" That is a very important question. Many people go to work
for God, but they seem to do it in such a professional way. I will
tell you how you can be brought into sympathy. I have found this rule
to be of great help to me. Put yourself in the place of the sorrowing
and afflicted ones, with whom you want to sympathize. If you do that
you will soon gain their affections and be able to help them.

God taught me a lesson a few years ago that I shall never forget. I
was Superintendent of a Sunday-school in Chicago with over 1,500
scholars. In the months of July and August many deaths took place
among the children, and as most of the ministers were out of the city
I had to attend a great many funerals. Sometimes I had to be at four
or five in one day. I was so accustomed to it that I got to do it
almost mechanically. I could see the mother take her last look at the
child, and see the coffin lid closed without being moved by it.

One day when I came home my wife told me that one of the Sunday-school
children had been drowned, and the mother wanted to see me. I took my
little daughter with me and we went to the house. I found the father
in one corner of the room drunk. The mother told me that she took in
washing in order to get a living for herself and her children, as her
husband drank up all his wages. Little Adelaide used to go to the
river and gather the floating wood for the fire. That day she had gone
as usual; she saw a piece of wood out a little way from the bank; in
stretching out to reach it she slipped, and fell into the water and
was drowned. The mother told me her sad story; how she had no money to
buy the shroud and the coffin, and she wanted me to help her. I took
out my note-book and put down her name and address, and took the
measure of the coffin, in order to send it to the undertakers.

The poor mother was much distressed, but it did not seem to move me. I
told her I would be at the funeral, and then I left. As my little girl
walked by my side she said to me: "Papa, suppose we were very poor,
and mamma had to wash for a living, and I had to go to the river to
get sticks to make a fire; if I were to fall into the water and get
drowned would you feel bad?" "Feel bad! Why, my child, I do not know
what I should do. You are my only daughter, and if you were taken from
me I think it would break my heart." And I took her to my bosom and
kissed her. "Then did you feel bad for that mother?" How that question
cut me