Thomas County cat. [volume] (Colby, Kan.) 1885-1891, 1889-01-31
,NsENsls.LITy TO PAIN.

Z Power That Plays m Important Part
In the Alteration OF Suffering.
Every one knows that the best nurses
are the calmest nurses, and the calm
est nurses are very seldom indeed the
nurses who really tsuffer most at the
sight Of their patients suffering. One
of the great advantages which the
patients themselves feel in entering a
hospital is that theirs sufferings, do not
come back reflected from the faces of
those around them; that the sympathy
they excite is only mild sympathy.
aud not one which heightens their
own pain. And it is equally true of
insensibility to very different kinds of
suffering-mOral and spiritual suffer-
ing-that certain measure of insen-
sibility. as we'll as sensibility, to it is
the first condition of the power to
do good. The teacher or priest who
wants to lead penitent to truer
and higher view of his life must
not be insensible to the keenness of his
anguish and the bitterness of his
shame; but. at the same time, he must
not enter into it so deeply as to be un-
nerved by it. and to be haunted by it
in all his daily duties. If he is. he will
be quite incompetent for his spiritual
work, and will be an inefficient. not an
efficient, guide in spiritual things. No
discerning man, however deep his own
shame and remorse, would go for
guidance to one who was likely to
suffer almost as much as himself, out
OF sympathy with him-as some very
near relative perhaps might Such a
guide would be a bad guide. and bad
guide just because his sensibility
would be too vivid, and his judgment
would be thereby perverted. 1t is the
same even with sufferings that are not
moral. and where the sufferers do not
require guidance. 1t is quite mistake
for those who live with such sufferers
to reprOach themselves. as they often
do, with their own insensibility. We
may be absolutely certain that those
who wish to feel more than they do.
really feel quite as much as they ought.
quite as much as the purpose of God
intends that they should. There is an
unworthy pride in great sensibility
which is not consistent with either true
humility or true usefulness. Hardly
sufferer exists who is not the better in
stead of the worse for seeing that
those around him are not utterly over
whelmed by his suffering-tha so far
as he can go out of himself at all he
may get little relief by entering into
the less OvershadOwed lives around
him. and tasting indirectly another's
enjoymcnts. We ought to be grateful
not only for being able to enter into
the sufferings of others. but for not be-
ing allowed to enter into them too
keenly. The self-reproach which one
so often hears uttered, that
the sufferings of others do
not reflect themselves wildly
enough in the hearts of the bystanders,
is an ungrateful self-reproach for a
limitation for which we have great
reason to be thankful. Not only would
a suffering that reflected itself ade-
quately in other hearts be fatal to the
work of the world, but it would be |
fatal, too, to the best and almost the |
only alienation of which that suffering
itself admits. A really patient and |
man will be quite as |
thankful for his insensibility as for his |
sensibility, and VII recognize that it
is to the former, Al least, as much as
to the latter that his power to alleviate
suffering is due.-London Spectator.