509. Burden-Bearing
Burden-Bearing
Gal_6:2 : ’93Bear ye one another’92s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.’94
Every man for himself! If there be room for only one more passenger in the lifeboat, get in yourself. If there be a burden to lift, you supervise while others shoulder it. You be the digit while others are the ciphers on the right hand side’97nothing in themselves, but augmenting you. In opposition to that theory of selfishness Paul advances in my text the Gospel theory: ’93Bear ye one another’92s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.’94
Everybody has burdens. Sometimes they come down upon the shoulders, sometimes they come down upon the head, sometimes they come down upon the heart. Looking over any assembly, they all seem well and bright and easy; but each one has a burden to lift, and some of them have more than they can lift. Paul proposes to split up these burdens into fragments. You take part of mine and I must take part of yours, and each one will take part of the other’92s, and so we will fulfil the law of Christ.
Mrs. Appleton, of Boston, the daughter of Daniel Webster, was dying after long illness. The great lawyer after pleading an important case in the courtroom, on his way home stopped at the house of his daughter and went into her sick-room. She said to him: ’93Father, why are you out to-day in this cold weather without an overcoat?’94 The great lawyer went into the next room and was in a flood of tears, saying: ’93Dying herself, yet thinking only of me.’94 Oh, how much more beautiful is care for others than this everlasting taking care of ourselves. High up in the wall of the Temple of Baalbec there are three stones, each weighing eleven hundred tons. They were lifted up by a species of machinery that is now among the lost arts. But in my text is the Gospel machinery, by which the vaster and the heavier tonnage of the world’92s burden is to be lifted from the crushed heart of the human race. What you and I most need to learn is the spirit of helpfulness.
Encourage the merchant. If he have a superior style of goods, tell him so. If he or his clerks have displayed good taste in adorning the show windows and the shelves, compliment his skill. If he have a good business locality, if he have had great success, if he have brilliant prospects for the future, recognize all this. Be not afraid that he will become arrogant and puffed up by your approval. Before night some shop-going person will come in and tell him that his prices are exorbitant and that his goods are of an inferior quality, and that his show window gave promise of far better things than is found inside. Before the night of the day in which you say encouraging words to that merchant there will be some crank, male or female, who will come into the store and depreciate everything, and demand that he haul down enough goods from the shelves to fit out a family for a whole winter without buying a cent’92s worth. If the merchant be a grocer there will be some one before night who will come into his establishment, and taste of this and taste of that and taste of everything else, in that way stealing all the profits of anything that he may purchase’97buying three apples while he is eating one orange! Before the night of the day when you approve that merchant, he will have a bad debt which he will have to charge to profit and loss’97a bad debt made by some one who has moved away from the neighborhood without giving any hint of the place of destination. Before the night of the day when you have uttered encouraging words to the merchant, there will be some woman who will return to his store and say she has lost her purse, she left it there in the store, she brought it there, she did not take it away, she knows it is there, leaving you to make any delicate and complimentary inference that you wish to make. Before night that merchant will hear that some style of goods of which he has a large supply is going out of fashion, and there will be some one who will come into the store and pay a bill under protest, saying he has paid it before, but the receipt has been lost. Now, encourage that merchant, not fearing that he will become arrogant or puffed up, for there will be before night enough unpleasant things said to keep him from becoming apoplectic with plethora of praise.
Encourage newspaper men. If you knew how many annoyances they have, if you understood that their most elaborate article is sometimes flung out because there is such great pressure on the columns, and that an accurate report of a speech is expected although the utterance be so indistinct that the discourse is one long stenographic guess, and that the midnight which finds you asleep demands that they be awake, and that they are sometimes ground between the wheels of our great brain manufactories; sickened at the frequent approach of men who want complimentary newspaper notices, or who want newspaper retraction; one day sent to report a burial, the next day to report a pugilistic encounter; shifted from place to place by sudden revolution which is liable to take place any day in our great journalistic establishments; precarious life becoming more and more precarious’97if you understood it, you would be more sympathetic. Be affable when you have not an axe to be sharpened on their grindstone. Consider what the nineteenth century would be without the newspaper, and give encouraging words to all who are engaged in this interest, from the chief of editorial department down to the boy who throws the morning or evening newspaper into your basement window.
Encourage mechanics. They will plumb the pipes, or they will kalsomine the ceilings, or they will put down the carpets, or they will grain the doors, or they will fashion the wardrobe. Be not among those who never say anything to a mechanic except to find fault. If he has done a job well, tell him it is splendidly done. The book is well bound, the door is well grained, the chandelier is well swung, the work is grandly accomplished. Be not among those employers who never say anything to their employees except to swear at them. Do not be afraid that you will make that mechanic so puffed up and arrogant he will never again want to be seen with working apron or in shirt sleeves, for before the night comes of that day when you praise him there will be a lawsuit brought against him because he did not finish his work as soon as he promised it, forgetful of the fact that his wife has been sick and two of his children have died of scarlet fever and he has had a felon on a finger of the right hand. Denounced perhaps because the paint is so very faint in color, not recognizing the fact that the mechanic himself has been cheated out of the right ingredients, and that he did not find out the trouble in time; or scolded at because he seems to have lamed a horse by unskillful shoeing, when the horse has for months had spavin or ringbone or springhalt. You feel you have the right to find fault with a mechanic when he does ill. Do you ever praise a mechanic when he does well?
Encourage the farmers. They come into your stores, you meet them in the city markets, you often associate with them in the summer months. Office-seekers go through the land and they stand on political platforms, and they enlarge to the farmers on the independent life of a farmer, giving flattery where they ought to give sympathy. Independent of what? I was brought up on a farm, I worked on a farm, I know all about it. I hardly saw a city until I was full grown, and I tell you that there is no class of people in this country who have it harder and who more need your sympathy than farmers. Independent of what? Of the curculio that stings the peach trees? of the rust in the wheat? of the long rain with the rye down? Independent of the grasshopper? of the locust? of the army worm? of the potato bug? Independent of the drought that burns up the harvest? Independent of the cow with the hollow horn? or the sheep with the foot rot? or the pet horse with a nail in his hoof? Independent of the cold that freezes out the winter grain? Independent of the snowbank out of which he must shovel himself? Independent of the cold weather when he stands threshing his benumbed fingers around his body to keep them from being frosted? Independent of the frozen ears and the frozen feet? Independent of what? Fancy farmers, who have made their fortunes in the city and go out in the country to build houses with all the modern improvements, and make farming a luxury, may not need any solace; but the yeomanry who get their living out of the soil, and who in that way have to clothe their families and educate their children, and pay their taxes and meet the interest on mortgaged farms’97such men find a terrific struggle. I demand that office-seekers and politicians fold up their gaseous and imbecile speeches about the independent life of a farmer, and substitute some word of comfort drawn from the fact that they are free from city conventionalities and city epidemics and city temptations. My most vivid remembrance of boyhood is of my father coming in on a very hot day from the harvest-field, and seating himself on the door-sill because he was too faint to get into the house, the perspiration streaming from forehead and from chin, and my mother trying to resuscitate him with a cup of cold water which he was too faint to hold to his own lips, while saying to us: ’93Don’92t be frightened; there’92s nothing the matter; a little tired that’92s all; a little tired.’94 Ever since that day, when I hear people talking about the independent life of a farmer, I see through the sham. Farmers want not your flatteries but your sympathies.
Encourage the doctors. You praise the doctor when he brings you up from an awful crisis of disease, but do you praise the doctor when through skillful treatment of the incipient stages of disease, he keeps you from sinking down to the awful crisis? There is a great deal of cheap and heartless wit about doctors, but I notice that the people who get off that wit are the first to send for a doctor when there is anything the matter. There are those who undertake to say in our day that doctors are really useless. One man has written a book entitled, ’93Every Man His Own Doctor.’94 That author ought to write one more book entitled, ’93Every Man His Own Undertaker.’94 ’93Oh,’94 says some one, ’93physicians in constant presence of pain get hard-hearted!’94 Do they? The most celebrated surgeon of the last generation stood in a clinical department of one of the New York medical colleges, the students gathered in the amphitheatre to see a very painful operation on a little child. The old surgeon said: ’93Gentlemen, excuse me if I retire; these surgeons can do this as well as I can, and as I get older it gives me more and more distress to see pain,’94 Physicians have so many hardships, so many interruptions, so many annoyances, I am glad they have so many encouragements. All doors open to them. They are welcome to mansion and to cot. Little children shout when they see them coming down the road, and the aged, recognizing the step, look up and say, ’93Doctor, is that you?’94 They stand between our families and the grave, fighting back the troops of disorder that come up from their encampment by the cold river. No one hears such thanks as the doctor hears. They are eyes to the blind, they are feet to the lame, their path is strewn with the benedictions of those whom they have befriended.
One day there was a dreadful foreboding in our house. All hope was gone. The doctor came four times that day. The children put away their toys and all walked on tip-toe, and at the least sound said: ’93Hush!’94 How loudly the clock did tick, and how the banister creaked, though we tried to keep it so still. That night the doctor stayed all night. He concentrated all his skill upon the sufferer. At last the restlessness of the sufferer subsided into a calm, sweet slumber, and the doctor looked up and smiled and said: ’93The crisis is past.’94 When propped up with pillows, in the easy chair, she sat, and the south wind tried to blow a roseleaf into the faded cheek, and the children brought flowers’97the one a red clover top; the other a violet from the lawn’97to the lap of the convalescent, and Bertha stood on a high chair with a brush smoothing her mother’92s hair, and we were told in a day or two she might ride out, joy came back to our house. And as we helped the old country doctor into his gig, we noticed not that the step was broken, or the horse stiff in the knees, and we all realized for the first time in our life what doctors were worth. Encourage them.
Encourage the lawyers. They are often cheated out of their fees, and so often have to breathe the villainous air of court-rooms, and they so often have to bear ponderous responsibility, and they have to maintain against the sharks in their profession the dignity of that calling which was honored by the fact that the only man allowed to stand on Mount Sinai beside the Lord was Moses, the lawyer, and that the Bible speaks of Christ as the Advocate. Encourage lawyers in their profession of transcendent importance’97a profession honored by having on the bench a Justice Story and a John Marshall.
Encourage the teachers in our public schools’97occupation arduous and poorly compensated. In all the cities when there comes a fit of economy on the part of officials, the first thing to do is always to cut down teachers’92 salaries. To take forty or fifty boys whose parents suppose them precocious and keep the parents from finding out their mistake; to take an empty head and fill it; to meet the expectation of parents who think their children at fifteen years of age ought to be mathematicians and mataphysicians and rhetoricians; to work successfully that great stuffing machine, the modern school system, is a very arduous work. Encourage them by the usefulness and lasting value and the magnitude of their occupation, and when your children do well, compliment the instructor, praise the teacher, thank the educator.
Encourage all individuals by telling them how many you have known with the same ailments who got well, and not by telling them of their sunken eye, or asking them whether the color of their cheek is really hectic, or mentioning cases in which that kind of disease ended fatally, or telling them how badly they look. Cheerful words are more soothing then chloral, more stimulating than cognac, more tonic than bitters. Many an invalid has recovered through the influence of cheerful surroundings.
Encourage all starting in life by yourself becoming reminiscent. Established merchants, by telling these young merchants when you got your first customer, and how you sat behind the counter eating your luncheon with one eye on the door. Established lawyers, encourage young lawyers by telling of the time when you broke down in your first speech. Established ministers of the Gospel, encourage young ministers by merciful examination of theological candidates, not walking around with a profundity and overwhelmingness of manner as though you were one of the eternal decrees. Doctors established, by telling young doctors how you yourself once mistook the measles for scarlatina. And if you have nothing to say that is encouraging, O, man! put your teeth tightly together and cover them with the curtain of your lip; compress your lips and put your hand over your mouth and keep still.
A gentleman was crossing a bridge in Germany, and a lad came along with a cage of birds for sale. The stranger said, ’93How much for those birds and the cage?’94 The price was announced, the purchase was made, and the first thing the stranger did was to open the door of the cage and the birds flew out into the sunlight and the forest. Some one who saw the purchase and the liberation said: ’93What did you do that for?’94 ’93Ah!’94 said the stranger, ’93I was a captive myself once, and I know how good it is to be free.’94 Ye who remember hardships in early life, but have survived those hardships, sympathize with those who are in the struggle! Free yourself, help others to get free. Governor Alexander Stephens, during his last illness, persisted in having business matters brought to his bedside. The incident was told me by a colored man, the servant of the Governor, while I was in the ante-room of the State house at Atlanta, Ga., waiting for the obsequies of Governor Stephens to begin. There was on the governor’92s table a petition for the pardon of a distinguished criminal, the petition signed by distinguished men. There was also on that table a letter from a poor woman in the penitentiary, written and signed by herself alone. Dying Alexander Stephens said: ’93You think that because I have been ill so many times and got well, I shall get well now, but you are mistaken; I shall not recover. Where is that letter from that woman in the penitentiary? I think she has suffered enough. As near as I can tell, she has no friends. Bring me that paper that I may sign her pardon.’94 A gentleman standing by, thinking this too great a responsibility for the sick man, said: ’93Governor, you are very sick now; perhaps you had better wait till to-morrow; you may feel stronger and you may feel better.’94 Then the eye of the old governor flashed, and he said: ’93I know what I am about.’94 Putting his signature to that pardon, he wrote the last word he ever wrote, for then the pen fell from his pale and rheumatic and dying hand forever. How beautiful that the closing hours of life should be spent in helping one who had no helper!
Encourage the troubled by thoughts of release and reunion. Encourage the aged by thoughts of eternal juvenescence. Encourage the herdsman amid the troughs of sin to go back to the banquet at the father’92s homestead. Give us tones in the major key instead of the minor. Give us ’93Coronation’94 instead of ’93Naomi.’94 You have seen cars so arranged that one car going down the hill drew another car up the hill. They nearly balanced each other. And every man that finds life up-hill, ought to be helped by those who have passed the heights and are descending to the vale. Oh, let us bear one another’92s burdens!
Since Christ bore our burdens, surely we can afford to bear those of others.
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage