greatly more sympathetic to the wants of his brother. And is not James right in his view! I believe that the root of all sympathy is retrospect — the memory of our own deliverance. I do not think that the actual time of sorrow tends to make us sympathetic. No man can behold his natural face while it is natural; he can only see it as a memory. But if I forget what I was, if I remember not the mirror of my own past meanness, I have lost the chord of njy own compassion. It is worse to veil yesterday than to veil to-morrow. There are men who veil to-morrow, and it is sad; they have no golden dream to cheer their day. But to veil yesterday is to break the only glass that shows me my brother’s cross, to shatter the only mirror that reveals my sister’s pain.

Keep thy mirror, O my soul! It is the most precious bit of furniture in all thy house — the last thing that thou shouldst part with. It reminds thee of poorer days, but that is its glory. It is that which gives thee a heart for the poor. Thy gorgeous furniture may make thee glad, but it will not make another glad. How shalt thou read thy brother’s pain except on the former leaf of thine own book — the leaf which thou hast turned! Paul says that we behold in a glass the glory of the Lord. What glass? The same which James saw — the glass of yesterday. The glory of the Lord is Calvary, and the road to Calvary is sympathy, and the road to sympathy is yesterday. Thou must go back if thou wouldst lift thy brother s load. Back, then, O my soul! Back to the record of thine own humility! Back to the memory of thy moth and rust! Back to the sight of the ground out of which thou wert taken! Back to the vision of thy rags in the mirror of the past! The memory of thy rags shall be thy robe of righteousness, for he who redeems his brother is he who forgets not the shadow of his own morning.