Those of you who were here, last Thursday evening, will recollect that the sermon was concerning those sons of Gershon who were burden-bearers in connection with the tabernacle in the wilderness.* They were not appointed to preach; they were not ordained to fight; but their service consisted in bearing burdens. There were some here, on that occasion, whom I had never known before, who had been, by the space of thirty years, great sufferers; they were carried into this place, last Thursday evening, I did not know of their presence until afterwards, when they told me that the sermon seemed to have been made for them, and that it had given them great comfort.

I thought I would follow up that sermon about burden-bearers by a discourse upon another text, which shows us that there are some burdens which we need not carry. Burdens of service, or burdens which come through our consecration to the Lord Jesus Christ,-these we will never lay down so long as we live. It shall be our joy to take up our cross daily, and follow Jesus; but there are certain burdens of care and sorrow, of which the text speaks, especially the burdens which come from the slander, and reproach, and oppression of ungodly men, which we need not carry. David says, “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.”

Beloved friends, the very best men in the world may be slandered; and if you should hear them evil spoken of, be you not among those who straightway condemn them. There are some who say, “Where there is smoke, there is sure to be fire;” and, although it is well known that “common fame is a common liar,” yet there are some, who are so fond of hearing or telling lies, that they are sure to believe such a lie as this, especially if it be spoken concerning a servant of God. Be you not, therefore, ready to believe all the reports that you hear against any Christian people. The best of men, as I have already reminded you, have been worst spoken of, and there are some who turn upon them directly, like lions scenting their prey.

I may be just now addressing some, who are the victims of the malice of ungodly men or women. I am sorry, dear friends, that this should be your lot, for it is among the bitterest of human afflictions; but, at the same time, I would remind you that nothing unusual has happened to you. You remember the three brave men who were cast alive into Nebuchadnezzar’s burning fiery furnace when it was heated seven times more than it was wont to be heated. You are scarcely enduring such a fiery trial as that; and, certainly, you are not suffering as did your Master, the Lord of all pilgrims who have made their way to heaven. But if, in any degree, it should happen that you are bearing a burden of this kind, the text will have a special message for you.

In speaking upon this passage, I want to keep it in connection with the whole Psalm. I do not think it is dealing properly with the Bible to pick out one verse here, and another there, without looking to see what the connection of the passage is. If men’s books were treated as God’s Book is often treated, we should make many a grand and noble literary work to appear to be an insane production. It is true that God’s Book can endure even such treatment as that. It is such a wonderful Book that, even a sentence torn out of it will convey most precious truth; but it is not fair to the Book, and it is not fair to yourself, to treat the Bible so. A text of Scripture should always be viewed in the setting in which God has placed it, for there is often as much that is admirable in the gold which forms the setting of the jewel as there is in the jewel itself.

So, looking at our text in that light, I shall begin by saying that, when we are much tried and burdened, there is something that we are tempted to do. The text does not mention it, but the Psalm does; and the text is an antidote to the malady which the Psalm describes or implies. “Cast thy burden upon the Lord,” is an injunction concerning that which we are to put in the place of something else which more naturally suggests itself to our poor foolish minds.

And, first, when we are in very severe trouble, we are tempted to complain. The psalmist says, in the second verse, “I mourn in my complaint, and make a noise.” I am not sure that our version is quite fair to David in this instance, but it suits my present purpose admirably. As the children of God, we ought to avoid even the semblance of a complaint against our Heavenly Father; but when our faith is sorely tried, when some sharp reproach is stinging our spirit, we are all too apt to begin thinking and saying that God is dealing hardly with us. You know how Job, that most patient of men, became very impatient when his so-called “friends” poured vinegar instead of oil into his wounds. Smarting under their cruel treatment, he said some things which he had far better have left unsaid. O brethren, pray that, whenever the Lord lays his rod heavily upon you, your tears may have no rebellion in them! Whatever his providential dealings with you may be, may you be enabled to say, with Job, “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” Let the worst come from his hand that can come, still say, with the patriarch, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” May you even join Job in his triumphant declaration, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” It is grand faith that enables a believer to say, “Though I should die at God’s altar, I will die like the lamb that is brought to the slaughter, or be like the sheep that is dumb before her shearers, and makes no complaint.”

The next natural temptation is that of giving up altogether, and lying down in despair. You get that in the fourth and fifth verses: “My heart is sore pained within me: and the terrors of death are fallen upon me. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me.” Have not some of you been sometimes tempted to say, “There, I can do no more; I must give all up; that last cruel blow has utterly broken me in pieces, and I feel that I can only lay me down, and die in the bitterness of my spirit”? Brothers and sisters, this is a temptation against which you must strive most earnestly. As no living man should complain, so no living man should despair, and especially no child of God. Up with thee, poor heart; thou hast not yet come to the end of God’s delivering mercy, even though thou hast come to the end of thy poor puny strength. The Lord shall light thy candle now that thy night is so dark. Thou shalt yet sing for very joy of heart though now thou canst only, like David, mourn in thy complaint, and make a noise. God will understand thy moaning, and thy mourning, and he will bring thee again from Bashan, and from the depths of the sea if thou hast sunk as low as that. Wherefore, talk not of dying before your time. Yet, if you do so, you will not be the first who has talked like that, for there was one, who never died, who said, “O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers.” That was Elijah, the prophet of fire; yet, just then, he seemed as if he were only cold ashes rather than a vehement flame,-another proof that the best of men are but men at the best.

The next very common temptation is, to want to flee from our present trials. You get that in verses six to eight: “I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest. Lo, then would I wander far off, and remain in the wilderness. I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest.” Possibly, you are the pastor of a church, and things do not prosper as you could wish; I wonder where they do. But, in your case, you think there is such a little prosperity that you must give up your position, and run away. Young gunners, before they have become accustomed to the smell of gunpowder, and the noise of cannons, have often been known to desert their guns, and even old soldiers have sometimes felt what the “trembles” are. But, my brother, if this is your case, I beseech you not to run away, If you did flee, where would you go? You think you will run away, as Jonah did, do you? I warrant you that Jonah was very sorry that he had run away when he found himself, in the whale’s belly, at the very bottom of the mountains, in the depths of the sea; and you and I will be sure to get into greater trouble if we run away from the path of duty. Fight it out, man; stand your ground in the name of God, and in the strength of God. It may be that there are better days just now coming, and that Satan is seeking to drive you away just as you are on the brink of success. Dr. Watts has a good paraphrase of this Psalm, and also writes wisely concerning the temptation to flee from the post of duty. He says,-

“Oh, were I like a feathered dove,

And innocence had wings!

I’d fly, and make a long remove

From all these restless things.

“Let me to some wild desert go,

And find a peaceful home;

Where storms of malice never blow,

Temptations never come.

“Vain hopes, and vain inventions all,

To ’scape the rage of hell!

The mighty God, on whom I call,

Can save me here as well.

“God shall preserve my soul from fear,

Or shield me when afraid;

Ten thousand angels must appear,

If He command their aid.”

Possibly, the special case in point is not that of a minister. It is some Mary, weeping at home because her brother Lazarus is dead. Martha is not a very congenial sister to her, so she does not even go with her when she goes to meet the Lord; yet, strangely enough, each of the sisters says the same words to Jesus, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” In due time, the Master sends for Mary, and soon she has the joy of welcoming Lazarus back from the grave. Some of us get queer ideas into our heads at times; we resolve that we will go we know not where, and do we know not what. Ah, my dear friends, he, whose great trouble lies in his own heart, cannot run away from it, for he bears it about with him wherever he goes. The old man of the mountain, who sits upon your shoulder, and clings so tightly to you, if he be your own self, is not to be shaken off by your running away. Far wiser will it be for you to do as the text says, “Cast thy burden upon the Lord.” Then thou wilt want no wings like a dove, nor wilt thou wish to fly away to the wilderness; but thou wilt be willing to stay in the very midst of the battle, and even there thou wilt be in perfect peace,-

“Calm ’mid the bewildering cry,

Confident of victory.”

I have often enjoyed the greatest solitude amid the crowds in Cheapside, and I believe that there is many a Christian, who has experienced the deepest peace in the midst of the wildest turmoil. Some of us know what Madame Guyon meant when she wrote,-

“While place we seek or place we shun,

The soul finds happiness in none;

But with a God to guide our way,

’Tis equal joy to go or stay.”

Trust thou in him, cast thou thy burden on him, for so thou wilt escape from this temptation of wanting to flee away from the place where he would have thee to be.

There is one other temptation that this Psalm suggests to me, and that is, the temptation to wish ill to those who are causing us ill. Perhaps mistaking the meaning of the passage, we are apt to pray the prayer in the ninth verse, “ ‘Destroy, O Lord!’ Our foes have slandered us, they have spoken ill of us, and we wish that they were dead, or that some great judgment might overtake them.” It will never do, dear friends, to indulge such a feeling as that. We shall be ourselves injured if we desire that others should be injured. Slander has indeed stung thee when thou harbourest the wish to sting another. Someone said, in my hearing, attempting to justify revenge or retaliation, “But if you tread on a worm, it will turn;” and I answered, “Is a poor worm, that only turns because of its agony through man’s cruelty, the pattern for a Christian man to follow? Will you look down to the dust of the earth to find the example that you are to imitate?” Wicked men trod upon Christ,-who even compared himself to a worm,-yet he did not turn upon them, except to cry, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Let that be the only kind of turning that you ever practise towards your enemies. Do not be driven, by their evil speaking or their cruel deeds, into harshness of speech or even harshness of thought. I have known some persons, under sore trouble, who have at last become quite soured and bitter of spirit; that is all wrong, and very sad, and no good can ever come of such a state of heart as that. The bruising of the sycamore fig results in its growing sweeter, let thy bruising produce a similar effect upon thee. Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, in his wondrous Sermon on the Mount, “I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.” If you do not act thus, which is the right thing for you to do, you will almost certainly do the wrong thing in some shape or other. Therefore, God help you to do what is right! Child, is thy father rough to thee? Then, love him until he becomes tender and gentle. Wife, is thy husband unkind to thee? Then, win him back by thy sweet smiles. Servant, is thy mistress harsh to thee? Even good women have sometimes dealt as hardly with their servants as Sarah dealt with Hagar. Well, if that is thy case, be not thou like Hagar, who despised her mistress. Submit thyself to her, for so shalt thou yet win her, as many a Christian slave of old, far worse treated than thou hast been, won his master or his mistress to Christ in those earliest and happiest days of Christianity. What is there for a Christian man to do but love his enemies? This is the most powerful weapon that we have in our armoury. We shall be wise as serpents if God teacheth us wisdom, and we shall also be harmless as doves if the Holy Spirit, like a dove, rests upon us, and makes us also to abound in gentleness. By this sign we shall conquer, for it is love that always wins the day.

Thus I have shown you what we are tempted to do when we are like this good man who was in such an evil case.

Now I am going to show you, from the text, as the Holy Spirit shall help me, what we are commanded to do. That is, “Cast thy burden upon the Lord.” Thou hast a burden upon thy back, it is too heavy for thee to bear, so cast it upon the Lord.

“How shall I do that?” someone asks. Well, if you are a child of God, I invite you, first of all, to trace your burden back to God. “But it comes from the treachery of Ahithophel, or from the rebellion of Absalom.” I grant you that it does; but those are only the second causes, or the agents, trace the matter back to the Great First Cause. If you do that, you will come, by a mystery which I will not attempt to explain, to the hand of divine providence, and you will say of every burden, “This also cometh from the Lord.” You have probably seen a dog, when he has been struck with, a stick, turn round, and bite the staff that smote him. If he were a wise dog, he would bite the man who held the stick that dealt the blow. When God uses his rod upon one of his children, even a godly man will sometimes snap at the rod. “But, sir, surely you would not have me turn upon my God?” Oh, no! I know you will not do that, for you are his child; and when you see that God is holding the rod in his hand, you will cease to be rebellious, and you will say, with the psalmist, “ ‘I was dumb with silence.’ I was going to speak, but I opened not my mouth, because I saw that it was in thine hand that the rod of chastisement was held.” It is well always to trace our trials direct to God, and say, “It may be Judas Iscariot who has betrayed me; but, still, it was planned in God’s eternal purpose that I should be betrayed; so I will forget the second cause, except it be to pray God to forgive the malice of the betrayer, and I will look to the Lord who permitted the trial to come upon me for his own glory and for my good.”

The next thing thou hast to do is this. Seeing that the burden is from God, patiently wait his time for its removal. There are some people, who, if they had a task set them by some great one whom they respected and revered, would cheerfully perform it. If, in the middle of the night, you were called up by a Queen’s messenger, and bidden to do something for Her Majesty, you would be glad to rise and dress, even though it might be a cold night, and you might have far to go to fulfil your commission; and if you feel that your burden is from the Lord,-if the King’s arms are stamped upon the affliction or trial that comes to you, straightway you will say, “As the Lord wills it, I will bear it without complaining. When it is his time to deliver me, I shall be delivered; and so long as it is his time for me to suffer, I will suffer patiently.” I wish that all Christians could be like that good old woman who was asked whether, as she was so very ill, she would prefer to live or to die, said that she had no preference whatever, she only wished that the will of the Lord might be done. “But, still, if the Lord said to you, ‘Which will you have?’ which would you choose?” She said, “I would not even then choose, but I would ask the Lord to choose for me.” You see, whenever anything comes to us from God, we have not the responsibility of it; but if it came through our own choice, then we might say to ourselves, “What fools we were to choose this particular trial!” You say that you do not like the cross God has sent you. Well but, at any rate, it is not by your own choice that you have to carry that particular cross. It is God who chose it for you; whereas, if you had selected it, you might well say, “Oh, dear me, what a mistake I made when I chose this burden!” Now, you cannot say that; and I pray that you may have grace to see that “the whole disposing” of your lot is, as Solomon says, “of the Lord.” The Hebrew of our text would bear such a rendering as this, “Cast on the Lord what the Lord gives thee. Cast on him what he cast on thee. See the marks of his hand on thy burden, and thou wilt be reconciled to thy load. Know that God sends it to thee, and patiently wait till he takes it away.” F. W. Faber very sweetly writes,-

“I have no cares, O blessed Lord,

For all my cares are thine;

I live in triumph, too, for thou

Hast made thy triumphs mine.

“And when it seems no chance nor change

From grief can set me free;

Hope finds its strength in helplessness,

And patient, waits on thee.

“Lead on, lead on, triumphantly,

O blessed Lord, lead on!

Faith’s pilgrim-sons behind thee seek

The road that thou hast gone.”

One blessed way of casting our burden upon the Lord is to tell the Lord all about it. It is a high privilege to get away alone, and talk to God as a man talketh with his friend. But I know what you often do, my brothers and sisters. When you get into a cleft stick, and cannot tell what to do, then you begin to pray. Why do you not, every morning, tell the Lord about all your difficulties before they come? What! will you only run to him when you get into trouble? Nay, go to him before you get into trouble. Half our burdens come from what we have not prayed over. If a man would take the ordinary concerns of life distinctly to God, one by one, it is marvellous how easily the chariot of life would roll along. Things over which we have not prayed are like undigested food that breeds mischief in the body; they breed mischief in the soul. Do thou digest thy daily bread by praying first, “God give it to me, and then God bless me in the use of it, and then God bless me afterwards in the spending of the strength derived from it to his praise and glory.” Salt all your life with prayer, lest corruption should come to that part of thy life which thou hast not thus salted. Tell the Lord, then, thy griefs, just as, when a child, you told your troubles to your mother.

“I cannot find words,” says one. Oh, they will come! They come fast enough when you complain to man, and they will sweetly come if you get into the blessed habit of talking to God about everything. A friend said to me, not long ago, “I was on the Exchange, and I saw that I had made a mistake in a certain transaction. I had lost money by it; and if I had gone on dealing in the same fashion, I should have been ruined. I just stepped aside for a minute or two into a quiet corner of my office. I stood still, and breathed a prayer to God for guidance. Then I went back, and felt, ‘Now I am ready for any one of you.’ ” “So I was,” he said, “I was not confused and worried, as I should otherwise have been, and so liable to make mistakes, but I had waited upon God, and I was therefore calm and collected.” There is much wisdom in thus praying about everything; although, possibly, some of you may think it trivial. I believe that the very soul of Christianity lies in the sanctifying of what is called secular,-the bringing of all things under the cognizance of our God by intense, constant, importunate, believing prayer.

When you have told the Lord everything, the next thing for you to do, in order to cast your burden upon him, is to believe that all will work together for your good. Swallow the bitter as readily as you do the sweet; and believe that, somehow, the strange mixture will do you great good. Do not look out at thy window, judging this, and that, and the other, in detail; but, if God sent it to thee, open the door, and take it all in for all that has come from him will be to his glory and to thy profit. Believe thou that, if thou shalt lose certain things, thou wilt really be a gainer by thy losses. Even if thy dearest one is taken from thee, all shall be well if thou hast but faith to trust God in it all. If thou thyself art stricken with mortal sickness, it will still be well with thee; and if thou dost still steadfastly trust in the Lord, thou shalt know that it is so. “We know,” says the apostle Paul; he does not say, “We think, we suppose, we judge,” but, “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” If thou dost know this, my brother or my sister, it shall help thee to “cast thy burden upon the Lord.”

When thou hast done this, then leave thy burden with the Lord. In the process of trusting God with thy burden, get to this point, that thou hast done with it. If I cast my burden upon the Lord, what business have I to carry it myself? How can I truthfully say that I have cast it upon him if still I am burdened with it? Throughout my life, which has not been free from many grave cares, there have been many things which I have been able to see my own way through; and, using my best judgment, they have passed off well. But, in so large a church as this, there sometimes occur things that altogether stagger me. I do not know what to do in such a case as that; and I have been in the habit, after doing all I can, of putting such things up on the shelf, and saying, “There, I will never take them down again, come what may. I have done with them, for I have left them wholly with God;” and I wish to bear my testimony that, somehow or other, the thing which I could not unravel, has unravelled itself. When Peter and the angel “came unto the iron gate,” it “opened to them of his own accord;” and the same thing has happened to me many a time. “Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?” asked the holy women when they came to the tomb of their Lord; “and when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away.” Learn to say, “My God has made this difficulty, and there is some good result to come of it; I have done the little I can do, so now I will leave it all with him.” Ah, but I know what some of you do; you say that you have left it all with God, and then you lie awake all night fretting about it. Is that casting your burden upon the Lord? Oh, for a blessed literalism about the promises of God, and our faith in them, so that we take them to mean just what they say, and act upon them accordingly! Now, if some poor woman here were sadly in debt for her rent, and she met with a Christian brother who said to her, “Do not fret, my good sister, I will see it all paid to-morrow;” do you think she would go running about, and saying, “O dear, I shall lose my things, my rent will not be paid”? No; she would say, “Mr. So-and-so, whom I know and trust, said that he would pay it for me, and I feel perfectly quiet about it.” Now, do thou so with thy God if thou knowest him. David said, “They that know thy name will put their trust in thee.” If thou truly lovest the Lord, it will be a proof of thy love to repose thy care upon him without questioning; and when thou hast cast thy burden upon him, it will prove the truth of thy having done so if thou art unburdened, and thy heart is at rest. If he beareth my burden, why should I also bear it? If he careth for me, what have I to do to vex myself with fretful, anxious cares?

I have thus done my best to show you what we are commanded to do: “Cast thy burden upon the Lord.”

And now thirdly, and very briefly, what we should endeavour to do.

If I read the text aright, we here have David talking to himself; and what we are to endeavour to do is, to talk to ourselves, just as David talked to himself. He says of his enemy, “The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart;” and so on, and then he seems to say, “Come, David, do not fret yourself like this; but cast your burden upon the Lord.” Have you not noticed how often David seems as if he were two Davids, and one David talks to the other David? It was so when he said to himself, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul; and why art thou disquieted within me?” And I want thee, dear friend, to chide thyself, and say, “Come, fretful heart, what art thou at? Cast thy burden upon the Lord. What art thou doing? Has God forsaken thee? Has God refused to help thee? Begone unbelief, take thyself off. Come, faith, and dwell in my soul, and reign over my spirit, swaying thy gracious sceptre of peace.”

And when you have thus been chiding yourself, argue with yourself about the matter. Say to yourself, “See how the text puts it: ‘Cast thy burden upon the Lord.’ ” Well, if it is thy burden, and God meant it for thee then do not thou quarrel with it. And as it is thy burden, so is God thy God, the covenant-keeping God, thy Father and thy Friend. Come, my soul, cast thy burden upon thy God; where else shouldst thou put thy burden when he bids thee cast it upon him? Thou canst not sustain thyself under such a load, but God will sustain thee and thy burden, too. Think of the righteousness of God, and say, “It is impossible that the righteous God should leave the righteous to perish. If they are slandered, that is a further reason why God should take up their cause. He is their Advocate and their Defender. Come, my heart, it shall never be truly said of the Judge of all the earth that he leaves his people to perish, especially when their good name is assailed because of their fidelity to him.”

I want you, dear friends, to talk thus with yourselves, especially those of you who are rather apt to give way to despondency. There are some such here, I know. You come to me, sometimes, with your griefs, and I do the best I can to cheer you; but I have often said to myself, “That dear sister had a father who was a member with us; he used to come to me in just the same way as she does. This despondency seems to run in the blood.” Some of you must have been born in December, and you never seem to get out of that month; it is always winter with you. But now I want you just to take the language of the text, and say to yourself, “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved;” and, possibly, God will bless thine own sermon to thyself more than he would bless my sermon to thee. At any rate, try it.

Lastly,-and here I want the time for a whole sermon,-let us think of what we may expect if we fulfil the command of the text: “Cast thy burden upon the Lord.”

There are two grand things in the text,-sustenance and sufferance. The old Puritans would have made a book about those two words, and we might preach a dozen sermons upon them, and still not exhaust their meaning. What does the Lord do with his people when they cast their burdens upon him? He gives them sustenance. “He shall sustain thee.” The word “sustain” is the same that is used when God told Elijah to go to Zarephath, saying, “Behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee,”-that is, “to feed thee,” “to nourish thee.” Perhaps that would have been a better rendering of the original: “Cast thy burden upon the Lord,” and what will he do? Deliver thee out of thy trouble? No; but he will feed thee up till thou canst carry it; and that will be an even better thing than relieving thee of the burden. Here is a dear child that has but a little load to carry, yet he staggers under it. It would be a kind thing for his father to pick up the child, and his load, too, and carry both him and his burden. But the wise father says, “I will so provide for that child that he shall grow in strength, and at last shall be able to carry his load.” “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee;” that is, “He shall feed thee; he shall nourish thee.” I believe that, when Paul was attacked by that viper that came out of the sticks, it looked a very ugly thing indeed, but Paul just shook it off into the fire. Why do you think that snake came? Why, it came to feed them all! “No,” say you, “that serpent did not do it.” It did, for the islanders said that this man was a god, and straightway they began to gather around him and his companions, and to provide for their wants with all the greater alacrity because of the reverence that they felt for the apostle. So you shall often find that what looks like a horrible thing will be the best way in which God could bless you.

“Cast thy burden upon the Lord.” “It will crush me.” No, it will not; you shall grow under it, and then grow out of it; and you shall prove the truth of those precious lines,-

“From all their afflictions my glory shall spring,

And the deeper their sorrows, the louder they’ll sing.”

Only by faith leave thy trouble with thy God, and he will nurture thee. Even out of the very rock of trouble will he feed thee, and give thee oil out of the flinty rock of thine afflictions.

Then, the other point is sufferance. I am obliged to hurry over these truths, and leave you to meditate upon them afterwards. “He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.” Learn, from this declaration, that nothing will happen to you but what God permits. There are some things which are very grievous, which God does suffer to happen to his people; but there are other things which he will not suffer; he will never allow them to come. “No,” says he, “my child, who has walked uprightly before me, my righteous one, the man who spoke the truth, the man who did the right thing, I will not suffer that man to be moved. He may be moved as the boughs of a tree sway to and fro in the breeze, but not as the roots of a tree are torn up by a storm. He may be moved a little, like a ship riding at anchor, which just swings with the tide; but he shall not be driven out to sea, or drift on to the rocks to his destruction.”

“He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.” Do you catch the psalmist’s idea? It is as if God interposed, and said, “No, I will not permit that.” A father may see his child somewhat put upon, yet at first he may not interfere; but, at last, a cruel blow is struck, and he says, “No, I will not stand that. While I have an arm to defend my child, he shall not be treated in that fashion.” Well, then, leave everything with your Heavenly Father, for he will not suffer you to be moved. If you are really righteous, trusting in the Righteous One, justified by the blood and righteousness of Christ, and are doing what is right in his sight, he will not suffer you to be moved. The next time you are sorely vexed by the tongue of slander, go and tell your Father, just as the little boys tell their big brothers. Go and tell your Father all about it, and do not fret over it. If somebody has done you a great wrong, you may say to him, “I shall be obliged to refer you to my solicitor.” But after you have done that, I hope you do not go writing letters to him on your own responsibility. Refer everything to God, and leave all with him; for, so, a blessed peace will bedew your spirit, making your life on earth like the beginning of life in heaven.

In closing my discourse, I must just say that I do feel, in my inmost soul, the deepest pity for those of you who have no God to go to when you are in trouble, You have a burden to bear, but you cannot cast it on the Lord. He will suffer you to be moved, for you do not cry unto him to help you. I feel that I would rather be a dog than be a man without a God. I think I could make myself happy if I were only a mouse in its hole; but if I were a prince in a palace, without God, I should be utterly miserable. O poor hearts, if you really want him, he is to be had! If you are longing for him, his door is open to receive you. If you will come to him, he will come and meet you much more than half way; yes, all the way will he come to everyone who wills to come to him. As soon as you say, “I will arise,” he has already arisen, and is on his way to meet you. Practically, there is no distance for you to go, for he is there, waiting to welcome you. Believe in his dear Son, and live. First cast your great burden of sin upon the Lord, and then cast upon him all other burdens that he is willing to take from you; and, soon, he will put a new song into your mouth, and establish your goings. The Lord grant it, for his dear Son’s sake! Amen!

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-35 (Song I.), 70, 688.

BURDEN-BEARING

A Sermon

Intended for Reading on Lord’s-day, May 17th, 1903,

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,

On Thursday Evening, August 26th, 1886.

“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ … Every man shall bear his own burden.”-Galatians 6:2, 5.

Observe, dear friends, that the apostle says, in the second verse of this chapter, “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” These Galatians had been trying to bear the heavy burden of the law of Moses. They had, as far as they could, put themselves again under the old ceremonial law. They had forsaken the gospel way of justification by faith, and had sought to be made perfect by their personal obedience to the law. Now, the apostle, as though he would expel one affection by another, says, “You want a law; you wish to be under a law; well, here is the law of Christ, yield yourselves to it. Instead of observing the outward ceremonials of the Levitical law, here is a living law, which touches the heart, and influences the life, obey that law. You are Christians; you have come under law to Christ by the very fact that you are not your own, but have been bought with a price by him; now see to it that you yield implicit obedience to the law of Christ.”

It is somewhat remarkable, I think, that many of those who are self-righteous, and apparently pay much regard to the law of Moses, are usually quite forgetful of that which is the very essence and spirit of that law. They are so righteous that they become stern, severe, censorious, which is being unrighteous, for the righteousness even of the law is a righteousness of love, “for all the law is fulfilled in one word,” that is, “love.” A self-righteous man is not generally a man with a tender spirit. He looks at that which is hard and stern in the law, and he begins to be himself hard and stern; but there is none of the softness, and sweetness, and gentleness, and graciousness which even the law itself required when it said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.” Paul did well, in the mood in which the Galatians were,-as they wanted to be under law,-to remind them of what is the essence of the law; and he did better still by reminding them that they were under law to Christ, whose law emphasizes the love which even Moses himself had taught under the old dispensation.

These Galatians had most foolishly sought to burden themselves with a load which neither they nor their fathers were able to bear. After being set free by the gospel, they had gone back to the yoke of bondage, so the apostle, in effect said to them, “As you have been so bewitched and fascinated that you want burdens to rest upon you, here are burdens for you: ‘Bear ye one another’s burdens.’ And, as you want law, here is law for you: ‘so fulfil the law of Christ.” It was characteristic of that sacred craftiness, that holy ingenuity, which was so conspicuous in the apostle Paul that he worded his argument thus, that he might draw the attention of these Galatians to it, fix it upon their memories, and, if possible, reach and influence their consciences.

Should there be any of you here who desire to come under the yoke of bondage, or who wish to be burden-bearers, or who find great music in the word “law”, I hope you will discover all these things in the text. I see in it, first of all, community: “Bear ye one another’s burdens.” Then the latter part of the text teaches us immunity. You are not bound to consider other people’s burdens as so much your own that you become responsible for them. No, “every man shall bear his own burden.” Then the third point, which will be a further opening up of the fifth verse, will be personality: “Every man shall bear his own burden.”

First, I see, in the text, a marvellous community: “Bear ye one another’s burdens.” What does this mean?

Well, dealing with it first negatively, it does not mean that we are to burden one another. There are some, whose religion consists in laying heavy burdens upon other men’s shoulders, while they themselves will not carry them for a single yard. You recollect that sect of Pharisees, with whom our Master was always in conflict; they have their representatives in these modern times. Why, even this text itself is twisted by some into a reason for burdening others. “ ‘Bear ye one another’s burdens,’ ” say they; “do you not see, friend, that you have to help me?” Yes, friend number one, but do not you see that you are not to go and burden that other friend? It is true that you have to bear his burdens. Let the first application of this passage be to yourself, and be not eager to apply it to your neighbour from whom you want to draw something. You have begun by violating the spirit of the text, not only by not bearing your brother’s burden, but also by thrusting upon him your own burden without taking his in exchange. I say this because I have often found that men naturally draw this inference: “We are to help one another; therefore, please help me.” The proper inference would be, “We are to help one another; where is the man whom I am to help?” Is not that the most logical conclusion from the text? Yet such is the selfishness of our nature that we begin straightway to say, “This text is a cow, I will milk it;” not, “This text gives me something to do, and I will do it;” but, “This text gives me a chance of getting something, and I am going to get it.” If you talk like that, it proves that you are out of gear with the text, and have not entered into the spirit of it at all.

The text does not mean that we are to spy out our brother’s faults. Its connection shows that the word “burdens” here means “faults.” “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another’s burdens.” To a good man, a fault is a burden. The worst burden that he has to carry is the fact that he is not perfect; that is what troubles him. Now, you and I are not to go about the world spying out everybody else’s faults. “He is an excellent man,” says one, “but” --. Now stop there, you have said quite enough already, you will spoil it if you say another word. “Ah!” says another, concerning someone else, “she is an admirable woman, an earnest worker for the Saviour.” Stop there; I know what you are going to say,-something that might make it seem that you were about as good as she is, and perhaps a little better, and you were afraid that the light of your star would not be seen unless you first covered up that other star. But it must not be so: “Bear ye one another’s burdens.” Bear with one another’s faults, but spy not out one another’s faults.

I think I have heard a story of Mr. Wesley going several times to a certain town, where he thought that there was a band of earnest Christian people; but he was met by a brother, who told him how dead they all were, what a little life there was in their meetings for prayer, and how much of inconsistency there was amongst them. When he got there, he did not notice anything of this; so, the third time he went, he said to this brother, “How is it that you always meet me, and tell me of these things about the brethren? Nobody else ever seems to say it.” “Well, you see,” he said, “Mr. Wesley, I have a rare gift of discerning spirits.” “Oh!” said the good man, “then wrap that talent up in a napkin, and bury it, and you will have done the best thing possible with it. The Lord will never ask you what you have done with it if you will only keep it to yourself.” I believe that there was great wisdom in that advice. There are still some who have only that gift of spying out other men’s faults. That is shocking, dreadful, horrible; so, alter all that, my brother. Shut your eye, and bend your back. If you know that the burden is there, bow down to help bear it; but do not stand, and point at it, and seem as if you wished to do that brother a discredit.

Further, the text does not mean that we are to despise those who have heavy burdens to bear; for instance, those who have the grievous burden of poverty. “Oh!” say some, “there is a large number of persons attending at such-and-such a place, but they are all poor people.” So you think little of poor people, do you? Then, what poor souls you must be! “Oh, but!” says one, “such-and-such a person is always afflicted, and very sad.” And do you despise the afflicted, especially the mentally afflicted, the desponding, the sorrowful among God’s people? Do you turn away from them, and say, “I cannot endure talking with persons of that sort; they are so sad in temperament and disposition.” But the apostle says, “Bear ye one another’s burdens;” which means, do not run away from other people because you see that they are burdened. If you say, “I like to be with the cheerful and the gay, I cannot go and spend my life in comforting the mourners in Zion,” is that mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who was meek and lowly, and who did not break the bruised reed, or quench the smoking flax? O brothers and sisters, we need to be schooled in this matter of showing sympathy with the sorrowful! No doubt, it will drag our own spirits down if we really have fellowship with those whom God has sorely afflicted in mind; but we must be willing to be dragged down, and it will do us good. If the Lord sees that we are willing to stoop to the very least of his people, he will be sure to bless us. I like sometimes to sing that verse that Dr. Doddridge wrote,-and I hope I can sing it truly,-

“Hast thou a lamb in all thy flock

I would disdain to feed?

Hast thou a foe, before whose face

I fear thy cause to plead?”

The second half of the verse is much easier than the first half. You might be able to stand up, like young David, before Goliath himself, for there is something grand and noble in such an action as that; but to go looking after the poor little lambs of the flock, that scarcely seem as if they are alive, is quite another matter. Yet that is what the text means: “Bear ye one another’s burdens.” Carry the lambs in your bosom, be tender to such as are afflicted; be, as your Master was, of a gentle, loving spirit, seeking to bear the infirmities of the weak, especially you who are strong; for, if you are like those fat cattle described by the Lord in the prophecy of Ezekiel, that thrust the lean cattle with side and with shoulder, and pushed with their horns those of the herd that were sickly, then the Lord will order you to be taken to the slaughter-house, for that is the lot of the fed beasts that are so big and brutal. The tall tree is uprooted in the breeze which only bends the lowly willow. Blessed are they who never exalt themselves over the weak and afflicted among the children of God.

Nor do I think, dear friends, that our text could be made to mean that any of us may dare to live as if all things existed for our own use. Are there not some people, who seem to feel that they are the centre of all creation, and that all things were created for their honour and glory? The working people, round about them, are so many “hands” to be employed by them at the lowest possible rate. The whole stream of trade must be so directed as to conduct the golden liquid into their capacious reservoirs. Politics and everything else must be so arranged that they shall prosper, whoever else may suffer loss. As they go through the world, their great concern is to mind the main chance. “Every man for himself,” is the motto of their lives; and they try to get as much as they can, and to keep as much as they can. Perhaps even their benevolence is only self-indulgence thinly veiled, for they give alms that they may be seen of men.

There are some Christian people,-at least, I call them Christians by courtesy,-whose main thought is about saving their own souls. Their favourite hymn is not in “Our Own Hymn Book,”-

“A charge to keep I have,

A God to glorify;

A never-dying soul to save,

And fit it for the sky.”

That is nothing but a kind of spiritual selfishness,-living unto yourself. There is something that you want to get, and that something is what you strive after. Blessed is that man who is saved beyond all fear, and who, for the love he bears his Lord, lives wholly and only to prove the power of the grace of God that has been bestowed upon him, and who earnestly seeks to be the means of saving the souls of others. The doctrines of grace do this for us,-by delivering us from all fear with regard to the future, and fixing us firmly upon the Rock of Ages, they turn our thoughts away from self to the service and the glory of our God. I delight to sing,-

“ ’Tis done! the great transaction’s done;

I am my Lord’s, and he is mine;”-

and to feel that, as he will never lose me, nor permit me to lose him, I can turn all my thoughts to the rescue of my fellow-sinners who are going down into the pit. If God shall grant us grace to enter into the true spirit of the gospel, having been delivered from every burden, both of this life and of that which is to come, we shall be prepared to bear one another’s burdens, and so to fulfil the law of that Christ who hath set us free from the law of sin and death which was in our members.

I have thus shown you, negatively, what the text does not mean.

But, dear friends, to take our text positively, we can see that it must mean, first, that we are to have great compassion upon those who are bearing the burden of sin. You cannot bear the burden of their sins for them;-only Christ can do that;-but you can help them to bear their burden. I mean this. Here is a troubled soul, who has begun to seek the Lord, and the poor creature is in great sorrow of heart. Get alongside that burdened one, and say, “Now, dear friend, I am very sorry for you; I feel as burdened about you as if it were my own soul, not yours, that was in trouble.” Ask the Lord to help you when you have left that person; after speaking with much prayer and many tears, go home so grieved that you cannot sleep, and keep on crying to God in secret about that soul. Then, when you get up in the morning with no burden concerning your own soul, because God has saved you, still feel that you have to carry the burden of this poor soul who does not know the Lord, and, at last, you get to feel as if you could not live if that soul did not also live. If it will not repent, you seem to feel the burden of its guilt. If it will not believe in Christ, you wish you could believe for it. Of course, you cannot repent and believe for it, but you can believe about it; and you can, by faith and prayer, bring it to Jesu’s feet, and lay it there. The Holy Ghost often draws sinners to the Saviour by means of the love of Christians. We can love them to Christ; and if we love them as the apostle Paul did when he travailed in birth for them until Christ was formed in them, it will not be long before we shall see them converted. I am sure that it is so; and that one great secret of soul-winning lies in the bearing of the burdens of the unconverted.

But we must take special care, dear friends, that we do this in the case of backsliders, because the text, in its connection, alludes to them most particularly: “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another’s burdens.” If that backslider has been awakened to a sense of his true condition, he will feel very unhappy; so be you very sympathetic towards him. He may be afraid to come back into membership with the church; if so, go after him, and encourage him to return. If he says, “I have brought disgrace upon the name of Christ,” try to bear part of the shame that he feels. If he says, “I cannot face So-and-so,” say to him, “I will stand between you; or I will go and plead for you.” Take to yourself, as far as you can, the shame and the disgrace which belong to the backslider. Try to get right into his place. I am sure that there is no other way of setting broken bones that is equal to this. There is no way of bringing back the wandering sheep like that which the good Shepherd took when he lifted the poor creature right up on his own shoulders. It was too worn, and weak, and weary, for him to lead it back, or drive it back, so he carried it all the way; and, brethren, let us carry the backsliders on our own shoulders in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. As far as it is possible to us, let us compel them to come in once more that God’s house may be filled; and let us take the burden of their grief, and of their shame, upon ourselves. Thus shall we carry out the injunction of the text: “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”

Next, the text seems to me to mean, “Be very patient with the infirmities of your brethren.” “Oh, but, So-and-so is very quick-tempered!” I hope that it is a burden to him to be quick-tempered; and if so, that is an additional reason why you should bear with him. “But So-and-so is really very bitter in spirit.” Yes, alas! there are still some people of that sort; and you are to bear with them. I hope it is a burden to them if they have even a tinge of bitterness in their nature, so bear with it. “I do not see why I should,” says one. Well, then, open your eyes, and read the text: “and so fulfil the law of Christ.” If the Lord Jesus Christ can put up with you, you ought to be able to put up with anybody. “Oh, but some people are so exacting!” Yes, some of you know that I am sometimes very exacting. When I am suffering very greatly from gout, if anybody walks heavily and noisily across the room, it gives me pain. Well, then, what do you think happens? Why, they go across the room on tiptoe; they do not say to one another, “We cannot help it that he is ill, and that our noise gives him pain; we shall walk just as we always do; we have a right to walk like that.” No, no, they do not need even to be asked to move about quietly, but they say, “Poor man, he is so ill that we must be as gentle as ever we can with him.” Could not you look in that kind of spirit upon brothers and sisters, who are not quite all that you would like them to be, and say, “They are not well spiritually,” and deal very gently with them, “and so fulfil the law of Christ”? We who are Christians are to live together in heaven for ever, so do not let us fall out by the way. Come, my brother, I have to bear a great deal from you, and you have to bear a great deal from me; so let it be give and take all the way through. “Bear ye one another’s burdens;”-not I bear yours without you bearing mine, but I bear yours and you bear mine; you put up with me, and I put up with you; and in that way we shall both “fulfil the law of Christ.”

Does not the text also mean that we are to bear one another’s burdens by having a deep sympathy with one another in times of sorrow? Oh, for a sympathetic heart! Seek after it, beloved Christian men and women. Seek to have large hearts, and tender hearts, for the world is full of sorrow; and one of the sweetest balms to sorrow is the sympathy of Christ flowing through the hearts of his own redeemed ones. Be tender, be pitiful, be full of compassion.

But this sympathy must show itself by actual assistance rendered wherever it is possible. “Bear ye one another’s burdens.” Let the burden of poverty be borne by those of you who have no poverty of your own. Succour your brethren in their times of need. Light their candle when their house grows dark. Blessed are those men and women who addict themselves to the ministry of the saints, and who seek, wherever they can, to lighten the burdens of life for their fellow-Christians, lending their shoulders whenever they can give support to the weak.

Brothers and sisters, we should also bear one another’s spiritual burdens by helping one another in our soul-struggles. I am afraid that, in some places of worship, Christian men and women come up to the house of prayer, and go home again, without ever speaking to one another. I do not think that is the case here; but it is the case in many places, especially in very respectable places of worship. There, they go in and out as if they were all self-contained, and could not speak to one another, especially if they happen to be half-sovereign people and a half-crown person is anywhere near; they cannot speak to him at all. This is all contrary to the mind of Christ. In our church-fellowship, there should be real communion, and we should converse with one another. In the olden times, “They that feared the Lord spake often one to another,” and Christian people should do the same still; and you, who are elders in the church, might often say a word that would help a poor young friend who is struggling to do right. You, who are joyous, might often lend some of your sunbeams to those who are in the dark, and you ought to do so; and it would be to your own profit as well as to the profit of others. Trade produces wealth, and the inter-trading of Christians, exchanging their good things one with the other, would tend to the spiritual enrichment of the entire body. God help you so to do by communion with one another!

“Bear ye one another’s burdens” also by much prayer for each other. When you have prayed for yourself, end not your supplication there. Keep a little list of people to be prayed for, and try to put down, on your list, certain things which you know trouble them, and which also trouble you, and bring them before the Lord. In some way or other, bear ye those burdens which God lays upon your brethren.

The time flies so quickly that I can only speak very briefly upon the second point, that is, immunity: “For every man shall bear his own burden.”

Let us always, for our comfort, recollect that there is a point beyond which we cannot go in bearing one another’s burdens. After you have prayed for anyone, and conversed with him, and he still continues in sin, you are ready to break your heart about him. Yes, it is right to feel like that; but do not be so unwise as to take his sin actually to yourself. If you have warned, prayed, instructed, and set a godly example and men will still sin, their sin is their own, and their blood will be upon their own head.

And, next, do not take the shame of other people’s sins upon yourself beyond a certain point. I have known a good man ashamed to come to the house of God because his son had disgraced himself. Well, his sin does dishonour his father; but, still, as you did not commit the sin, and you did not do anything to contribute to it, do not feel so ashamed as that. I have known some Christian people very seriously injured by the shame which they have felt because some distant relative or some near relative has misbehaved himself. Go to God with it; but recollect that it is not your sin, and it is not your shame either. Bear it so as to sympathize and pray about it, but not so as to be yourself ashamed and depressed because of it.

Remember, also, that we cannot take other people’s responsibilities upon ourselves. I am responsible for faithfully preaching the gospel, but I am not responsible for your reception of it. If I preach the truth, and there is not a soul saved by it, I am not responsible for that; and if you, dear teacher in the Sunday-school, or if any of you Christian workers, have laboured in vain,-if you have been faithful to God, I do not think that will happen;-but if it does, and it may happen in some measure,-do not seem to bear that responsibility, for the text says, “Every man shall bear his own burden.” I find it difficult to make young brethren, when they begin to preach, feel sufficiently the burden of souls; but, every now and then, I have met with a brother, who has felt the burden of souls so much that he has scarcely been able to preach at all. That is a pity; because, after all, the salvation of souls lies not with us, but with God; and if we have faithfully declared the whole counsel of God, and can call God to witness that we have not kept back anything of his truth that we knew, or failed in faithfulness or earnestness, we must leave the matter there, and fall back upon the eternal purpose of God, and throw the responsibility of the result upon our unbelieving hearers.

I have not time to speak as I should like upon the last point; that is, personality: “Every man shall bear his own burden.”

That is to say, every man, if he has any religion at all, must have personal religion. You cannot get to heaven by your mother’s godliness, or by your father’s graciousness; there must be a work of grace in your own souls. No man can be a sponsor for another in spiritual things. There is no more gigantic falsehood than that one person should promise that another shall do this and that, which he cannot even do himself. No; “every man shall bear his own burden.” Every one must come, with his own sin, to his own Saviour; and, by his own act of faith, must find peace through the blood of Jesus Christ. Do not trust to any national religion, for it is utterly worthless. It is personal religion alone that can save you. If the blood of saints be flowing in your veins, it brings you nothing except greater responsibility; for salvation is not of blood, nor of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God, and of God alone.

And every man should bear his own burden by personal self-examination. I should never think of asking another man to give me his opinion of me; and I hope you will not do so. Search your own souls, “examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith.” “Oh, I do not like self-examination!” says one. So the bankrupt said, he did not like casting up his accounts; but when a man in business does not cast his accounts up, his accounts will soon cast him up; and when a man does not like to examine his own heart, depend upon it the time will come when another will examine him, and he will be found wanting, and be cast away as worthless.

Next, this text means that there must be personal service: “Every man shall bear his own burden.” That is, if you and I are saved, we must each one have a work of his own, and we must set to work, and do it personally. The Lord has put each one of us into a position where there is something we can do which nobody else can do, and we are bound to do it, and not to begin thinking of how little others do, or how much others do, but to say to our Lord, “What wilt thou have me to do?” Let each Christian Levite bow his shoulder, and carry some burden for the Lord’s house.

And every man should make a personal effort to bear his own burden. We have a certain number of persons about, who seem as if they never can do anything for themselves, they have to be carried wherever they go. I think I have told you of a set of portraits that I have at home; it represents my two sons, taken on their birthdays while they were quite little boys, and then taken every birthday till they had grown to be young men. Well, at first, they are in a perambulator, and it is very interesting to see how they have grown every year. But there are some of you who have been in perambulators ever since I knew you, and you are in perambulators still, and I have to keep wheeling you about still. Oh, I wish you would grow! We are all pleased to have dear little children, and we do not mind how little they are at first; but if, after they were fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, or twenty years old, our boys were the same size as they were when they were a year old, we should feel that we were the parents of poor little dwarfs, and it would be a great trial to us. And it is a great trial to us, spiritual parents, when we are the fathers of dwarfs. Oh, that you would grow, brethren! God help you so to grow out of yourselves, and your inactivities, and your listlessness, that every man shall say, “I am big enough to bear my own burden. By the goodness of God, I will get so much grace, and so much help, that I will do some work for the Lord, and do it thoroughly. I will bear my own burden;-not sit on the top of it, and fret and cry, and ask somebody else to bear it for me; but I will bear my own burden.”

I will finish by saying that the text indicates that everybody has his own burden. “Every man shall bear his own burden.” You look at somebody else, and you say, “Ah, I wish I had his load to carry!” I do not think that I ever met with more than one person in the world with whom, upon mature consideration, I would change places in all respects. I have thought, once or twice, that I might do so; but, soon, there has been a hitch somewhere, and I have said, “No, I will go back into my own shell, after all.” I think, sometimes, that I would not mind changing places with George Müller for time and for eternity, but I do not know anybody else of whom I would say as much as that. But I daresay that even he has his own burden, though he has not told me about it when I have talked with him. And that good woman, who always looks so smiling, God bless her!-she has a skeleton at home in the cupboard. And that good brother, who is always so bright and cheery,-yes, he has a burden, too. There is a cross for everyone; and I want you to feel that it is so, because it would take away all thought of envy whenever you meet with another who seems so much happier than yourself. That brother has the sense to turn the smooth side of his coat outside; he wears the rough side of it inwards,-a very sensible thing to do. Do not, therefore, begin to say, “Oh, but, I am so much worse off than he is!” You do not know what he has to endure, “for every man shall bear his own burden.” Let us end the whole matter by not envying others, or caring or wishing to be other people; but just saying, “What can I do to help anybody else? What I can do to help anybody, I will do by the grace of God.”

But what can some of you do in carrying burdens for other people? Why, even while I have been talking, you have said, “I do not care to do that. What have I to do with other people?” You are in the gall of bitterness, and in the bonds of iniquity, while you talk like that! Any man who is selfish is an unsaved man, for the chief point in salvation is to save us from ourselves. As long as you live simply within your own ribs, you live in a dungeon. You will never come into the palace where the many mansions be,-the liberty of our great Father’s house,-until you can say, “I love others more than I love myself. Above all, I love the great Burden-bearer, who took my burden of sin upon his shoulders, and carried it up to the tree, and away from the tree; and now, through love to him, the love of self is gone, and I will live to glorify his name for ever and for ever.”

God bless you, for Jesus Christ’s sake! Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

GALATIANS 5:13-26; and 6:1, 2

Chapter 5. Verse 13. For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.

Do not turn your liberty into licence. The apostle, in this Epistle, had been urging the Christians of Galatia to stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ had made them free, and never to be again entangled with the yoke of legal bondage. He warned them against that error into which many have fallen. But you know that it is often our tendency, if we escape from one error, to rush into another. So the apostle guards these Christians against that Antinomian spirit which teaches us that freedom from the law allows indulgence in sin: “Use not your liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.”

14. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

Oh, if that “one word” were so engraven on our hearts as to influence all our lives, what blessed lives of love to God and love to men we should lead!

15. But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.

When dogs and wolves bite one another, it is according to their nature; but it is sad indeed when sheep take to biting one another. If I must be bitten at all, let me rather be bitten by a dog than by a sheep. That is to say, the wounds inflicted by the godly are far more painful to bear, and last much longer, than those caused by wicked men. Besides, we can say with the psalmist, “It was not an enemy that reproached me; then I could have borne it.” It is natural that the serpent’s seed should nibble at our heel, and seek to do us injury; but when the bite comes from a brother,-from a child of God, then it is peculiarly painful. Well might the apostle write, “If ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.” I have lived long enough to see churches absolutely destroyed, not by any external attacks, but by internal contention.

16. This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.

If your life is guided by the Spirit of God,-if you are spiritual men, and your actions are wrought in the power of the Spirit,-“ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.”

17. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh:

They will never agree; these two powers are always contrary one to the other. If you think that you can help God by getting angry, you make a great mistake. You cannot fight God’s battles with the devil’s weapons. It is not possible that the power of the flesh should help the power of the Spirit.

17, 18. And these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.

The law is ever to you the blessed rule by which you judge your conduct, but it is not a law of condemnation to you, neither are you seeking salvation by it.

19-21. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like:

The list is always too long to be completed; we are obliged to sum up with a kind of et cetera: “and such like.”

21. Of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

A very solemn, searching, sweeping declaration. Let each man judge himself by this test. “The fruit of the Spirit” is equally manifest, as the apostle goes on to say,-

22, 23. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

Neither human nor divine. Good men make no law against these things, nor does God, for he approves of them. What a wonderful cluster of the grapes of Eshcol we have here! “The fruit of the Spirit”-as if all this were but one after all;-many luscious berries forming one great cluster. Oh, that all these things may be in us and abound, that we may be neither barren nor unfruitful!

24. And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.

It is not yet dead, but it is crucified. It hangs up on the cross, straining to break away from the iron holdfast, but it cannot, for it is doomed to die. Happy indeed shall that day be when it shall be wholly dead.

25, 26. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.

Do Christian people need to be talked to like this? Ay, that they do, for the best of men are but men at their best, and the godliest saint is liable to fall into the foulest sin unless the grace of God prevent. Oh, that we could expel from the Church of Christ all vain glorying, all provoking of one another, and all envying of one another! How often, if one Christian brother does a little more than his fellow-workers, they begin to find fault with him; and if one is blessed with greater success than others are, how frequently that success is disparaged and spoken of slightingly! This spirit of envy is, more or less, in us all; and though, perhaps, we are not exhibiting it just now, it only needs a suitable opportunity for its display, and it would be manifested. No man here has any idea of how bad he really is. You do not know how good the grace of God can make you, nor how bad you are by nature, nor how bad you might become if that nature were left to itself.

Chapter 6. Verse 1. Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault,-

If he travels so slowly that his faults catch him up, and knock him down: “If a man be overtaken in a fault,”-

1. Ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness;

Set his bones for him if they have been broken; put him in his proper place again.

1. Considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.

What would you wish others to do to you if you were in the position of this fallen one? The apostle does not say, “Considering thyself, lest thou also be overtaken in a fault.” No, but, “lest thou also be tempted,”-as much as to say, “It only needs the temptation to come to you, and you will yield to it.”

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