i. 10, 13, 16): nor Gehazi into that of the Shunamite woman (2 Kings
iv. 27). Michal, though the wife of David, was "a stranger to his joy" at the bringing up of the ark to Zion (1 Sam. xviii. 13, 20, with 2 Sam. vi. 12-16).--_Fausset._
The two extreme experiences of a human heart, which comprehend all others between them, are "bitterness" and "joy." The solitude of a human being in either extremity is a solemnising thought. Whether you are glad or grieved, you must be alone. The bitterness and the joyfulness are both your own. It is only in a modified sense, and in a limited measure, that you can share them with another, so as to have less of them yourself. . . . Sympathy between two human beings is, after all, little more than a figure of speech. A physical burden can be divided equally between two. If you, unburdened, overtake a weary pilgrim on the way, toiling beneath a load of a hundred pounds weight, you may volunteer to bear fifty of them for the remaining part of the journey, and so lighten his load by half. But a light heart, however willing it may be, cannot so relieve a heavy one. The cares that press upon the spirit are as real as the load that lies on the back, and as burdensome; but they are not so tangible and divisible. . . . There are, indeed, some very intimate unions in human society, as organized by God. . . . The closest of them all, the two "no longer twain, but one flesh," is a union of unspeakable value for such sympathy as is compatible with distinct personality at all. . . . The wife of your bosom can, indeed, intermeddle with your joys and sorrows, as no stranger can do, and yet there are depths of both in your breast which even she has no line to fathom. When you step into the waters of life's last sorrow, even she must stand back and remain behind. Each must go forward alone. The Indian _suttee_ seems nature's struggle against that fixed necessity of man's condition. But is a vain oblation. Although the wife burn on the husband's funeral pile, the frantic deed does not lighten the solitude of the dark valley. One human being cannot be merged in another. Man must accept the separate personality that belongs to his nature.--_Arnot._
It is true, observes a philosophic essayist, that we have all much in common; but what we have most in common is this, that we are all isolated. Man is more than a combination of passions common to his kind. Beyond them and behind them, an inner life, whose current we think we know within us, flows on in solitary stillness. Friendship itself is declared to have nothing in common with this dark sensibility, so repellent and so forbidding, much less may a stranger penetrate to those untrodden shores. We may apply Wordsworth's lines,--
To friendship let him turn For succour; but perhaps he sits alone On stormy waters, tossed in a little boat That holds but him, and can contain no more.
--_Jacox._
By this thought the worth and the significance of each separate human personality is made conspicuous, not one of which is the example of a species, but each has its own peculiarity, which no one of countless individuals possesses.--_Elster._
Who but a _parent_ can fully know the "bitterness" of his grief who "mourneth for an only son"--of him who is "in bitterness for his first-born." Who but a parent can sympathise with the royal mourner's anguish over a son that has died in rebellion against his father and his God! Who but a _widow_ can realise the exquisite bitterness of a widow's agony when bereft of the loved partner of her joys and sorrows! Who but a _pastor_ can know, in all its intensity, the bitterness of soul experienced in seeing those on whom he counted as genuine fruits of his ministry, and on whom he looked with delighted interest, as his anticipated "joy and crown" in "the day of the Lord," falling away--going back and walking no more with Jesus.--_Wardlaw._
The principal thought of verse 11 has been treated before. See on