October 8

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.—MATT. v, 7.

The quality of mercy is not strain'd;

It droppeth as the gentle dew from heaven

Upon the place beneath; it is twice blessed—

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

SHAKESPEARE.

Mercy is compounded of a consciousness of demerit, a sense of the evil of sin, and a desire for the good, the highest good; this will complete the composition of mercy, making it like God's. . . . Mercy expends not herself in sighs and tears; sits not down with the sorrow and the sinfulness which she both beholds and feels; she looks upward and she looks onward; upward for help, onward to salvation, and is as ready to succor as she is prompt to sympathize. The world's pity stops with itself. If it gives a thought to distress, it is but in the luxury of a sentiment. If it ever compassionates a sinner, it is as of course that it leaves him in his degradation. But the mercy which shall obtain mercy does not thus acquiesce in evil. Feeling what sin is, she knows also of a SAVIOUR, and desires that the fellowship in disease may become a fellowship also in its cure. . . . It is of the essence of mercy to desire—to see the fallen rise, to help the diseased to recover, the sinner to be saved.

C. J. VAUGHAN.