#241 Compassion on The Ignorant

Men who are ignorant should not be met with scorn, nor fault-finding, nor neglect, for they need compassion.

We should lay ourselves out to bear with such for their good.

A disciple who has been taught all that he knows by a gracious Savior should have compassion on “the ignorant.”

A wanderer who has been restored should have compassion on “them that are out of the way.”

A priest should have compassion on the people with whom he is one flesh and blood, and assuredly our Lord, who is our great High Priest, has abundant compassion upon the ignorant.

Let us think of his great pity towards them.

I. WHAT IS THIS IGNORANCE?

It is moral and spiritual, and deals with eternal things.

It is fearfully common among all ranks.
It leaves them strangers to themselves.
- They know not their own ignorance.
- They are unaware of the heart’s depravity.
- They are unconscious of the heinousness of their actual sin.
- They dream not of their present and eternal danger.
- They have not discovered their inability for all that is good.
It leaves them unacquainted with the way of salvation.
- They choose other ways.
- They have a mixed and injurious notion of the one way.
- They often question and cavil at this one and only way.
It leaves them without the knowledge of Jesus.
- They know not his person, his offices, his work, his character his ability, his readiness to save them.
It leaves them strangers to the Holy Spirit.
- They perceive not his inward strivings.
- They are ignorant of regeneration.
- They cannot comprehend the truth which he teaches.
- They cannot receive his sanctification.
It is most ruinous in its consequences.
- It keeps men out of Christ.
- It does not excuse them when it is willful, as it usually is.

II. WHAT IS THERE IN THIS IGNORANCE WHICH IS LIABLE TO PROVOKE US, AND THEREFORE DEMANDS COMPASSION?

Its folly. Wisdom is worried with the absurdities of ignorance.
Its pride. Anger is excited by the vanity of self-conceit.
Its prejudice. It will not hear nor learn; and this is vexatious.
Its obstinacy. It refuses reason; and this is very exasperating.
Its opposition. It contends against plain truth, and this is trying.
Its density. It cannot be enlightened: it is profoundly foolish.
Its unbelief. Witnesses to divine truth are denied credence.
Its wilfulness. It chooses not to know. It is hard teaching such.
Its relapses. It returns to folly, forgets and refuses wisdom, and this is a sore affliction to true love.

III. HOW OUR LORD’S COMPASSION TOWARDS THE IGNORANT IS SHOWN. “He can have compassion on the ignorant.”

This he clearly shows—

By offering to teach them.
By actually receiving them as disciples.
By instructing them little by little, most condescendingly.
By teaching them the same things over again, patiently.
By never despising them notwithstanding their dullness.
By never casting them off through weariness of their stupidity.
- To such a compassionate Lord let us come, ignorant as we are.
- For such a compassionate Lord let us labor among the most ignorant, and never cease to pity them.

Notes

It is a sad thing for the blind man who has to read the raised type when the tips of his fingers harden, for then he cannot read the thoughts of men which stand out upon the page; but it is far worse to lose sensibility of soul, for then you cannot peruse the book of human nature, but must remain untaught in the sacred literature of the heart. You have heard of the “iron duke,” but an iron Christian would be a very terrible person: a heart of flesh is the gift of divine grace, and one of its sure results is the power to be very pitiful, tender, and full of compassion.—C. H. S.

Ignorance is the devil’s college.—Christmas Evans.

What the Papists cry up as the mother of devotion, we cry down as the father of superstition.—William Secker.

That there should one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, this I call a tragedy. Were it to happen more than twenty times in the minute, as by some computations it does, what a line of tragedies!

The miserable fraction of science which our united mankind, in a wide Universe of nescience, has acquired, why is not this, with all diligence, imparted to all?—Thomas Carlyle.

Utter ignorance is a most effectual fortification to a bad state of the mind. Prejudice may perhaps be removed; unbelief may be reasoned with; even demoniacs have been compelled to bear witness to the truth; but the stupidity of confirmed ignorance not only defeats the ultimate efficacy of the means for making men wiser and better, but stands in preliminary defiance to the very act of their application. It reminds us of an account, in one of the relations of the French Egyptian Campaigns, of the attempt to reduce a garrison posted in a bulky fort of mud. Had the defences been of timber, the besiegers might have set fire to and burnt them; had they been of stone, they might have shaken and ultimately breached them by the battery of their cannon, or they might have undermined and blown them up. But the huge mound of mud had nothing susceptible of fire or any other force; the missiles from the artillery were discharged but to be buried in the dull mass; and all the means of demolition were baffled.—John Foster.

In Eyesight, Good and Bad, by Dr. R. B. Carter, the writer says “Nothing is more common than for defective sight to be punished as obstinacy or stupidity. For my own part, I have long learned to look upon obstinate and stupid children as mainly artificial productions, and shall not readily forget the pleasure with which I heard from the master of the great elementary school at Edinburgh, where twelve hundred children attend daily, that his fundamental principle of management was that there were no naughty boys and no boobies.”

I used to reproach myself for religious stupidity when I was not well; but I see now that God is my kind Father, not my hard taskmaster expecting me to be full of life and zeal when physically exhausted. It takes long to learn such lessons. One has to penetrate deeply into the heart of Christ to begin to know its tenderness and sympathy and forbearance.

The love of Jesus—what it is

Only His sufferers know.

—Elizabeth Prentiss.