Christ's Sympathy

“/ have compassion o?i the multitude, because they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat: and if I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way.” — Mark viii. 2, 3.

The compassion here displayed by the Son of Man is a pity for the common wants of men.

It is their common wants that here impress Him. He is not afraid for this multitude as to its spiritual condition; He knows that the men who compose it are intensely spiritual. But He fears that the very intenseness of their spiritual excitement has made them forget their temporal necessities. They have been enduring physical privation, but they have not felt it because their thoughts have been away from themselves; their thoughts and their eyes have been on Him. But He knows that the moment they shall lose sight of Him their physical privation shall exert itself; He knowTs that the moment He has sent them away from His presence they shall feel that physical want which they now have without feeling it, and His human heart bleeds for the human needs of man.

0 Thou Son of Man, in Thy religion alone is there hope for those who toil. Thou alone of all masters hast sympathy with the needs of the common day, with the wants of the passing hour. To all other masters the needs of the common day are ignoble, the wants of the passing hour are sin. The religions of men have uo sympathy with mau as man; they call on him to leave the world, they frown upon his struggles for the perishable bread. But Thou hast compassion on the prosaic toilers of life. Thou hast compassion on those who are fasting by the way, and. who have no spiritual vision to break their fast. Thou hast compassion on the crowd in which each man is alone — alone with his solitary battle, alone with his poverty and care. Thou hast taken up the cross of them that labour, and hast claimed it for Thine own. Thou hast identified Thine interest with the cry of struggling millions: “Give us this day our daily bread.”