1 Thessalonians 5:14 Now we exhort you, brothers, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feebleminded, support the weak, be patient toward all men. A disposition to despise weakness, observed Mr. Fonblanque, seems to be a law of nature which humanity prevails against with effort, by urging the sympathies and stimulating them by the imagination. Poor Boswell again and again makes piteous record of Johnson's unimaginative contempt for the sufferings of frailer constitutions; and he philosophizes on the fact that in full health men can scarcely believe that their ailing neighbours suffer much, "so faint is the image of pain upon our imagination." "At your age, sir, I had no headache," snapped the doctor at Sir William Scott once when the future Lord Stowell ventured to complain of one. When Fanny Burney fell ill at court, she wrote, "Illness here, till of late, has been so unknown that it is commonly supposed that it must be wilful, and therefore meets little notice till accompanied by danger. This is by no means from hardness, but from prejudice and want of personal experience." John Stuart Mill reckoned it as one of the disadvantages of Bentham that from his childhood he had never had a day's illness; his unbroken health helped to incapacitate him for sympathy with his fellows, and weakened his power of insight into other minds. (F. Jacox, B. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feebleminded, support the weak, be patient toward all men. |
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