The Book of Courage by John Thomson Faris (read dune TXT) 📕

It has been said that, while the word "sympathy" does not occur in the Bible, the idea is there; it is in bud in the Old Testament, but it is in full blossom in the New Testament. Christ was always sympathetic. He felt for the disturbed host at the wedding; His heart went out to Zaccheus; He wept with Mary and Martha; He listened to the plea of the blind and the lepers; He was deeply stirred as He saw the funeral procession of him who was the only son of his mother, a widow.

An eloquent preacher was talking to his people of this glorious flower of the Christian life. "Beholding the lily," he said, "sympathy breathes a prayer that no untimely frost may blight the blossom; beholding the sparrow, sympathy fills a box with seeds for the birds whose fall 'the Heavenly Father knoweth'; beholding some youth going forth to make his fortune, sympathy prays that favorable winds may fill these sails and waft the boy to fame and fortune. Do the happy youth and maiden stand before the marriage altar, the Christian breathes a prayer that love's flowers may never fall, and that 'those who are now young may grow old together.'"

One of the pleasing stories told of Richard Harding Davis, the writer and war correspondent, was of an incident when real sympathy transformed him.

In May, 1898, when the Massachusetts troops were about to go from Florida to Cuba, Mr. Davis entered the encampment as the men were saddened by the first death in the company. At once his cheerful face took on a subdued look. The next day proved to be "a broiling dry hot day which set the blood sizzling inside of one," but Davis tramped for two hours in the search of flowers. Then he learned that eight miles away he might secure some. Though no one was abroad who did not have to be, Mr. Davis started on a sixteen-mile horseback trip. Securing the flowers, he brought them back and made a cross of laths on which he tied them. Then came the search for colors to make the flag. Again he tramped a weary distance, but at last he found red, white and blue ribbon. That night he laid his tribute on the casket.

An American author who lived several generations before Davis was noted for his sympathetic attitude to the suffering. Richard Henry Dana was compelled when a young man to take a voyage around Cape Horn on a sailing ship. That classic of the sea, "Two Years Before the Mast," was one of the results of that experience. Another result was that when the author became a lawyer in Boston, his knowledge of ships made him a favorite advocate in nautical cases. His knowledge of the sufferings of the men before the mast, who were so often abused, was responsible for his taking their part in many an unprofitable case. He had learned by bitter experience what the sailors under a brutal captain had to suffer, and any mistreated seaman had in him a firm friend and a fearless pleader.

The truest sympathy comes from those who, like Dana, know what suffering means. An author in Scotland, who lived in Dana's generation, never heard of the American friend of seamen, but he had the same spirit, born of his own suffering. He was not accustomed to complain, and was always reticent in speaking of himself. Once, however, for the sake of a friend, he allowed himself to tell of his own life:

"With all your sorrows I sympathize from my heart," he wrote. "I have learned to do so through my own sufferings. The same feeling which made you put your hand into your pocket to search among the crumbs for the wanting coin for the beggar, leads me to search in my heart for some consolation for you. The last two years have been fraught to me with such sorrowful experiences that I would gladly exchange my condition for a peaceful grave. A bankrupt in health, hope and fortune, my constitution shattered frightfully, and the almost certain prospect of being a cripple for life before me, I can offer you as fervent and unselfish a sympathy as ever one heart offered another. I have lain awake, alone, and in darkness, suffering severe agony for hours, often thinking that the slightest aggravation must make my condition unbearable and finding my only consolation in murmuring to myself the words patience, courage and submission."

That, surely, is a part of what Robert Louis Stevenson meant when, as one element in his statement of the ideal for the perfect life, he named "to be kind." True kindness is impossible without sympathy.

So long as there is so much real sympathy in the world there can be no place for the maunderings of a pessimist. Every sight of a man, a woman or a child whose life is beautified by the outgoing of sympathy is an effective message of courage, of cheer, of hope.