Mark 6:32-34 And they departed into a desert place by ship privately.… We often speak of love as the ultimate passion, but there is a depth even beyond love. For love is largely its own reward, and so may possibly have an element of imperfection, but pity or compassion has not only all the glory or power of love, but it forgets itself and its own returning satisfactions, and goes wholly over into the sufferings of others, and there expends itself, not turning back or within to say to itself, as does love, "How good it is to love!" It may be a factor in the solution of the problem of evil that it calls out the highest measure of the Divine love; a race that does not suffer might not have a full revelation of God's heart. What! Create a race miserable in order to love it! Yes, if so thereby its members shall learn to love one another and if thus only it may know the love of its Creator. In the same way it is man's consciousness of misery, or self-pity, that reveals to him his own greatness — a thought that Pascal turns over and over. Pity is love and something more: love at its utmost, love with its principle outside of itself and therefore moral, love refined to utter purity by absorption with suffering. A mother loves her child when it is well, but pities it when it is sick, and how much more is the pity than the love! How much nearer does it bring her, rendering the flesh that separates her from it a hated barrier because it prevents absolute oneness, dying out of her own consciousness, and going wholly over into that of the child whose pains she would thus, as it were, draw off into her own body! To die with and for one who is loved — as the poets are fond of showing — is according to the philosophy of human nature. Might not something like it be expected of God, who is absolute love? And how shall He love in this absolute way except by union with His suffering children? Such is the nature of pity; it is a vicarious thing, which bare love is not, because it creates identity with the sufferer. (T. T. Munger.) Parallel Verses KJV: And they departed into a desert place by ship privately.WEB: They went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. |
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