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.
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