There will
be an identity of soul-interest. The pious mother will make the everlasting
interests of her husband and child, her own; and will labor with the same
assiduity to promote them as she does to promote her own salvation. She
will thus enter into the spiritual emotions of her kindred, and bear them
vicariously, making thus her religious sympathies the law of preservation
to all the members of her household.
The living stream of this sympathy is given by Christ in His address to the
weeping daughters of Jerusalem: "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me,
but weep for yourselves and for your children!" The following is also its
living utterance: "My son, if thy heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice,
even mine." We have also a beautiful exhibition of it in the touching
history of Ruth, in the life of Joseph, and in the mother of Samuel. Peter
describes it when he says, "Be all of one mind, having compassion one of
another; love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous." Esther expresses it
in the exclamation, "How can I endure to see the destruction of my
kindred!" Paul gives utterance to it when he says, "I would be accursed for
my brethren and kindred's sake." Jesus exemplifies it in His intercourse
with the family of Lazarus; He shows its emotion and its active charities
when He stands on the grave of that friend, and weeps, and calls him from
the dead. His sympathy for a lost world is the true pattern of
home-sympathy.
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