A few years ago, in Chicago, during July and August, many children died. I attended many funerals, sometimes as many as three a day. I got so used to it that it did not trouble me to see a mother take the last kiss and the last look at her child, and see the coffin-lid closed. I got accustomed to it, as in the war we got accustomed to the great battles, and the wounded and dead.
One night when I got home, I heard that one of my Sunday School pupils was dead, and that her mother wanted to see me. I went there and found the father drunk.
Adelaide's mother washed clothes for a living, and her daughter's work was to get wood for the fire. She had gone to the river that day and seen a piece floating on the water. She had stretched out for it, lost her balance, and fallen in.
The poor woman was very much distressed, for her husband earned no money. "I would like you to help me, Mr. Moody," she said, "to bury my child. I have no place to bury my child, and I have no money to purchase one."
Well, I took the measurements for the coffin and came away. I had my little girl, Emma, with me and she said: "Papa, suppose we were very, very poor, and mamma had to work for a living, and I had to get sticks for the fire, and was to fall into the river, would you be very sorry?"
This question reached my heart. 'Why, my child, it would break my heart to lose you," I said, and I gave her a hug.
"Papa, do you feel bad for that mother?" she said; this word woke my sympathy for the woman, and I went back to the house, and prayed that the Lord might bind up that wounded heart.
When the day came for the funeral I went to the grave yard. The drunken father was there and the poor mother. I bought a spot for the grave to be dug in and then the child was buried. There was another funeral that day, and the corpse was laid near the grave of little Adelaide. And I thought how I would feel if it had been my little girl that I had been burying there among strangers.
I went to my Sunday School thinking this, and suggested that the children should contribute some money to purchase a special grave yard for the children. We soon got it, and the papers had scarcely been made out when a lady came and said, "Mr. Moody, my little girl died this morning; let me bury her in the place that the Sunday school children bought."
The request was granted, and she asked me to go to the grave—it was a beautiful day in June, and I remember asking her what the name of her child was. She said Emma. That was the name of my little girl, and I thought what if it had been my own child.
We should put ourselves in the places of others. I could not help shedding a tear. Another woman came shortly after and wanted to burry her son there also. I asked his name. It was Willie, and it happened to be the name of my little boy—the first two laid there were called by the same names as my two children, and I felt sympathy and compassion for those two women.
If you want to be sympathetic, put yourself into other people's places. We need Christians whose hearts are full of compassion and sympathy. If we haven't got it, pray that we may have it, so that we may be able to reach those men and women that need kindly words and kindly actions, far more than sermons. The mistake is that we have been preaching too much and sympathizing too little. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel of deeds and not of words.