BEAUTIFUL IN SENTIMENT.
By T.
THERE are many beautiful and sympathetic things being said. They are elegantly written out in prose, poetry, and song. But it is one thing to tell these beautiful things in words merely, and quite a different thing to tell them in actual deeds. Mere talk is of but very little account. But when good talk is translated into the corresponding good deeds, it amounts to something. We may sit in a cosy room, with every comfort surrounding us, and write beautiful sentiments; we may tell of "the good we all should do while the days are going by;" we may even become so enraptured that we break forth into song about it; but what good is there in all of it unless we do something to actually relieve want and distress. "If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone." James 2:15-17.
The faith which grows sentimental yet does nothing to relieve the misery and suffering that fills this world is a "dead" faith. And a dead faith is simply no faith at all. For what can anything do when it is dead? These are times for earnest action. Men and women and pitiable little children fill our great cities and towns and even some of the smaller villages with their cries for bread. Our sympathies at such a time as this should be coined into heroic deeds of sacrifice and service. And then, and only then, can our words have in them the true balm of sympathy.