Hurting the Lives of Others

“The elm was broken after many years;

The great trunk yielded when it seemed most sound;

And, while its wreck yet trembled on the ground, A curious man, putting aside all fears, Found in the wood fragments of broken spears

A lad had cast there in his round

Of boyish fun. He thought: ‘The strength profound Of Nature’s life, which every spring uprears The tiny bud and cares for each small leaf,

Nursed well these wounds, the tree grew sturdily.*

One answered: ‘Love’s hand, drawing out the steel, Had outweighed years in its prompt service brief:

A weak place in the heart of man and tree

Leaves he who waits for time such wounds to heal.’”

Charles N. Sinnett.

It seems to have been the nurse’s fault. Perhaps she was only careless. However it may have been, the maiming that came to the child that day was something he never got over. Down along the years we see a man lame, so lame that he had to be carried about by attendants, — crippled, unable even to walk, because that day the nurse tripped and fell with the baby. No doubt there are many people continually in the world who carry scars and injuries which mar their usefulness and cause them suffering or loss, simply through the negligence of those who in childhood were set as their guardians and protectors.

But there are other hurts besides bodily ones, which come to people’s lives through the fault of others. There are woundings of children’s minds which stunt or cripple them all their days, limiting or marring their development and hindering their usefulness. There are marrings of character which leave child-life distorted, wounded, scarred, deformed, sending men and women into the world unfitted for duty; to be a curse, not a blessing; to do harm, not good, to their fellows all their days. There are maimings of immortal souls in the cradle, in the home, in the school, which leave their sad mark on lives for all eternity.

George MacDonald says, “If I can put one touch of a rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.” That is very beautiful: but suppose it be not a touch of rosy sunset, but a touch of wounding, of marring, of defiling, that we put into a life, — have we not wrought with the enemy of souls, in the harming of immortalities?

We all know, too, that it is easier to do harm than good to other lives. There is a quality in the human soul which makes it take more readily, and retain more permanently, touches of sin than touches of holiness. Among the ruins of some old temple there was found a slab which bore very faintly and dimly the image of the king, and in deep, clear indentations the print of a dog’s foot. So human lives are apt to take less deeply the image of the Father’s face, and more ineffaceably the impressions of evil things. It needs, therefore, in us, infinite carefulness and watchfulness as we walk ever amid other lives, lest by some word, or look, or act, or disposition, or influence of ours, we hurt them irreparably.

The lesson touches home-life. It is a sad thing if we stumble with our children in our arms, and maim them. It is sad if the harm be only in their bodies, making them lame or infirm through all their years; but it is sadder still when their characters are marred through faulty education or training; when they are sent into life unfitted for its duties, unprepared for meeting its responsibilities, only to fail in its struggles, because we were negligent in our training of them. Saddest of all is it when by sinful example, or by the lack of religious culture, we maim their souls, wound or scar their spiritual natures, and send them, moral cripples, into life. Greatest of crimes is the hurting of a child’s soul.

But parents are not the only persons who may harm the lives of others. There is not a fallen life anywhere in the depths of sin and shame that once was not innocent and beautiful. Somebody whispered the first unholy thought in the unguarded ear. Somebody started the first suggestion of evil and kindled the first wrong desire in the breast. Somebody led the unwary feet into the first steps of wandering. Somebody first caused Christ’s little one to stumble, and after that, through all the years, the life was misshapen. There is always a first tempter, one who causes the innocent to stumble. The tempter may go his way, and may walk among honorable men with no brand upon his brow, with no finger pointed at him, while the victim of his tempting moves in weakness and sadness toward deeper shame and utter ruin. Society is full of such moral tragedies. But God does not forget. The hidden things shall be brought to light. The maiming or hurting of a soul, though no man know now whose the sad work is, some day will reveal its own story. Its secret will be declared in the glare of noon. It is stated that within ten years a certain merchant in a great city lost six book-keepers by death. He could not understand the strange fatality attending these young men. The symptoms were similar in all the cases, and all the men finally died of consumption. An investigation at last convinced the merchant that the room in which the book-keepers worked was unhealthy. It was a small office in the back part of the building, into which no sunlight ever came. The merchant then prepared another room, high up in his store, where the sunlight streamed in all day, and almost instantly the health of his men became better. Unconsciously he had been committing a sore wrong against the lives of his clerks. We may say this was only a bodily hurt; but does God not care for our bodies? Is it no sin to injure the health of another, to send men and women down their years with broken constitutions, unable for the tasks and duties that God assigns to them? Is there not a commandment against murdering the body?

The time must come when the law of Christian love shall assert its sway over all the relations of life. Employers must recognize it, and must treat every man, woman, and child in their service as a child of God. Business must recognize it, and the Golden Rule must become its basis, instead of the hard, soulless, godless, grinding law of greed and gain, which yet in too many establishments has sway. Men cannot afford to get rich by oppressing the hireling in his wages, by grinding the poor into the dust, by doing injustice to the least of God’s little ones. With the New Testament in our hand, containing the Sermon on the Mount, the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, and the thirteenth of First Corinthians, we dare not forget that all men are brethren, and that he who hurts the least or the weakest hurts Christ himself, and smites God in the face. There is need for very plain teaching all along the line of the great burning question of capital and labor. Men must learn that money which comes into their hands through the slightest wronging or harming of another life brings a curse with it. Or an employee may be unjust to his employer, and the law applies equally to him. There are not two gospels, one for capital and another for labor, and none are exempt from the law of love.

We may hurt our neighbors in many ways. We may do injury to their business, to their influence, to their good name. We may treat them rudely, unkindly, or we may do them harm by neglecting to do the good we owe to them. “I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink.” All about us are human needs which are silent prayers to us for help. We may shut our eyes, if we will, and say it is no affair of ours, and these suffering or imperilled ones may go down in the current, while we go on in our busy life and prosper. But we cannot thus get rid of the responsibility. They are our brethren, these hurt ones. Christ died for them. To pass them by is to pass him by. “Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.”

Then the lesson has another side. It is not enough that we do not hurt the lives of others; we must do the part of Christ in healing the hurts which have already been given. Everywhere they move, — children with pinched faces and sad eyes; young people wounded in their souls by sin, victims of evil habits; lives crippled and maimed; the poor, hurt by man’s oppression and greed.

A workman with a gentle heart told recently, with pathetic detail, how he had once saved the life of his canary-bird. The bird had escaped from its cage into the room, and had flown against the surface of some boiling water. There seemed little hope of saving the poor suffering creature. But this kindlyman quickly applied soothing remedies, and, with womanly gentleness, nursed the bird for many weeks, until at last he saw it fully restored, and heard again its sweet songs.

That is like Christ, who did not break a bruised reed. That is what we should do in Christ’s name with the hurt lives about us, whether hurt by the wrong of others or by their own sin. We should pray for gentleness, — nothing but gentleness can perform such holy ministry. Then we should seek to be restorers of lives that are wounded or bruised. That is Christlikeness.

“He hears one’s life-blood dripping
Through the maddest, merriest hour;
He knows what sackcloth and ashes hide in the purple of
power.

The broken wing of the swallow
He binds in the middle air.”