Intelligent Sympathy

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 8, 1916

Intelligent Sympathy

The only way in which the manifold claims of justice can be met is by the continual presence of an intelligent sympathy. Unless we can enter into the pleasures and pains of other people with some degree of participation, we cannot tell how to promote the one or avert the other. Only a keen sense of our friend's feelings will prevent us from wounding them; only a vivid realization of the needs of a community will teach us how to minister to those needs; only a close sympathy with the miseries which a special course of action will produce can lead us to take special pains to avoid that cause. If we are indifferent to all suffering but our own, we shall not exert ourselves to diminish it; if we care nothing for any joys but our own, we shall not strive to increase or perpetuate them. — Great Thoughts.