KINDNESS.
Blessed be the Lord: for he hath shewed me his marvellous kindness.—Psalm xxxi. 21.
Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness.—Joel, ii. 13.
Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another.—Romans, xii. 10.
Be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.—Ephesians, iv. 32.
The poorest poor
Long for some moments in a weary life,
When they can know and feel that they have been
Themselves the fathers and the dealers out
Of some small blessings—have been kind
To such as needed kindness; for this single cause,
That we have all of us a human heart.
Wordsworth.
Awake, my soul, in joyful lays,
And sing thy great Redemer’s praise;
He justly claims a song from me,
His loving-kindness O how free!
He saw me ruined in the fall,
Yet loved me notwithstanding all:
He saved me from my lost estate,
His loving-kindness O how great!
Often I feel my sinful heart
Prone from my Jesus to depart;
But, though I have Him oft forgot,
His loving-kindness changes not.
Soon shall I pass the gloomy vale;
Soon all my mortal powers shall fail:
O may my last expiring breath
His loving-kindness sing in death!
Then let me mount and soar away
To the bright world of endless day:
And sing with rapture and surprise,
His loving-kindness in the skies.
Medley.
As from the bosom of her mystic fountains,
Nile’s sacred water windeth to the main,
Flooding each vale embosom’d ’mong the mountains,
From far Alata’s fields to Egypt’s plain:
So from the bosom of the Fount of Love,
A golden stream of sympathy is gushing;
And winding, first through intellect above,
Then through each vale of mortal mind is rushing;
Sweeping the heart of iceberg and of storm,
Purging humanity of every blindness,
Melting all spirits earthly into one,
And leaving holiness and joy—’tis Kindness.
D. K. Lee.
Meanwhile as we idly rave,
Thousands hasten to the grave;
No kind voice their footsteps guides
To the home where truth abides;
Tones of truth within them stirred,
Meet with no kind answering word.
J. Gostick.
Be kind to each other!
The night’s coming on,
When friend and when brother
Perchance may be gone.
Then, ’midst our dejection,
How sweet to have earn’d
The blest recollection
Of kindness return’d!
When day hath departed,
And Memory keeps
The watch, broken-hearted,
Where all the loved sleeps,
Let falsehood assail not,
Nor envy disprove;
Let trifles prevail not
Against those ye love.
Nor change with to-morrow
Should fortune take wing,
But the deeper the sorrow
The closer still cling.
Oh, be kind to each other,
For night’s coming on,
When friend and when brother
Perchance may be gone.
Anon.