Looking on the Things of Others.
THERE is a wonderful deal of meaning in the apostle’s injunction, “Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.” It exactly meets the most subtle and universal form of selfishness. Few of us, let it be hoped, are in the constant habit of seeing clearly troubles that we might relieve, and doing nothing for them. Yet who of us, on honest self-examination, is not conscious that somehow or other he does very little to make other people happier? There are enough who need help all around us, no doubt, and we cannot believe ourselves really cold-hearted; so why is it that we do so little? The great reason is, that we are so absorbed in our own interests as never to notice the thousand chances to help some one else. The priest and Levite who came and looked on the wounded Samaritan, and then passed on, were, let us believe, worse than most men. If a whole host of people had passed near, some with eyes and ears intent on game they were chasing, some staring with all their might at stars they were studying, so that none of them saw the poor Samaritan, or seeing him, got but a very dim notion whether he was hurt, or drunk, or asleep,—that would have corresponded to the unconscious selfishness that clings to almost all of us. What a startling thing it is to get a sense, as we do sometimes, that every other man’s life is to him just what our own is to us! We look around on our companions, about whom we know and think so little, and feel—each one of these has just such a world of cares, and pleasures, and various experiences, as I myself live in! Under such a thought, the world seems suddenly to become a million times bigger. Most of the time we live in an incessant “I.” I am happy, I am troubled, I did that, I shall do this,—so the song runs, from morning to night, from year’s end to year’s end. And all the while there are people about us whose lives are of just as much account as ours are! The New Testament is full of the spirit of that sweetest and highest goodness which forgets self, and enters into the lives of others. The perfect example is that of Him who “came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.” The all-including virtue is the charity which “seeketh not her own.” We are bidden to “rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.” This spirit, which is the essence of Christianity, can only grow as we learn to “look upon” the things of others; to have our eyes open to what is happening to them, our ears ready to catch the tones of their voices; in a word, to be sympathetic. Sympathy means feeling with others; not feeling for them; not looking out on their pleasure or pain as something foreign and distant from ourselves; but coming side by side with them, so as in a certain measure to make their feeling ours. All sorts of things combine to make this spirit hard to acquire. To scarcely any one does it come as an easy and natural grace. Almost every child is at the outset extremely selfish, bound up in its own little life, and has to be taught to think for others, even in a moderate degree, by endless training. As the deeper experiences of life come on, they at first take such possession of the heart that outside claims are almost forgotten. Young love sees no one in the world save its single beloved. As the cares of life thicken, they seem almost necessarily to shut out for want of room careful thought for those outside. Earnestness itself, earnestness for noble objects, makes men unconsciously selfish, unless they keep close watch against it. Many a man is so absorbingly devoted to science, to benevolence, to the church, that his wife sighs in secret for the little tokens of love; and his children give him but a distant reverence instead of tenderness and confidence. The sin of self-absorption is all-besetting! Nature and circumstance and occupation all combine to fasten it on a man; and those are most under its power who are least conscious of it. As this article is being written, a message comes in, “So-and-so is here to see you.” The whole first impulse in reply is of resistance,—“What, stop writing, break the chain of thought, perhaps not to regain it, spoil the article? No; he shall be shortly dealt with!” Ah! but the right thing is, since the visitor was entitled to come, to go to him, listen to his wants as if there were nothing else, and for the time enter wholly into his feeling! Have you seen a good doctor, receiving one patient after another in rapid succession; and, as each in turn comes in, listening to his symptoms, examining his case with closest attention,—oblivious of the one who came before, the one who will come next, and all other things in the world? What that doctor does for men’s bodies, we ought all the while to do for their hearts. What sight known to man is half so beautiful as one who lives such a life of sympathy and self-forgetfulness? Thank God that we know such! Who has not seen some mother, in the midst of a great household, every hour taking upon herself some part of the life of her children? Be it the baby who cries, the boy who has cut his finger, the young man with his love trouble,—all in turn find just the help and comfort they need! Her whole life is parceled out among the lives of others; and if you would find what is that part of it which is her own, private and peculiar, lo, that, too, is unselfish love! Her highest joy, her deepest sorrow, are in the joy and sorrow of her husband and her children. Through such saints God teaches over and over again the lesson of which Christ’s life was the perfect embodiment. And it is for us, following far behind him, to patiently and diligently bring ourselves into his spirit. It is the best possibility that life offers to us, that we should learn, hour by hour, to be thoughtful for others, to be considerately and tenderly sensitive to the lives about us. Every brief conversation, all our work with others, all our interruptions, the relations of mistress and servant, of employer and clerk, of the family and the church and the neighborhood—all give us the opportunity to put the thought for others before the thought for self. And it is by these daily lessons that we are to come into that charity without which knowledge, and faith, and zeal, profit nothing—into that love whose spirit makes Heaven.—Christian Union.