Some time ago, I began to read the Bible carefully to study Bible characters. I read through the four Gospels, and my heart was moved. When I look over an audience and think of the wretchedness and misery that you and I do not see, that He does see, I think I can understand what this passage means: “When He saw the multitude, He was moved with compassion.” His heart went out to them.
We ought to have more compassion for the unfortunate, the erring, and the fallen. How many times I have had to upbraid myself for this. I believe it would be a very easy thing to reach the unfortunate and distressed if we had the spirit of the good Samaritan.
People say, “I wish I had it.” How can we get it? Listen. Suppose a great misfortune has overtaken you; wouldn’t you like to have someone come right along and help you? Wouldn’t you? I believe there is not a man or woman, I don’t care how rich or poor they may be, who does not need, at some hour in their lives, a little human sympathy, a little ministration of love, or helpful words from somebody else. Each heart has its own bitterness, each one has his own trouble and sorrow. We are too apt to think that others do not need or care for our compassion.
Now if you want to get the spirit of compassion, just think of someone among your acquaintance who is in trouble–someone who is in distress, or who has had some great misfortune. And who has not? Then imagine that their trouble is yours.
I used always to spend my summers in Chicago; probably fifteen-hundred to two thousand children were in my Sunday school, and very few of them had a church home. When sickness or death came into their families they used to send for me. I sometimes attended three or four funerals a day. I could go to a funeral and see a mother walk up to the coffin of her loved one, and hear sobs and wails of anguish that were enough to break a heart of stone, but I heard them so often they wouldn’t move my heart. I had become hardened.
One day my wife told me that one of the children in my Sunday school had been drowned. I took my little girl, four years old, and started for the home of the child. Some working men and women had dragged the little one’s body from the water, and the mother sat by the dead child, stroking her hair, as the water was dripping down upon the floor. It was her firstborn child. Little Adelaide used to go to the Chicago River and gather floating wood for the fire. That day she had gone as usual; she saw a piece of wood a little way from the bank, and in stretching out her hand to reach it she slipped and fell into the water and was drowned.
There were four children in the room. The husband sat in the corner–drunk. The mother said between her sobs and tears: “You see the condition my husband is in. I have had to take in washing to get a living for my children, and I have had to care for him. He has never provided for us, or done a day’s hard work in five years. Adelaide was my companion. I have no money to buy a shroud or coffin for her. Oh, I wish you could help me.”
I laid down the money for the coffin and the shroud. Then she said, as the tears rolled down her face, “Can you help me find a place to bury her?”
“Yes,” I said, “I will attend to that.”
I made a memorandum of what was wanted, and I did it all very mechanically. Then I took my little child by the hand and started out. When we reached the street, my little girl said, “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 should see a big stick and should try to get it and should 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.
“Papa,” she said, “did you feel bad for that poor mother?” The child had been shocked at her own father. How that question cut me to the heart. I could not speak.
I led the child home, then I went into my room and turned the key to the door. I walked up and down the room all that day. I said to myself: “You profess to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, and to represent Him, and you went to that heart-broken woman, and you left her there with a drunken husband.” I got on my knees and asked God to forgive me, and to give me a tender heart, that if I ever saw people in trouble I might sympathize with them.
I went back to that poor woman’s house, and read the fourteenth chapter of John, and I told the mother where Adelaide had gone, and prayed that the Lord might heal the mother’s wounded heart. We fastened the lid of the coffin, got a carriage and put the poor mother and her four little children into it, and, last of all, little Adelaide’s coffin was put into the carriage with them. The husband was still drunk and did not realize what was going on. The cemetery was seven miles away. I had not been there for many years. I thought my time was too precious to go there. I said, “I can’t let that mother go alone and bury her child,” and rode the seven miles and comforted her all I could. I could weep with her then. “Suppose it was my child!” was the thought that kept coming into my mind.
We buried Adelaide in the Potter’s Field. We had no sooner lowered her body into the grave than we were ordered off the place. As the mother tore herself away, she turned and looked towards the little grave and moaned: “I haven’t always been able to pay my rent, and have lived among strangers all my life. I have always thought that was hard, and oh, it is hard! But it is harder to bury my Adelaide here, to leave her here in an unmarked grave in the Potter’s Field. I am afraid I shall not know where she is laid.”
I thought it would be very hard for me to lay my little girl in a pauper’s grave. I said to myself, “I will never bury a child in a pauper’s grave again as long as I live.”
On the next Sunday I told the story before my Sunday school, and, although they were all poor children, we raised money and bought a lot of our own in which a hundred children could be buried. Before I could get the deed, another heart-broken mother came and said: “Mr. Moody, my little girl died today. Can I bury her in that lot?”
She asked me if I would go to the funeral, and say a few words, and bury her. I said I would. I well remember the first burial in that lot. The little grave was dug under an oak tree.
When we came to lay the child in it, I asked the mother: “What was the name of your little girl?”
“Emma,” she said.
That was the name of my own little girl, my only daughter. Do you think I could not grieve, that I could not weep and sympathize?
In a little while, another mother came. Her little boy had died, and she wanted to bury him in that lot. We made a grave close to Emma’s grave. After making a few remarks, I turned to the mother and said, “What was the name of your boy?”
“Willie,” she said. was the name of my only boy at that time. So strange that the first two little bodies let down into those graves should bear the names of my two dear ones. Do you think I could not weep with that mother, that I did not have compassion, and that my heart did not ache for her?
Soon after, I went to Europe. I was gone a year and a half, and when I returned to Chicago, one of the first things I did was go to that cemetery. The lot was filled with little graves. I have often said that I should like to be buried there with those little ones, and when my Master comes, and they rise to meet Him, I should like to go up with them.
Have you got compassion yourself? Don’t you think there’s need of it? Ought we not to cultivate it? Oh, my friends, what conception can you form of the compassion of Jesus? He knows what human nature is. He knows what poor, weak, frail mortals we are, and how prone we are to sin. He will have compassion upon you; He will reach out His tender hand and touch you as He did the poor leper. You will know the touch of His loving hand, for there is virtue and sympathy in it.
“He will have compassion upon us; He will subdue our iniquities; and Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19).