^ Dr. Bell's desire for sympathy, and his appreciation of it was touchingly intense, and yet he had a way of looking and speaking with almost flippant unconcern when feeling most deeply. This was at times when he knew that any display of emotion would " upset everything." Thus many people who knew him well saw little of his inner self. They saw him as the hope- inspiring physician, smihng and chatting, cheering the sorrowful, soothing the sufferer, quick to see fun lurking near solemnity, taking up the burden of others with seemingly no burden of his own, bringing a gay good humour to meet anxious doubts and dreadful fears. When young, his bearing was that of a joyous nature on whom the gods had showered their good gifts. Even in later years when many bereavements had wounded his warm affections to the quick his smile was ready, and his sense of fun as fresh as ever. His self-control was perfect.^
f The late Eight Hon. W. H. Smith, when First Lord of the Admiralty, was leaving his ofl&ce one afternoon, when his secretary, seeing him packing up a number of letters and other Government papers, asked him to leave them and have them forwarded to him by post as other Ministers did. " No," was the answer, " the fact is our postman has plenty to carry. I watched him one morning coming up the approach, and I determined to save him as much as I could." *
(1) By the giving of sympathy you take away the worst weight of sorrow. You cannot take it all away, but you can lift off that
* Joseph Bell : An AppreeicUimi, 34.
• The Morning Watch, 1894, p. 10.
GAL. VI. 2, 5 421
in it which maims the life or slays the soul, if you love enough. Unloving sympathy has no tact, no inventiveness, no insight, no reverence. But the sympathy of love — and that you are bound to win, if you would obey this law — enters into the sanctuary of another's sorrow with uncovered head and reverent stillness, sees the point where tenderness can touch and not hurt, has quickness of imagination to invent the means of bearing away the burden ; rescues the sufferers before they are conscious of being rescued, and wins undying love. There is no happiness in life so delicate and pure as the doing of this beautiful thing. It is the happiness of God Himself.
(2) Joy may for the moment be as great a burden as sorrow. The heart may be o'erfraught with delight, and nigh to breaking with it. When Lear awoke from his madness and saw Cordelia bending over him, and love in her eyes, he all but died of joy. We have no right, but have great wrong, if we treat with indiffer- ence the joy of the child or the rapture of youth. " They want no sympathy," we say, or even with a scoff, " He is happy ! let him alone ! " Have we never repulsed young or old with a cold look when they came up full of their delight, longing for us to share their pleasure ? It is an unkindly act ; let us never do it again. Let us think rather that joy is a burden that you have to bear for others. Make the delight of others brighter by sympathy. Do not blow with a cold wind upon the rose in flower, lest you wither its leaves. " Rejoice," said St. Paul, with his large knowledge of the naeds of love, " rejoice with them that do rejoice."
3. Different temperaments, like different plants, require different atmospheres. Some plants require a tropical heat before they will put on their beautiful garments. We have to create about them a mimic summer, and delude them into feeling that they are far away, at home in the burning clime. Other plants seek for our own temperate heat; they disburse their treasure, not to the soft calling of the luxurious breeze of the tropics, but to the robust, bracing, toughening winds of our own land. How we have to humour the plants if we would lure them out into blossoms and flower ! This one must be set a little farther in the shade. That one must be lifted up into the light, to receive the baptism of the sun. Each one must be placed accord-
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ing to its temperament. And when vices cling about them in the shape of destructive little parasites, little insects which grow fat by draining up the sap, then how we have to medicate the atmosphere, to provide certain conditions which shall help the plants to deal with their enemies, and to throw off the burdens ! Thus we create suitable conditions for individual plants ; and thus we must create suitable conditions for the full and beautiful growth of individual men,
^ Looking back over these two years of illness, it is impossible not to be struck by the calmness and fortitude with which that illness was met. There were moments of terrible depression and of disappointment and of grief. It was not easy for him to give up ambition, to leave so many projects unfulfilled, so much work undone. But to him this illness grew to be a mount of purifica- tion,
Ove I'umano spirito si purga, E di salire al ciel diventa degno.