HOW close God is seen to be when we learn that, as the Psalmist said, "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him," and when we read in Isaiah the assurance, "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you"! This love of God, pitying, comforting, uplifting, is the precious tie which binds earth to heaven. It links the heart of humanity to the very fount of being, and shows forth man's unity with God in a manner appreciable to finite thought.
Pity in its larger sense is the feeling of compassion for the suffering of another, coupled with the earnest desire to relieve such as are in any way oppressed. True pity is Godlike in that it combines mercy with justice, and seeks to bless and uplift the race. True devotion rises above the human sense of pity, and love unfolds that divine pity which feels not alone one's own but the world's great need. Many years after Jesus' earthly sacrifice, one of his disciples, the Apostle Peter, ever mindful of the Master's loving service for humanity, wrote to the Jewish Christians scattered throughout the Roman provinces, urging them to practice pity and love in their daily lives. In the third chapter of his first epistle he makes this brief summary: "Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous."
This Christlike, loving courtesy enjoined by the apostle, the world of to-day seems not always to associate with its present interpretation of the word "pity." Speaking generally, the word is now often used in a restrictive sense, which distinguishes it from such synonyms as "compassion" and "sympathy," both of which indicate a certain degree of equality in circumstance or situation, instead of regarding "its object not only as suffering, but weak, and hence as inferior," as one authority says.
