"Sweet sensibility! thou keen delight! Unprompted moral! sudden sense of right! Perception exquisite! fair virtue's seed! Thou quick precursor of the liberal deed! Thou hasty conscience! reason's blushing morn! Instinctive kindness, ere reflection's born! Prompt sense of equity! to thee belongs The swift redress of unexamined wrongs! Eager to serve, the cause perhaps untried, But always apt to choose the suffering side!" Where shall we find a more exquisite picture of home-sympathy than this, from the pen of that truly pious woman, Hannah More! We consider the home-sympathy as an argument against the neglect and abuse of the nursery. It is the instinctive impulse of the parent's heart to be faithful to the trust of home. What mother, prompted by such sympathy, can be recreant to the duties of her household? Can she, keenly sensible to the danger of her children, anxious for their welfare, prompt to do them justice, eager to procure them interests and joys, yearning to alleviate their misfortunes, push them from her arms, and give them over to the care of unfeeling and immoral nurses? If among all the members of the Christian home "There is a holy tenderness, then the law of sympathy is the standard of faithfulness to the loved ones of home, and its violation is an abuse of the affections and faith of the heart. We shall now consider the natural and spiritual sympathy of home. What are the natural elements of home-sympathy? The original meaning of sympathy is "harmony of the affections." As such it is an instinctive element of human nature. "Sympathy," says Adams in his Elements of Christian Science, "is a natural harmony by which, upon matters especially that concern the affections, one human being shall, under certain conditions, feel, feel in despite of all concealment of language, the real state of the other." It is, in a word, that law of our nature which makes the feeling of one become affected in the same way as are the feelings of another, so that, in obedience to this law, "we rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep with them that weep." In order to this the motive need not be the same in those in whom the feeling is the same; for that feeling engenders a feeling of its own kind in the other, independent of similar motive. Home-sympathy is that primary power of the heart by which all the affections of one member are extended to all the other members. It awakens in each for all the others, those delicate sensibilities which impel to the most self-denying and benevolent acts. The parent who sympathizes with the child, will extend to it all the aids within a parent's ability. Its nature is to yield more of itself to weeping than to rejoicing, to misery than to joy. The parent will exert more power and do more for the wretched child than for those of his children who are not in the same condition. He will leave the latter in their security, and seek the one lost sheep of his little flock. Thus it exerts a sheltering influence against the dangers and miseries of human life. It is the law of home-preservation, written upon the heart, obeyed by the affections, and impelling each member to yield a voluntary devotion to the welfare of all the others. It is this which makes it one of the most lovely attributes of home. It is one of the golden chains that link its members together in close unity, making one heart of the many that are thus fused together, and blending into beautiful unison their specific feelings, and hopes and interests. It is, therefore, the law of oneness in the family, weaving together, like warp and woof, the existence of the members, and locking each heart into one great home-heart, "like the keys of an organ vast," so that if one heart be out of tune, the home-heart feels the painful jar, and gives forth discordant sounds. By it we are not only bound to our kindred, but to our friends, our nation, our race. It impels us to all our acts of benevolence even to an enemy. Earth would be a dreary scene, and society would be a curse, if it did not reign in human nature. Sympathy was a rich and interesting theme with the ancients. It entered into all their philosophy and religion, and gave rise to numerous fables. They believed that sympathy was a miraculous principle, and that it reigned in irrational and inanimate things. Thus they thought that "two harps being tuned alike, and one being played, the chords of the other would follow the tune with a faint, sympathetic music." It was also believed that precious stones sympathized with certain persons, that the stars sympathized with men, that the efficacy of ointment depended upon sympathy, that "wounds could be healed at a distance by an ointment whose force depended upon sympathy, the ointment being smeared upon the weapon, not upon the wound." Upon this belief many erroneous, superstitious and dangerous systems of philosophy and religion were established. The natural philosophy of Baptista Porta, or Albertus Magnus, was founded upon the principle of sympathy. Plato applied this principle to marriage, and maintained that "marriage was the union of two souls that once, in their preexistent state, were one, and that sympathy urges them to union again, and sends them unconsciously seeking it over the world." In the middle ages it was maintained that two friends could be so moved with mutual sympathy as to have, under certain conditions, a true and perfect knowledge of one another's state, even when at a great distance apart. To the revival of this erroneous view of the law of sympathy may be ascribed the theories of Mesmerism and spiritual rappings at the present day. Home-sympathy, viewed as a feeling and a faculty, is twofold in its nature, viz., passive and active. As passive, it is the mere sense of harmony of feeling among all the members, producing the idea and feeling of the oneness of home. It makes a unity of affection, so that the temper, hopes and interests of each member have a living echo and response in all the others. It gives to home its unitive heart, preserves its vital coherence, fuses all the hearts together, makes each a thread in the web of home-being, where each finds its true measure, is inspired with the home-feeling when all is right, and oppressed with home-sickness when separated from it. But home-sympathy is also active. As such it is "the active power that one person has naturally of entering into the feelings of another, and being himself affected as that other is." Each member of home has the power in his feelings of making the feelings of all the other members his own, though he may not have the causes of the feelings of the one with whom he sympathizes. Thus one friend may feel the grief of another, actually and really, though he may not suffer the loss of that friend. He can make the emotion which that loss caused, his own. We may weep with the mother who pours her floods of anguish upon the grave of her child, though we may not have sustained the same loss. The husband weeps with his wife, though he may not be able to feel the pangs which penetrate her heart. The child can enter into the feelings of the parent, and be affected to tears or to joy by them. And thus the home-sympathy demands that all the emotions of home, whether joyful or painful, must affect all, -- must vibrate from heart to heart. It involves the power of home-transference, by which, each member conveys to his own affections, all within home. It is thus the law of adaptation and assimilation, for the home-affections. In obedience to this law the hearts and interests of the members are bound up in beautiful harmony. The necessities of one are supplied by all. It is this which makes the members faithful to each other, and prompts them to deeds of disinterested love. It is, therefore, only when the home-sympathy, as a feeling and a faculty, is carried out and acted upon according to its instinctive impulses, that it becomes an effective agent of good. This, however, is not always done. Often it is neutralized by not being permitted to express itself according to the laws of its own operation. Many members have acute feelings and great powers of sympathy, but it exists in them only as feeling, only as a stimulus, a sentiment, and is, therefore, nothing but home-sentimentalism, -- a disease of home-sympathy. Thus, for instance, parents may weep over the wickedness of their children, and the pious wife may lament the impenitence of her husband; but if they go no further, their sympathy is really false, because it does not share in and feel the state of others, nor seek to alleviate their impending miseries. The home-sympathy is not simply the look of the priest and Levite upon the half-dead traveler, but also the help of the good Samaritan. Its language is not only, "Be ye clothed and fed," but also, "I will clothe and feed thee." The mere indulgence in the feeling of sympathy is but to harden the heart in the end. Such were the sympathies of Rosseau, -- mere heart-stimuli, without legitimate deeds and objective force, existing only as a love-sick sentiment. And this was both the theme of his eloquence and the cause of his misery. Such, too, were the sympathies of Robespierre, -- a mere ebullition of disembodied sentiment, borne up like a floating bubble upon muddy waters, and exploding upon the slightest depression. But, on the other hand, when home-sympathy is issued in faithful action as its emotions prompt, it becomes an efficient agent in the happiness and peace of the family. It not only gives eloquence to the tongue, tears to the eye, but faithfulness to the life. It serves as a key-note to the mind and heart, framing the home-energy, revealing to us our real state, and prompting, by the instinct of love, the means for our highest welfare. "How glows the joyous parent to descry, Sympathy is excited and measured by the power of natural affection. In proportion to the strength of the latter will be the attractive power of the former. That soothing voice which calms the wailing-infant; that fond bosom from which the child draws its subsistence, and on which it pillows its weary head; that smile which throws a sunshine around its existence, and all those acts of kindness administered by the hand of love, draw the child instinctively to the parent's heart, and blend in sweetest union its very being with theirs. The principle of home-sympathy reigns in some degree in every household whose members have not sunk below the level of the brute. Its nature demands that it be mutual. It should glow with peculiar warmth in the wife, the mother, and the sister; because it is a more prominent instinct of woman. It is an intuition of the mother's heart. "When pain and anguish wring the brow, Who but she can smooth the pillow and soothe the anguish of the child of affliction? There is a tenderness in her nature, a softness in her touch, a lightness in her step, a soothing expression in her face, a tender beam in her eye, which man can never have, and which eminently fits her for the lead in home-sympathy. The want of it is a libel upon her sex. It is her prerogative, -- the magic power she wields in the formation and reformation of character. But her sympathy should find response in the bosom of her husband, the father, the brother; for, if true, it must he mutual. Their joys and their sorrows must be common. Thus heart must answer to heart, and face. "The cruelty of that man," says J.A. James, "wants a name, and I know of none sufficiently emphatic, who denies his sympathy to a suffering woman, whose only sin is a broken constitution, and whose calamity is the result of her marriage." Without such mutual sympathy, the members of the family would be cold and repulsive, and society would be deprived of its most lovely attributes; its members would lose the connecting link which brings them together, and its entire fabric would fall to pieces and degenerate into barbaric individualism. "Had earth no sympathy, no tears would flow, We shall now consider briefly the religious elements of home-sympathy. These involve harmony of the spiritual affections, and a transfer to all the members, of the religious experience and enjoyment of each. As natural sympathy arises out of and is measured by natural affection, so spiritual sympathy is the product of faith and love. Hence the latter is purer, more refined and efficient than the former. If the members of the family are the children of God, they will live together in the unity of the Spirit as well as of natural affection. The sympathy of the pious portion will be interposed in behalf of the salvation of the impenitent members. There will be an identity of soul-interest. The pious mother will make the everlasting interests of her husband and child, her own; and will labor with the same assiduity to promote them as she does to promote her own salvation. She will thus enter into the spiritual emotions of her kindred, and bear them vicariously, making thus her religious sympathies the law of preservation to all the members of her household. The living stream of this sympathy is given by Christ in His address to the weeping daughters of Jerusalem: "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children!" The following is also its living utterance: "My son, if thy heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even mine." We have also a beautiful exhibition of it in the touching history of Ruth, in the life of Joseph, and in the mother of Samuel. Peter describes it when he says, "Be all of one mind, having compassion one of another; love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous." Esther expresses it in the exclamation, "How can I endure to see the destruction of my kindred!" Paul gives utterance to it when he says, "I would be accursed for my brethren and kindred's sake." Jesus exemplifies it in His intercourse with the family of Lazarus; He shows its emotion and its active charities when He stands on the grave of that friend, and weeps, and calls him from the dead. His sympathy for a lost world is the true pattern of home-sympathy. It was disinterested, superior to all selfishness, self-denying, active, and prompting Him to do and suffer all that He did. It was not measured by the merits of the object after which it yearned. He sympathized with all, "For each He had a brother's interest in His heart." And its softening influence fell, like morning dew, upon the heart of adamant, melting it into contrition and love. "In every pang that rends the heart, See Him bend over the bed of Jairus's daughter; see Him opening the eyes of the blind, healing the paralytic, comforting and feeding the poor widow, and cheering the bereaved and troubled heart. Wherever He went He was "a brother born for them in adversity." See Him on the cross, when weltering in blood and struggling with the pangs of a cruel death, He casts His languid eye upon His aged mother who is there weeping her pungent woes, and makes provision for her comfort. His sympathy now for all is the same. "None ever came unblest away; It is this sympathy which makes Him a member of every Christian home. And when the sympathy of its members is the reproduction of His, they will, like Mary, sit in loving pupilage at His feet, each becoming the agent of blessings for all the rest. The wife will seek the salvation of her husband; the mother will labor with unwearied diligence for the redemption of her child. Thus when home-sympathy is purified and developed by Christian faith and love, it opens up the most elevated of all home-feeling and solicitude, and becomes the most effectual safeguard against impending ruin. No family can be true to its privileges and mission without it. It allures to the cross, leads all the members in the path of the sympathizing one, and prompts them to say, "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me." What would the Christian home be, therefore, without such sympathy? Powerless, amoral desolation! We read in God's Word, of men losing natural affection, and of mothers forgetting their sucking children. But these were worse than brutes. What shall we then say of Christian parents being devoid of spiritual sympathy, -- shedding no tear of anguish over their moral ruin, nor showing the least concern about their salvation? Such parents do not rejoice even over the return of their children to God. They are a disgrace to the Christian name, and bring infamy upon the Christian home. Some parents do not proceed quite so far. They indulge in the feeling of sympathy for their children; but alas! that feeling is never expressed in efforts to save them. It is all expended in vain and fruitless lamentations, and is, therefore, at best but a morbid sentimentalism, -- but a cloak behind which are lurking parental hard-heartedness and religious apathy; proving plainly the great truth advanced by Adams, in his Elements of Christian Science, "that an indulgence in the feelings of sympathy without carrying them out to the relief of actual distress, produces hardness of heart to such a degree that the most pitiless and cruel, the most licentious and unnatural, and ungrateful conduct shall be joined with the most overflowing and deeply thrilling sentiment." Let those parents who are ever lamenting the wickedness of their children, but do nothing to make them better, ponder well this sentiment, and see it in the grin, of their own hypocrisy, and the desolation of their injured home and children. Let the other members, as well as the parents, take the timely warning. Let the pious wife here see the character of her sympathy for her impenitent husband. And let each see that their pious sympathy "always issue forth in actions." Let that sympathy give not only eloquence to the tongue, tears to your eye, and sighs to your heart, but also faithfulness to your life and holy calling. As the cry of hunger from your children, and their shivering cold in winter, prompt you to provide for their natural wants, so let their moral wants impel you to fidelity to their souls. All will be vain without this. The stern demands of a father's authority, and the formal teachings of a mother's lip, will fall like the frost of a winter's morning, upon their tender hearts, -- only to sear and to harden and to freeze up the heart against God. For "He will not let love's work impart But when pure and holy sympathy goes out, in its softening influence after the young; -- "Then, feeling is diffused in every part, Such sympathy has a saving influence upon both the parent and the child. It softens and refines the former, while it forms and allures the latter. The child fondly leans upon the parents, looks up to them for support and enjoyment, and is led by them in whatever path they choose. By its influence the feeling of natural and spiritual helplessness becomes developed in the child; the sense of dependence on a superior is awakened; and with these, all those feelings of confidence and veneration, which lay the foundation of religious affections, are unfolded. The parent's influence, both as to kind and degree, depends, therefore, upon the character of home-sympathy. If it is but natural, the parental influence will not extend beyond the worldly gain and temporal welfare of the child. The parent will exert no power over the soul. But if it be spiritual, and extend beyond the mere instincts of natural affection, it will expand the mind, and develop all the melting charities of our nature. It will pass with a new transferring and transforming power, from husband to wife, from parent to child, from kindred to kindred. Wherever it finds its way; whatever fiber of the heart it may touch, it begets a new and holy affection, unites the energies, lightens the toils, soothes the sorrows, and exalts the hopes, of all the members. It reflects a softening luster from eye to eye, goes with electric flash from heart to heart, glows in its warmth throughout all its moral courses, accumulates the home-endearments, stimulates each member to religious exertions for all the rest, and lays the foundation in each heart for an unbroken home-communion of their sainted spirits in heaven! It cements them together in their tent-home, creating a sweet concord of hearts and hopes and joys; and then elevates them unitedly in fond anticipation of reunion in their eternal home. They blend their tears together over the grave of buried love, and enjoy the saintly sympathy of loved ones gone before them. This is its most lovely feature. Tell me, is there not a bond of sympathy between Jesus and His people here, -- between loved ones in heaven and their pious kindred on earth? Do not the tears of the Christian home reflect the tears of Jesus? These are to the heart like the dews of Hermon, -- like the dews that descended upon the mountains of Zion. "No radiant pearl which crested fortune wears, Is such, Christian brother, the sympathy of your home? It will be a safeguard against the follies and the false interests of life. It will restrict the fashionable taste and sentiments of the age. It will teach wisdom to the pious mother, and be a sure defense against the dangers and indiscretions of the nursery and fashionable boarding school. Under its influence, mothers will not trust the souls of their children to the guardianship of irreligious nurses, nor expose them to the perils of a corrupted and heartless fashion. They will deny themselves the ruinous pleasures of a gay and reckless association with the world; and with maternal solicitude, attend upon the opening of those buds of life which God has committed to them. The pious mother will wield her power over her children, by the force of this sympathy; for her's is the deepest, purest, and most saving of all home-sympathy: "Earth may chill |
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