gs to-day, though we would have liked to hear
them, and he would have been glad to tell them, because he is too
deeply concerned for us to prophesy golden groves at the end of a
journey whose every footstep is taken upon the broad road leading to
destruction. With meekness can we receive the reproofs of a parent
knowing that, however hard his word, his heart is tender. "Whom He
loveth He chasteneth," was written of the Lord. When it can be written
of the Lord's ambassador, then again it will be true that although "no
chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous," yet will
it yield "the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are
exercised thereby." Let us take it, then, that pity is an essential of
the preacher's message, and must make its presence felt, if not in
word, at least in accent, or tone, or atmosphere. Is it too late in
the argument to ask what this pity really and truly is?

In Theodore Hunger's volume, "The Freedom of Faith," a book which will
be found in many of our libraries, there is a chapter on the pity of
Jesus Christ which would probably repay us for another perusal. Very
powerfully the author maintains that pity is a deeper and sublimer
passion than love. In "The Alchemist," Balzac, depicting an ideally
perfect affection makes the object of it deformed, indicating that love
has not attained its highest height until it has become pity. Thus the
mother's love for her child is never so noble as when expressed in
ministering to its sickness. How near to the little one does she come
in those painful, anxious hours when, perchance, all the reward her
love seems like to bring is the blighting of her dearest hopes. She
loves her child in health, but that love is rewarded with joy; she
loves it as it triumphs in its little tasks of intellect, but that love
is rewarded with pride; its moral achievements awaken her admiration;
its spiritual victories arouse her gratitude, and in admiration and
gratitude, love has compensation; but none of these emotions so carry
over her soul into fellowship with the soul of that dear one, none
bring her into a touch so close, or give such gentleness to the
fingers, such softness and tenderness to the voice as does pity, "when
pain and sickness wring the brow." And what of the parental feeling
for that other child--the child, we mean, whose name no one speaks in
her ear, who has gone out from the family circle, who is away in the
far country