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(§> YMPATHY is founded on love. It is but another word for disinter- 
® estedness and affection. We assume another s state of mind; we go 
out of self and, as it were, inhabit another’s personality. We sympathize 
with him; we help him; we relieve him. There can be no love without 
sympathy; there can be no friendship without sympathy. Like mercy, 
sympathy and benevolence are twice blessed, blessing both giver and re¬ 
ceiver. While they bring forth an abundant fruit of happiness in the 
heart of the giver, they grow up into kindness and benevolence in the heart 
of the receiver. 
“We often do more good,” says a distinguished author, “by our sym¬ 
pathy than by our labors, and render to the world a more lasting service 
by absence of jealousy and recognition of merit than we could ever ren¬ 
der by the straining efforts of personal ambition. 
A man may lose position, wealth, and even health, and yet live on in 
comfort, if resigned to bear physical pain and privation; but there is one 
thing 'without which life becomes a very burden: that is— human sympathy. 
Man is dear to man: the poorest poor 
Long for some moments in a weary life 
When they can know and feel that they have been 
Themselves the fathers and the dealers-ont 
Of some small blessings: have been kind to such 
As needed kindness, for the single cause 
That we have all of us one human heart. 
—W ordsworth. 
A most astonishing example of a truly 6 divine sympathy ’ we find, in 
Christ’s parable of the prodigal son, where Jesus said: 
“A certain man had two sons: and the younger of them said to his 
father: Father, give me the portion of substance that falleth to me. And 
he divided unto them his substance. And not many days after, the 
younger son, gathering all together, went abroad into a far country, and 
there wasted his substance living riotously. 
