September 26

"Put on therefore, as the elect of God, bowels of mercies." —Colossians 3:12.

PUT on a heart of compassion, says the wise apostle.

Some elect and gracious souls seem, indeed, to have this heart from the very outset of their lives. They love all things both great and small, and it is as if they could do nothing else. Love is their vital breath and their native air. It comes to them naturally and spontaneously, as the linnets pipe and sing simply because they must, as the flower unfolds and cannot help itself, as the fountain bubbles up irresistibly to the surface and the sun.

But how good it is for me, who have no inborn faculty of loving, that I may put on a heart of compassion!

I can do it by asking God, day after day, to take out of me my selfish, censorious, critical, untender, evil heart. I can do it by perpetually recollecting Christ, who went about ever doing good, and who has left me an example that I should follow in His steps. I can do it by claiming, morning by morning, the grace of the Paraclete, the Comforter, the Holy Ghost. I can do it by the endeavour to set myself in the place of others, and to comprehend their difficulties and temptations. I can do it by watching always for opportunities of lifting the bruised reed and of fanning the smoking flax. I can do it, as Robert Levett with his single talent did, by "little unremembered acts of kindness and of love."

Thus the heart of compassion may be born, and may grow and thrive even within me. Thus my hard and exacting and suspicious spirit may spread its black wings and fly away from me, never to return again.