Bearing one another's Burdens.

Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

GALATIANS vi. 2.

HIS world is full of burden-bearers.

THIS

The man has

yet to be born who shall pass through it without taking a load. There are some men who seem as if they would. They say, "get ready the chariot, prepare the wings; we mean to roll through life in ease; we mean to soar above its cares." But the wheels of the chariot go heavily. The flight is never far. The invisible burden gathers, and they are surprised to find themselves among the weary and the heavy laden who need rest.

Not only is the bearing of burdens the common lot, but there is a sense in which the injunction of the text is universally fulfilled. We do, naturally and inevitably, bear one another's burdens. "No man liveth to himself." No man can. Each gives and takes continually, helps or hinders those around according to his own life. And life is such that every man must take some share of the life of those around. To be in relationships means this. To be in a family as head or member, to be in business, to be one of a social and civilized com

munity implies this. We do bear one another's burdens, and the share of some men is very heavy. Then, what need is there of the text? The text is needed to make that Christian which is simply natural. It is needed to change hard necessity into holy duty. It is needed to multiply the instances in which it can be fulfilled. One of the peculiar excellences of Christianity is this, that it takes what is good, or what is existing in human life by necessity, and raises it into religion. It adopts certain natural sentiments, and puts them into their right place in the system of truth. It consecrates certain natural virtues by furnishing right motives and worthy ends. Viewed in this light, how pleasant is the text? It speaks to men who are all struggling and suffering together, and says not, "throw off the burden, deny the mutual claim, restrain the hand of help ;" but it says, "what you must do, do willingly. What you might leave undone, do more willingly still." "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ."

I shall speak now of some of the burdens which we may help our Christian neighbours and our fellow-men to bear; and then, much more briefly, of the motives and inducements to such a course.

I.

Poverty is a purden which we may lighten. It cannot be reasonably questioned that poverty is a great

They live among straits.
This is partly true; but

disadvantage, and constitutes a great pressure on the poor. It may be said, "many of the poor are born poor. They do not feel the privations so much as you, looking down upon their state, might imagine. They are strangers to the tastes of luxury. They have never had the pleasant sensations of competence. Their whole life is a struggle." then we have to think, if we think justly and Christianly, not of their actual state only, but of their possible state; not only of what is, but of what might be. The poorest man is a man altogether, and is capable of all that a man can be in soul and in circumstances. The most perfect man is only a specimen of what the most imperfect man might be. "But there must be the different classes in society. Our Lord tells us that we shall always have the poor with us?" Our Lord, as we take it, refers simply to a fact. Surely he does not announce poverty as a perpetual institution for this world-as one of the laws of his kingdom. That kingdom is of such a nature that in proportion as its principles prevail, they must bring all evil things to an end. Now poverty, if not morally an evil thing in itself, has in very many cases a constant pressure that way. It does drive men on to thoughts and states of mind, and acts and habits, which are evil. It prevents the acquisition of knowledge. It makes decency very difficult. It quenches the nobler strivings. It wears the body with toil, withholds the sustenance of

strength. It makes life a drudgery. When very deep it is twin-sister to famine, and behind them both are the darker forms of crime. "Lest I be poor and steal," is the argument by which the wise man's prayer, "Give me not poverty," is sustained.

No thoughtful loving man can say that that is a state in which men ought to be content, or in which we ought to be content to see them. It is a great burden, and we are to bear it, with them, and for them. The manner of doing this is a large question, on which no very specific instruction can be given. In those cases, where the poverty is not providential, and for the time necessary, but voluntary and vicious, pecuniary help, indiscriminate relief, would not be the bearing of the burden, rather it would be making it heavier. Or if indolence were the cause, then a stimulus to industry would be the relief. Or if wrong laws or mistaken social arrangements were producing it, the correction and amendment of these would be the cure. But, in any case, the bearing of the burden never can consist in mere moralizing-in looking at them, preaching to them about their duties and their proper place in the social scale, giving them a little charity and some wise advice. If we are to bear the burden, we must take it in some way so that they shall feel we are taking it. We must go and stand by them and with them. We must give something, feel something, do something, and be something,

in relation to them and their straits, which will be sympathetic and helpful. And the obligation to this course is the stronger, because there is another obligation, all but constant and universal in its force, to decline and resist the solicitations of a clamorous mendicancy which meet you on every side. If you are wise, and thoughtfully merciful, you send the beggars from your gates, and refuse them on the street, when they assail you with their piteous whine. One is sorry, indeed, to think it, but to those who have examined the subject, the evidence is irresistible, that work is their abhorrence, and that begging is their trade. And yet it is no easy thing to justify to one's own feelings a uniform refusal. Tenderness flows; benevolence pleads; the eye affects the heart."It would hardly be safe to one's own moral health to decline in every case." But how much will this unpleasant, and to some even dangerous duty, be sweetened and made wholesome, by the blessed habit of seeking out the poverty that is to be relieved, by the habit of "considering the poor" in all their feelings and in all their circumstances, so as to make the relief given really honourable and pleasant. If you are in the habit of looking lovingly around the circle of relationship, and with brotherly-kindness among the poor of the church, and into the neighbourhood where you live, and into the darker parts of our social economy, in order that you may cheerfully and immediately do what your means