Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/128

Rh first. The dread of the sight of pain may be made to pass away by enough of inevitable experience. But the selfish love of the office of comforter grows with the sense of our personal importance, and with the number of times when we are called upon to exercise our powers. There are people who are always fretful and disconsolate unless they know of somebody who very badly needs consoling. Then they are calm and happy, for they are sure that they are admirable as comforters, they feel themselves the centre of an admiring neighborhood, they are plying their noble avocation in a graceful fashion. This type is surely no very uncommon one. Such people are apt to be intolerable companions for you unless you have a broken leg, or a fever, or a great bereavement. Then they find you interesting, because you are wretched. They nurse you like saints; they speak comfortably to you like angels. They hate to give the little comfort that can be given from day to day to those who are enduring the ordinary vexations of healthy and prosaic life. They rejoice to find some one overwhelmed with woe. The happy man is to them a worthless fellow. High temperature is needed to soften their hearts. They would be miserable in Paradise, at the sight of so much tedious contentment; but they would leap for joy if they could but hear of a lost soul to whom a drop of water could be carried. To them the most blessed truth of Scripture is found in the passage: “For the poor ye have always with you.” Yea, blessed are the merciful, for they shall never lack work. They shall be like the sculptor, delighting in the