Feeling

Feeling - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

FEE'LING, ppr.

1. Perceiving by the touch; having perception.

2. a. Expressive of great sensibility; affecting; tending to excite the passions. He made a feeling representation of his wrongs. He spoke with feeling eloquence.

3. Possessing great sensibility; easily affected or moved; as a feeling man; a feeling heart.

4. Sensibly or deeply affected; as, I had a feeling sense of his favors. [This use is not analogical, but common.]

FEE'LING, n.

1. The sense of touch; the sense by which we perceive external objects which come in contact with the body, and obtain ideas of their tangible qualities; one of the five senses. It is by feeling we know that a body is hard or soft, hot or cold, wet or dry, rough or smooth.

2. Sensation; the effect of perception.

The apprehension of the good gives but the greater feeling to the worse.

3. Faculty or power of perception; sensibility.

Their king, out of a princely feeling, was sparing and compassionate towards his subjects.

4. Nice sensibility; as a man of feeling.

5. Excitement; emotion.

fel'-ing: The following varieties of meaning are to be noted:

(1) "To touch," "handle," "grope after" (mashash (Ge 27:12,22; Ex 10:21; mush, Ge 27:21; Jud 16:26; pselaphao, Ac 17:27).

(2) "To know," "understand," "experience" (bin, Ps 58:9; yadha`, Pr 23:35; ginosko, Mr 5:29).

(3) "To have a fellow feeling," "to place one's self into the position of another," especially while suffering, "to have compassion" (sumpathein, Heb 4:15; compare 10:34; which is to be carefully distinguished from the similar verb sumpaschein, which means "to share in the same suffering with another," Ro 8:17; 1Co 12:26). See Delitzsch, Commentary on Heb 4:15.

(4) "To feel harm," "pain," "grief," "to be sensitive" (paschein, with the roots path- and penth-, Ac 28:5); or with the negation: "to have ceased to feel," "to be apathetic," "past feeling," "callous," apelgekos, perfect participle of apalgeo (Eph 4:19) which describes the condition of the sinner, who by hardening his heart against moral influences is left without a sense of his high vocation, without an idea of the awfulness of sin, without reverence to God, without an appreciation of the salvation offered by Him, and without fear of His judgment.

H. L. E. Luering