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BYWAYS TO BLESSEDNESS 33

ignorance which prompts them so to act, and knowing that they alone will suffer for their wrong
acts.
Learn, by self-conquest and the acquisition of wisdom, to love him whom you now condemn, to
sympathise with those who condemn you. Turn your eyes away from their condemnation and
search your own heart, to find, perchance, some hard, unkind, or wrong thoughts which, when
discovered and understood, you will condemn yourself.
Much that is commonly called sympathy is personal affection. To love them who love us is
human bias and inclination; but to love them who do not love us is divine sympathy.
Sympathy is needed because of the prevalence of suffering, for there is no being or creature
who has not suffered. Through suffering sympathy is evolved. Not in a year or a life or an age is the
human heart purified and softened by suffering, but after many lives of intermittent pain, after

many ages of ever recurring sorrow, man reaps the golden harvest of his experiences, and garners
in the rich, ripe sheaves of love and wisdom. And then he understands, and understanding, he
sympathises.
All suffering is the result of ignorantly violated law, and after many repetitions of the same
wrong act, and the same kind of suffering resulting from that act, knowledge of the law is acquired,
and the higher state of obedience and wisdom is reached. Then there blossoms the pure and
perfect flower of sympathy.
One aspect of sympathy is that of pity — pity for the distressed or pain-stricken, with a desire
to alleviate or help them bear their sufferings. The world needs more of this divine quality.
“For pity makes the world
Soft to the weak, and noble for the strong.”

But it can only be developed by eradicating all hardness and unkindness, all accusation and
resentment. He who, when he sees another suffering for his sin, hardens his heart and thinks or
says: “It serves him right”- such a one cannot exercise pity nor apply its healing balm. Every time a
man acts cruelly towards another (be it only a dumb creature), or refuses to bestow needed
sympathy, he dwarfs himself, deprives himself of ineffable blessedness, and prepares himself for
suffering.

Another form of sympathy is that of rejoicing with those who are more successful than
ourselves, as though their success were our own. Blessed indeed is he who is free from all envy
and malice, and can rejoice and be glad when he hears of the good fortune of those who regard
him as an enemy.
The protecting of creatures weaker and more indefensible than oneself is another form in
which this divine sympathy is manifested. The helpless frailty of the dumb creation calls for the
exercise of the deepest sympathy. The glory of superior strength resides in its power to shield, not
to destroy. Not by the callous of destruction of weaker things is life truly lived, but by their
preservation:
“All life is linked and kin,”