Amid the weird symbols and gorgeous visions of Ezekiel no prophecy bears more vivid traces of its author’s personality. In a peculiar sense Ezekiel is made part and parcel of his own message. Even his common acts assume dramatic meanings. Is there anything more moving than the picture of his bereavement? “The word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Write thee the name of the day, even of this same day”–the fatal day when the armies of Babylon closed round Jerusalem for the last time, the same day Ezekiel is made the personification of grief too deep for tears: “Son of man, behold, I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke: yet neither shalt thou mourn nor weep…forbear to cry, make no mourning for the dead…So I spake unto the people in the morning: and at even my wife died.”
Again, when Ezekiel was sent to the captives by the river of Chebar with a burden of yet darker doom, we feel how this prophet has a passionate human heart. When he comes to the exiles, he can speak nothing; he is overwhelmed. He can only take his place dumbly by their side: “I sat where they sat; and I remained there astonished among them.”
Often we narrow the idea of sympathy as though it stood for a mere feeling. But sympathy is an act as well. Before we can sympathize properly with any other human being, we must put ourselves in his place. We must, if not literally, at least imaginatively, sit where he sits and feel as he feels. Only then we may begin to understand what help he needs.
For successful Christian service hardly any gift is more necessary than this power of imaginative sympathy. No man dare attempt such service, apart from a Divine call and the inward consecration which answers and obeys it. Yet not even this vital equipment will save us from blundering so long as with all our zeal we ignore the facts of human nature and the conditions of modern life. The most ardent Christians can never serve effectively unless they will take pains to understand the people they try to help.
The wisdom which cometh down from above is not afraid to stoop, until it can enter by intuition into other men’s feelings and read their condition, and understand by instinct how to deal with their souls. Such an endowment as this depends partly on moral inheritance, but it can be cultivated. Thoughtful love grows wise by constant watching, and strong by patient self-denial. The heart that is at leisure from itself wins power to soothe and sympathize. It is worthwhile to remember George Fox’s wonderful prayer: “I have prayed to be baptized into a sense of all conditions, that I might be able to know the needs and feel the sorrows of all.”
There are men and women who have learned to feel for all sorts and conditions of men. For them there remains no swifter solvent of doubts, no surer road to realities, than to leave behind them their theories and their pride of position and their hoarded culture, and humbly and innocently to go out into the highways and hedges, and there to rejoice with them that do rejoice, and to weep with them that weep. Through such experiences it shall be shown them what they must do.
It braces and purifies our imperfect sympathy when we recognize that this virtue, like every other, rests on the Divine Exemplar. When God Himself stooped to visit His people in their captivity, He sat where they sat. “Forasmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and blood, He likewise Himself took part in the same.” Christ goes into partnership even with our common flesh and blood. He shares all the conditions of the human lot, shares them to the uttermost. Our humblest needs, our hardest struggles, our deepest questionings, our loneliest prayers, our sharpest sorrows, our blackest shames, our deadliest fears, Christ gathers them all into His bosom and takes them for His own. He was made flesh and blood for everyone. He was made sin for everyone. He tasted death for everyone. He sat where we sit, and became even as we are, though sin apart–that we sinners may rise into His likeness, and may sit with Him on His throne at last.