Burdens

Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.—Galatians 6:2.

For each man shall bear his own burden.—Galatians 6:5.

The key-note of this Epistle, the key-note of Christianity, is struck in these two sentences. They seem to express a contradiction, but it is not really so. If we take them together they are a brief description of the essence of our religion; a definition, in short compass, of the spirit of the Christian life. For the Christian faith is based upon two great underlying principles which, though not strictly original to it, are yet, in their passionate expression, among the most precious of its gifts to man. They explain at once the mystery and comprehensiveness of its scheme of salvation for the individual soul; and also the Divine beauty and eternal reality of that great ideal of the Church as the Kingdom of God, a community of souls in which each individual member must bear his own burden, while all the members are bound together, bearing one another’s burdens, and united in Him who is the great Burden-bearer of humanity, who is the Head of the body, even Christ.

It is impossible to obey one part of this law without obeying the other; it is impossible to bear our own burden, without at the same time bearing the burden of others; it is impossible to realize the awful responsibilities of being, without at the same time realizing the claims of our brothers; impossible to find our own true life without giving up our individual will, without merging our personal interests in those of the human brotherhood.

So we have—

  I.  The Individual Burden.

  II.  The Mutual Burden.

  III.  The Law that Lightens the Burden.

I

The Individual Burden

“Every man shall bear his own burden.”

1. When St. Paul says, “Every man shall bear his own burden,” he is speaking of the burdens which no man can transfer from his own shoulders to those of another, burdens which from the very nature of things he must bear, and not another. And he uses a word that carries this meaning. It is the word used by classical writers when speaking of a soldier’s kit. St. Luke uses it in the Acts when speaking of the lading of a ship. And our Lord uses it when He says, “My burden is light.” In all these cases the idea is that of a burden which cannot be got rid of. A soldier on active service must carry his own knapsack, or he is not fit to be a soldier. A merchantman must carry her own lading, or she may as well be broken up. A Christian must bear the burden of Christ, whatever that burden may be, or he cannot be a Christian. There are, then, certain burdens which a man must himself bear, which he cannot transfer from his own shoulders to those of another—which another cannot carry.

How many people cunningly and persistently contrive to shift their burden to the shoulders of their neighbours! They are not particular as to whom they saddle with their duty and care, but they determine to bear as little of it themselves as is possible. In youth somebody must fag for them; they treat their friend as a valet; their public life is parasitical; as husband or wife, they shuffle the whole weight of responsibility on their partner. The ingenuity of the ignoble to make themselves comfortable at other people’s expense is no small part of the comedy and tragedy of human life. How different the spirit of Christ! Let me manfully accept my own burden; and then, by thought, sympathy, influence, and substantial aid, let me lighten the burden of my neighbour. My Master was the great burden bearer of the race. Let me drink in His spirit and follow in His steps.1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson, The Gates of Dawn, 24.]

2. In creating man God has laid firm and deep the foundations of individual character and of individual life. There is no individuality in the case of a flock of sheep or a herd of cattle Doubtless no two sheep are exactly alike, and the shepherd knows the difference between them, however alike they may appear to the superficial; but there is no individual consciousness and no individual life. One primrose is like another primrose. It is a pity that this one should fade, but another will spring up in its place, and the hedgerow will be none the worse. But in the case of men God has laid firm and deep the foundations of individual character, individual condition, individual responsibility, and individual destiny. So it comes to pass that of two children born of the same stock, playing in the same nursery, brought up very largely with the same education and surroundings, each possesses his own individual character from the outset, sometimes in a fashion which puzzles parents who study their children closely; and, as soon as moral responsibility begins, each one begins of necessity to shape his own character, to choose his own course, to mark out his own path, and very largely to fashion his own destiny. And the burdens each one has to bear are those belonging to his individual lot.

Perhaps the most prominent Secession divine in Aberdeen who was a contemporary of Dr. Kidd was James Templeton, minister of what is now Belmont Street U. P. Church. He was a man of quiet power and singular shrewdness of observation. His mother wit, spiritual fervour, homely illustration, and unabashed vernacular gave him acceptance with the people. One Sabbath, speaking to persons who complained that their burdens in life were exceptionally heavy, he said—“Suppose now you were to take all your separate burdens to the Castlegate and drop them doon there, and after examinin’ them and comparin’ them one with another, I am thinkin’ you wouldna be willin’ to exchange with any when you really saw what they were; but, pickin’ up your bit bundlie, each one of you wad gang awa’ hame mair contentit than when you went to the Castlegate.”1 [Note: James Stark, Dr. Kidd of Aberdeen, 140.]

(1) There is the burden of physical disability or disfigurement, such as lameness, blindness, or deformity of any sort—always a very grievous burden to be borne. St. Paul knew this burden, the shame and the sorrow of it. Apparently he suffered from some distressing physical evil that made him contemptible in the eyes of men and that injured even his ministerial usefulness. Some, indeed, have held that the thorn in the flesh was a moral weakness—a violent temper, a jealous nature, even a lustful passion. But no man ever received grace to bear these things, though thousands have received grace to get rid of them. The facts that the thorn was not removed and that grace was given him to bear it show conclusively that it could not have been a moral weakness but rather a physical defect, a disease. And there are thousands in the world to-day, like him, who have to bear unaided and alone the burden of physical weakness or deformity save for that Divine grace which helps them to overcome the shame and to endure the pain.

In one of Schiller’s poems a beautiful story is told to this effect: When God made the birds He gave them gorgeous plumage and sweet voices, but no wings. He laid wings on the ground and said, “Take these burdens and bear them.” They struggled along with them, folding them over their hearts. Presently the wings grew fast to their breasts and spread themselves out, and they found that what they had thought were burdens were changed to pinions.1 [Note: A. T. Pierson.]

(2) There is the burden of intellectual weakness. Men have not all the same mental powers, the same facility in acquiring learning, the same range of vision, the same foresight. One man succeeds in life because he has a greater power of forecasting the future, of calculating the changes in the money market, or industrial life, than his neighbour. The race is perhaps not always to the swift, but it generally is. The battle is not always to the strong, but it generally is. And in the race of human life a man, notwithstanding all his diligence and probity, may find himself outdistanced by one of keener intellect and greater foresight. He may think it hard that it should be so, but he must bear the burden of his own defects as best he may.

I would gladly bear your burden,

If it might be so,

But each heart its own must carry;

None may go

Altogether free, you know.

If I might, it would be easy,

O my friend, for me

Just to take your task and do it,

But, you see,

Such a thing could never be.

Though my heart aches, as I watch you,

Toiling through the day—

Missing some of life’s old sunshine

From your way—

Finding work instead of play—

Yet I know that it is better—

Know that you and I,

Looking back from God’s to-morrow,

By and by—

Never more shall question “Why?”

By our losses He is leading

To eternal gain:

He will surely give us sunshine,

After rain—

Calm for sorrow—peace for pain.1 [Note: Edith H. Divall, A Believer’s Rest, 78.]

(3) It may be some permanent or far-reaching consequence of a former act of our own; some neglect, or recklessness, or sin in the past, which has hung a weight about our necks. The sin may be repented of; the pardon may be assured. But the temporal consequences of the sin remain, and will remain so long as we have breath. This is the most irksome and the most painful form which a man’s individual burden can take. If you thrust a knife into your arm, it does not affect me. You yourself feel the pain; you yourself must endure the agony. I may sympathize, I may pity, I may bandage the gash, but the severed flesh and the lacerated fibres are yours, and along your nerves nature telegraphs the pain. So it is with the soul. A man who stabs himself with a bad habit, who opens the arteries of his higher life with the lancet of his passions and drains them of the vital fluid, who inserts his head within the noose of appetite and swings himself off from the pedestal of his self-control, must endure the suffering, the weakness, and the loss which are the issue of his insane conduct.

Sin is often described by active and aggressive metaphors—it is a deceiver, a destroyer, an enemy, etc. This passive one is more dreadful, for it tells simply of the dead weight of fact. Facts are “chiels that winna ding.” Sin is, to Paul, “this dead body”; and the flaccid mass of inelastic flesh, at once soft and heavy, is horrible enough without the implied hint of decay. The worst thing about sin is just that it is there—an irrevocable fact which the sinner has put there. When he realizes this he feels it as a burden: he cannot sleep, or eat, or work, or play as once he did. Yet that is a precious pain. The far deeper danger is that one should grow accustomed to it, as the Swiss peasant to the growing load of hay or Milo to his ox, until he is able complacently to “draw iniquity with a cart rope.” The unblushed-for past—the dead weight of sinful facts faced deliberately and carried lightly—that is a doom far deeper than the most oppressive load.1 [Note: John Kelman, The Road, i. 3.]

3. Now St. Paul does not say that the burden shall be lifted from off our shoulders, or that it shall be borne for us, but that we shall be sustained in carrying it. If it is God’s gift, it is His will that we should keep it, at least for the time. There is some blessing in it for us, and it would not be kindness to us for God to take it away, even at our earnest pleading. It is part of our life, and is essential to our best growth. This is true of duty; however hard it is, to relieve us of it would be to rob us of the opportunity for reaching larger usefulness. It is true of struggle; all nobleness and strength of character come out of conflict. It is true of suffering; it is God’s cleansing fire, and to miss it would be a sore loss to us. Hence, while God never fails us in need, He loves us too well to relieve us of weights which are essential to our best growth and to the largest fruitfulness of our life. He does not take the load from our shoulder, but instead He puts strength in us to enable us to carry the burden, and thus grow strong. This is the secret of the peace of many a sick-room. It is the secret of the deep, quiet joy we see oft-times in the home of sorrow.

The seal of one of those Scottish Covenanters whom Claverhouse imprisoned on the lonely Bass Rock reads “Sub pondere cresco”—“I grow beneath the load.”2 [Note: A. Smellie, In the Hour of Silence.]

Thy burden is God’s gift,

And it will make the bearer calm and strong;

Yet, lest it press too heavily and long,

He says, “Cast it on Me,

And it shall easy be.”

And those who heed His voice,

And seek to give it back in trustful prayer,

Have quiet hearts that never can despair,

And hope lights up the way

Upon the darkest day.

It is the lonely road

That crushes out the light and life of heaven;

But borne with Him, the soul restored, forgiven,

Sings out through all the days

Her joy and God’s high praise.1 [Note: J. R. Miller.]

II

The Mutual Burden

“Bear ye one another’s burdens.”

1. The Greek word for burden in this verse might be better rendered by “load,” for the idea is that of an adventitious and heavy burden. A man’s family is, in a certain sense, a burden—a burden that arises from his being a husband and a father—but it is not a burden of which he can rid himself. To him it is a light burden, as to the Christian Christ’s burden is light. But to this burden there may be added the burden of ill-health, or misfortune, or poverty. It is not in any one’s power to say to him, “I am to take up your burden. You shall no longer be weighted down with your family. You shall no longer be a husband. You shall no longer be a father. Your duties as husband and father shall no longer oppress you.” We cannot say that. We might, indeed, remove his children from him, but that would not in any degree lessen his duty to care for them and train them and teach them and act a father’s part towards them. If we wish to help him it is his load, not his burden, we must bear—the crushing weight of poverty, or misfortune, or sorrow.

2. This burden-bearing means a different thing in each life. It is not a pretty sentiment, a mere figure of speech. It is the great and manifold service of love, which needs all the wisdom and strength and patience that we can bring to it, and which can be wrought in a thousand ways. Occasionally this burden-bearing can be done very literally when we can take on to our own shoulders for the bearing, and into our own hands for the doing, that which for another was too heavy and too hard. But more frequently it must take the form of the indirect and mediate service of sympathy. In the great league of pity and help to which we are all called, and in which, if only we are unselfish enough, we can all find a place, we ever find that the best thing we have to give to the world is our influence. No man liveth to himself. Every man is ever adding to or diminishing the burden of other lives. There is an infinitude of interaction—much of it beyond our tracing; and in so far as we carry through life a cheerful, patient, responsive, and unselfish spirit we shall be doing something every day to make the burden of others easier to be borne.

Dr. Bell’s desire for sympathy, and his appreciation of it was touchingly intense, and yet he had a way of looking and speaking with almost flippant unconcern when feeling most deeply. This was at times when he knew that any display of emotion would “upset everything.” Thus many people who knew him well saw little of his inner self. They saw him as the hope-inspiring physician, smiling and chatting, cheering the sorrowful, soothing the sufferer, quick to see fun lurking near solemnity, taking up the burden of others with seemingly no burden of his own, bringing a gay good humour to meet anxious doubts and dreadful fears. When young, his bearing was that of a joyous nature on whom the gods had showered their good gifts. Even in later years when many bereavements had wounded his warm affections to the quick his smile was ready, and his sense of fun as fresh as ever. His self-control was perfect.1 [Note: Joseph Bell: An Appreciation, 34.]

The late Right Hon. W. H. Smith, when First Lord of the Admiralty, was leaving his office one afternoon, when his secretary, seeing him packing up a number of letters and other Government papers, asked him to leave them and have them forwarded to him by post as other Ministers did. “No,” was the answer, “the fact is our postman has plenty to carry. I watched him one morning coming up the approach, and I determined to save him as much as I could.”2 [Note: The Morning Watch, 1894, p. 10.]

(1) By the giving of sympathy you take away the worst weight of sorrow. You cannot take it all away, but you can lift off that in it which maims the life or slays the soul, if you love enough. Unloving sympathy has no tact, no inventiveness, no insight, no reverence. But the sympathy of love—and that you are bound to win, if you would obey this law—enters into the sanctuary of another’s sorrow with uncovered head and reverent stillness, sees the point where tenderness can touch and not hurt, has quickness of imagination to invent the means of bearing away the burden; rescues the sufferers before they are conscious of being rescued, and wins undying love. There is no happiness in life so delicate and pure as the doing of this beautiful thing. It is the happiness of God Himself.

(2) Joy may for the moment be as great a burden as sorrow. The heart may be o’erfraught with delight, and nigh to breaking with it. When Lear awoke from his madness and saw Cordelia bending over him, and love in her eyes, he all but died of joy. We have no right, but have great wrong, if we treat with indifference the joy of the child or the rapture of youth. “They want no sympathy,” we say, or even with a scoff, “He is happy! let him alone!” Have we never repulsed young or old with a cold look when they came up full of their delight, longing for us to share their pleasure? It is an unkindly act; let us never do it again. Let us think rather that joy is a burden that you have to bear for others. Make the delight of others brighter by sympathy. Do not blow with a cold wind upon the rose in flower, lest you wither its leaves. “Rejoice,” said St. Paul, with his large knowledge of the needs of love, “rejoice with them that do rejoice.”

3. Different temperaments, like different plants, require different atmospheres. Some plants require a tropical heat before they will put on their beautiful garments. We have to create about them a mimic summer, and delude them into feeling that they are far away, at home in the burning clime. Other plants seek for our own temperate heat; they disburse their treasure, not to the soft calling of the luxurious breeze of the tropics, but to the robust, bracing, toughening winds of our own land. How we have to humour the plants if we would lure them out into blossoms and flower! This one must be set a little farther in the shade. That one must be lifted up into the light, to receive the baptism of the sun. Each one must be placed according to its temperament. And when vices cling about them in the shape of destructive little parasites, little insects which grow fat by draining up the sap, then how we have to medicate the atmosphere, to provide certain conditions which shall help the plants to deal with their enemies, and to throw off the burdens! Thus we create suitable conditions for individual plants; and thus we must create suitable conditions for the full and beautiful growth of individual men.

Looking back over these two years of illness, it is impossible not to be struck by the calmness and fortitude with which that illness was met. There were moments of terrible depression and of disappointment and of grief. It was not easy for him to give up ambition, to leave so many projects unfulfilled, so much work undone. But to him this illness grew to be a mount of purification,

Ove l’umano spirito si purga,

E di salire al ciel diventa degno.

More and more there grew on him a deepening sense of the goodness of God. No one had ever suffered more from the Eclipse of Faith, no one had ever been more honest in dealing with himself and with his difficulties. The change that came over his mental attitude may seem almost incredible to those who knew him only as a scientific man; it does not seem so to the few who knew anything of his inner life. To them the impression given is, not of an enemy changed into a friend, antagonism altered into submission; rather is it of one who for long has been bearing a heavy burden on his shoulders bravely and patiently, and who at last has had it lifted from him, and lifted so gradually that he could not tell the exact moment when he found it gone, and himself standing, like the Pilgrim of the never-to-be-forgotten story, at the foot of the Cross, and Three Shining Ones coming to greet him.1 [Note: Life and Letters of George John Romanes, 351.]

III

The Law that Lightens the Burden

“And so fulfil the law of Christ.”

Here the Apostle directs his readers from the law given on stone to the law which should be written on the heart, from the Mount of Sinai to the Mount of Beatitudes, from the law of the letter which killeth to the law of the Spirit which giveth life. There can be little doubt that the Apostle’s words here were suggested by the controversy which had been raging in the Galatian Church.

The Galatians who were the object of St. Paul’s attention had been showing much more interest in the outward marks of religion than in its inward power. They had come under the spell of that view which made religion a matter of rite and ritual, and here the Apostle would have them learn that such a view was altogether a mistake. Like his fellow-Apostle, he could enforce the truth that pure religion before God and the Father was not a matter of circumcision or of outward ordinances. It did not consist of attendances at synagogue at the proper hour or of keeping the feasts in all their strictness. Pure religion was something more than these. It was to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

1. This law is founded on the necessities of our human nature. It is not necessary to obey it because it is commanded; it is commanded because it is necessary. It fits into the wants of man. For we are all dependent on one another. As in our body each organ lives for itself only in living for the rest, as each part, even each atom, of our frame supplements the wants of the others, gives and receives, bears and forbears, dies and lives alternately for the life of the whole—so is it in the ever living body of humanity. The life of each nation, each society, each man, depends on the mutual giving and receiving, dying and living, bearing and forbearing of all the rest. So the moment we, through selfishness of life, divide ourselves from this living and dying for others, the moment we isolate ourselves, we pronounce our own sentence of death. The absolute loss of love is eternal death, as its absolute gain is eternal life. It was that Christ Jesus saw; it was that He proclaimed on Calvary. And it is the law of the life of the universe. Therefore, “bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”

To bear the burdens of others might well have seemed to St. Paul a dictate of the intuitive moral consciousness, and might well have been commanded by him on the ground of that inward intuition. But this is not the ground on which St. Paul commands it; he appeals to a positive historical authority, which he calls “the law of Christ”; and he asks men to bear the burdens of others, not because that precept was written in their hearts, but because it had been given by Him who was the object of their worship. In writing to these Galatians, wavering as they were between Christianity and Judaism, he evidently speaks of the law of Christ in contradistinction to the law of Moses. It is as if he had said, “Do not think that, in coming from Judaism to Christianity, you are passing from a region of positive certainty into a world of mystic obscurity; we too have a historic Lawgiver, who has uttered His voice from the mount of God, and who speaks with an authority which Moses never wielded. You have received from Moses only the negative precept—the command not to hurt your brother; we offer you a law of Christ which commands you to identify your brother’s interests with your own—‘Bear ye one another’s burdens.’ ”

When Dr. Temple resigned the headmastership of Rugby to become Bishop of Exeter, his farewell sermon to the boys was from the text, “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” “This new commandment of Christ,” said the preacher, “this law of love which Paul is here referring to, our Lord and the Apostles place above all other commandments. How is this? The older dispensation had placed the fear and love of God first, then the love of neighbours. Surely the highest rule must be to love first God, then truth, holiness, justice, and after these one another. Has the Gospel sunk below the law? No, for under the Gospel, by the incarnation of the Son of God, the two loves are united, can no longer be kept apart. There can be no love of God apart from love of man. Christ Himself has pointed out this love of each other as the special mode by which He would have us acknowledge Him. Let us help one another, then, at our Lord’s call, by courage, by patience, by cordial and tender sympathy in joy and sorrow, by faithful warning, by resignation. There are no bounds to the help which spirit can give to spirit in the intercourse of a noble life. When parted, we can still bear one another’s burdens by hearty, mutual trust. There is nothing which gives more firmness and constancy to the life of a man than loyal trust in absent friends.”1 [Note: Frederick Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, i. 238.]

2. The bearing of our own burden in a Christian spirit prepares us for lifting the load of other people. Every experience carries with it the power of bearing a burden. Have you never passed through times when your own religious faith was at stake? Then how tenderly you can enter into the mental struggle of others. Have you never known the trouble of making both ends meet? Then you will sympathize with the burdens of those who dare not be generous, because, by God’s grace, they will first be just. Have you known what it is to go to your business, while some dear child was lying, like alabaster, in the sleep of death, and you had to keep down your feelings while you won life’s daily bread? Then how you can feel for others who have left their hearts in the great death-chamber with the closed door.

While it is true that by bearing our own burdens we learn best how to bear other people’s, the converse is no less true. There is no help towards bearing our own burdens so effective as the bearing the burdens of others as well. This is the moral paradox of our being. Are we sinking under the weight of our own burden? Then let us go up to our neighbour, and courageously shoulder his also. The two will be lighter, incomparably lighter, than the one was. Is not this demonstrably true? Is a man’s heart wounded and bleeding with some recent sorrow—a cruel bereavement, a disappointed hope, an outraged affection; and he broods over it until the pain becomes too terrible to bear? The only relief for his agony is found in ministering to the wants or consoling the sorrows of another. His sympathy is thus evoked; and with sympathy come new interests, new feelings, a new life.

Sad souls, that harbour fears and woes

In many a haunted breast,

Turn but to meet your lowly Lord,

And He will give you rest.

Into His commonwealth alike

Are ills and blessings thrown;

Bear ye your neighbours’ burdens; lo!

Their ease shall be your own.

Yield only up His price, your heart,

Into God’s loving hold;

He turns with heavenly alchemy,

Your lead of life to gold.

Some needful pangs endure in peace,

Nor yet for freedom pant;

He cuts the bane you cleave to off,

Then gives the boon you want.1 [Note: S. H. Palfrey.]

Describing David Hill’s itinerant tours in China, one of the missionaries, the Rev. T. Protheroe, says, “I venture to add an incident which occurred on one of our journeys. He had a servant in training for the work of an evangelist. The servant had given over a bundle of rugs, which served as Mr. Hill’s bedding, to an old man who escorted us, and showed evident unwillingness to bear any share even in relieving the old man of his burden. It was a hot day. One word from Mr. Hill would have been enough, but he preferred to teach the much-needed lesson in another way, and said he should carry the bundle himself. Of course, I objected, and there was some dispute as to which of us should bear the burden but he won the day in the end by saying, ‘Do let me have it; I want to teach him humility.’ ”2 [Note: J. E. Hellier, Life of David Hill, 247.]

3. The measure of our love to one another must be the love that Christ showed to us. It is an infinite measure. There is no one who can say, “I have done enough for my brother man. I have loved enough.” Beyond our most eager efforts stretches the ever-expanding loving-kindness of Jesus. There is no one who can say, “I have forgiven enough! If my brother sin again, if my enemy do me another wrong, I will forgive no more”; for beyond our most amazing forgiveness extends the unwearied forgiveness of Christ—the image, the reflexion and the revelation in man of the unconquerable desire to bless and to redeem, which is deepest towards us in the heart of God our Father. Therefore, in this illimitable demand upon us for love, we are greatly blessed. We are placed in the infinite, and kept in the infinite; we are freed from definitions of love, from maxims of forgiveness, from all the foolish casuistry that limits love. In this, at least, we are not to be content with our limitations. There are no limitations. We are challenged by God Himself to share in His infinity; never to endure finality in tenderness, never to imagine the end of love. It is a glorious call, and to answer it brings us into the infinite God Himself. So, as the Apostle Paul exhorts the Ephesians, “walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love.”

Thus will you “fulfil the law of Christ”—that law which has its culminating glory in the atoning death of Calvary; its Divinest symbol in the cross. Then only does the higher life begin with us when we bow ourselves before the majesty of this “supreme offering made by supreme love, because the need of man was great, when we feel the glow of a common life with the lost multitude for whom that offering was made, and behold the history of the world as the history of a great redemption in which we ourselves are fellow-workers in our own place and among our own people.”

In the Pilgrim’s Progress, coming to the Cross is the last incident in the man’s salvation. The cross, which used to be the emblem of slavery, now becomes the means of liberty and lightening. The point to notice here is that we are saved by what we see. The sinful man loses his burden upon realizing a fact, and the essence of Christianity is a magnificent realization. Sin had been too much for him, but now God has vanquished it. The joy that follows is inevitable. Bunyan tells us in his Grace Abounding, that, when the joy of this release came to him, he could have spoken of it to the very crows that sat upon the ploughed land by the wayside. The power and beauty of the simple sentence which tells of the burden tumbling into the mouth of the sepulchre make that passage one of the religious classics of the world. No commentary is necessary or possible except the memory of that experience in the hearts of those in whose lives it has happened.1 [Note: John Kelman, The Road, i. 71.]

Burdens

Literature

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Talbot (E. S.), in Keble College Sermons, 1877–88, 1.

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