SUNDAY READING

Taranaki Daily News, 19 May 1928, Page 17

SUNDAY READING

By REV- A. H. COLLINS

EACH MAN MUST SHOULDER HIS OWN PACK.

‘‘Bear ye one another's burd-n and so fulfil the law of Christ.” “For each man shall bear his own burden."—Cal. vi., 2, 5.

Ruskin declared that he felt he had never expressed the whole truth until he had contradicted himself two or three times in a lecture. Saint Paul seems to have shared that feeling, and was not afraid of a paradox. The sovereignty of God and the freedom of man are truths difficult to reconcile. The doctrine of "justification by faith” and the doctrine of “justification by works” sound contradictory, yet both are found in the New Testament. In this chapter the Apostle puts verse two and verse five in seeming conflict. “Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” “For each man shall bear his own burden.” How ean both statements be true? Yet both passages are time to the facts of life. In one- case the “burden” is something which can, and should, be shared Bad social conditions are the result oi men living together in wrong and they can be removed by men living together in right relations. The burden of ignorance, the burden of sickness ths burden of poverty, the burden of temptation, can be lessened, and in some cases removed, by the founding of public schools and hospitals, by old age pensions, and legislation against the liquor traffic and dangerous trades. The ! community acting together can brighten ! and sweeten the human lot. and in so doing is fulfilling the law of Christ.

LOADS NOT TRANSFERABLE: - In the second passage “burden” stands for the load which naturally and inevitably belongs to a man. like the soldier's knapsack, which the soldier cannot share with his comrade, but each must carry for himself. There are loads which can and ought to be shared, and it is the will of Christ they should be shared, but there are duties and. responsibilities which by the fact of our manhood are marked “non-transferable.” “Each man must shoulder his own pack,” and to lift that “burden” is to do a man the greatest disservice. Dr. Moffatt supplies the clue to the nature of this non-transferable burden in his translation. “For every man will have to bear his own load of responsibility.” When a Christian community has done all it ean and ought to soften the human lot, and remove the temptations to wickedness and vice, there is still this one thing it cannot, must not, do: it dare not. attempt to free a man of the sense of personal accountability to God for the ordering of his life. Now I want to rub that simple truth in, for a two-fold reason. The truth is practically denied by rationalistic teachers and by some forms of religion. Books are in circulation in tens of thousands of copies which deny the personal accountability of man for his action. Man is a machine. Man is' the product of heredity and environment. Man is born of certain parents, in certain conditions. and inherits certain physical and mpral features, and he can no more help being what he is than he can change the shape of his nose or the colour of his hair. If he is born of vicious stock, the strong probability is that ho will grow up vicious. The slum dweller is handicapped in the race, the mansion-bred is free of the handicap and will likely win.

STRIKING AT TEE ROOT. One writer, who had the ear of British working men to an extraordinary degree, says: “Th© actions of a man’s will are as mathematically fixed at his birth as are the motions of the planets in their orbit,” and the conclusion he reaches is stated this way: “Everything a man does is at the instant, when he does it, the only thing he can do.” Hence he argues: “No man is answerable for his acts,” whilst another writer of ithe same school makes the unblushing assertion: “The sooner moral responsibility is got rid of, the better.” That I such books should be written and printed, and read by a nation possessing Locke and Shakespeare, Ruskin and Browning, is a burning shame, for such teaching strikes at the root of all right living. If a man’s will and conduct are ' determined before he is born, never mind how or by whom, then to praise or blame, to reward or punish, is as foolish and unjust, as to chide a watch for not keeping correst time, or rebuke a barometer for not being reliable. Deny human responsibility and you discrown man and change him to an automaton. THE SUPREME FACTOR. We cannot ignore the influence of heredity and environment in their influence. They count and in some cases very greatly count. It is a great thing to start life with elean blood, in clean surroundings, but the supreme factor in the building of character is neither heredity nor environment, but our personal choice. In the same garden patch, fef by the same soil and warmed by the same sun, you may pluck a delicious strawberry or the deadly nightshade, the fragrant rose or the stinging nettle. The same climatic conditions produce nourishing fruit, the deadly poison, the exquisite perfume and the filthy stench. Two sons under the same roof sleep in the same crib, and are tended by the same mother, and the one rises to honour and the other sinks to shame.

From the same father’s side, From the same mother’s knee, One to long darkness and the frozen tide, And one to the peaceful sea. The reason? The reason lies in human choice. I am not tilting at windmills, I am pressing a truth which makes or mars our manhood. In the East vou have fatalism and in the West you have freedom, and the result is seen in national character. Heredity counts, so does environment, but man is lord of his own life. Nature is our helpmate, its light blesses, its winds j freshen, its manifold ministeries lighten our tasks, but these physical laws do not determine human character, conscience, conduct. Why do we use the words “may,” “must,” “ought”? Is it not because we know that our will cannot be compelled? We are free agents. We have the power of choice. M e have a sense of “oughtness.” Our. wills are ours, we kijow not why, Our wiH'b. ire ours to make tlieip Thine.’ ’

r FACTORS WHICH IMPERIL. | My second reason for stressing this i truth is that it is not rationalism alone that imperils the sense of human accountability. Some forms of religion Ido it. The priest, whether Papal or : Protestant, is the foe of the soul. If j a man assumes power to act for his | fellows in matters of religion he ruins .the soul. If a church says, “I will think i for you, I will tell you what to believe, and how to worship God, I will do for your religious concerns what your lawyer does for your property, look after its safety, I will grant you ‘absolution and release,’ I will see you through from childhood to old age, I will draw on the treasury of merit in the saints, and I will deliver you from purgatorial fires for a fee,” he ruins the soul by lifting off the burden oi personal responsibility. The atmosphere is pressing on me, as I write, to the extent of fifteen pounds to the square inch, so that I am at this moment j bearing a burden of several tons weight, [I could escape this pressure by standing under an air pump. I should lose my burden, but life would go at the same time! In the same way, I am bearing my burden of moral and spiritual accountability-, and for any man or any church to offer to lift that burden oil my conscience, means to weaken my will and destroy my manhood. Our salvation must be worked out in personal thought, personal repentance, personal faith and personal surrender to God. No man can pray instead of you, read the Bible instead of you, or believe in Jesus Christ instead of you. No man can act as your proxy before God. W» must bear the responsibility of our own acts, find our way to God atone, and from Him receive pardon and peace.

REFUGE IN THE CROSS. There is a familiar picture of a woman who has been almost overwhelmed in a sea of trouble and is finally east on a rock, where she clings to the Cross as a refuge for her shipwrecked coul. That refuge in the Cross has been a real experience to multitudes. "Other refuge have 1 none, hangs my helpless soul on Thee.” But that is not what Saint Paul is thinking of here. He is not thinking of a limp and helpless soul clinging to something outside itself, but rather of a masculine, vigorous, rational life, which shoulders its own responsibility. If a man wants to follow Christ, he must take up his own burden like a man. He is beset by his own problems and diffi eulties—his poverty, his temper, his timidity, his sin—and Christ says ■to him: “This is your burden, your personal cross. Do no shirk it, or dodge it, or lie down under it, or turn from it to My Cross. Stand up under it like a man, and come to Me; and as you thus come to Me, not limply and feebly, but honestly bearing your own burden, you will find your way opens into strength and peace. The yoke you carry will grow easier, and the burden you do not shirk will be made light. Play the man.” The "burden” of personal accountability God will not lift from your shoulders, but He will shaje your burden in loving sympathy. He knows you intimately and personally. He knows your name and yonr nature, the place oi dwelling and the circumstances of your life. "Cast thy burden upon the Lord and He will sustain thee.’* He who up- | holds the world by His might will heal i you and your burden as the ocean bears [the foam bell and the mountain the ' snowflake.

A QUAINT LEGEND. There is a quaint legend of Saint Christopher which points the moraJ. There was once a mighty giant named Arprobus, a tall, broad-shouldered, powerful man. He wished to offer his services to some one worthy of employing a servant so capable and strong. He desired for his master one that had no superior, and feared no other person in the world. He heard of a very powerful king, and at once travelled to his country, and stood in the hall of Ins palace, offering to him the gnpit gifts of strength with which lie bad been endowed, and was accepted, Arprobus served faithfully the king until one day his majesty, falling .sick, was in mortal terror at the thought of death. The powerful servant asked him why he feared, a great king as he was? The trembling king told, his servant that he was afraid of the devil, into whose hands he must fall, if he died “Then there is one stronger than you?” said Arprobus, looking in disappointment at the shivering monarch. “Oh, yes!” said the king. “The devil is stronger than I am.” “Then you are his servant,” said the giant, “and I onlyserve a prince who has no superior.” Then Arprobus entered into the service of the devil. It was not long before, passing by a cross that had been erected by the wayside, Arprobus noticed that the devil shuddered as he looked upon it. “Why do you tremble?” asked he. “What is that?” “It is the cross.” “Sure! But why does that terrify you?” “I fear Christ, who once hung upon it.” "Then He is mightier than you?” "Yes; He is my foe!” ‘I And yon are, after all, His servant, if you fear Him. Fare well! I only serve the Master who has no superior.” Again the giant wandered forth, inquiring for Christ, whom even the Devil feared. Some one told him that, by doing Christ’s work, he would become His servant, and sometime meet the great Master Himself, and receive His approving words and welcome. Wherever Arprobus heard of a labourer

that needed aid, u sufferer that he could relieve, there he hurried, offering aid, and constantly calling upon the Master, whom he had not seen, but already (begun to love, for a vision of His i blessed face. Although he was baffled | in his great desire, Arprobus was never | happier. Under the blessing of those I “ready to perish,” his great heart swelled with exceeding joy, and Iris eyes (melted with refreshing tears. Be rais|ed his cabin by a stream, over which I the pilgrims passed to the Holy Land, 'and remained there, assisting the faint and weary as they crossed it. One night, when a dreadful storm was beating upon his roof, howling through the forest, tossing up the swift river into ridges of foam, he heard a child’s voieo upon the banks, calling in touching tones, “Oh! come, carry me over the river.” He rose at once, wondering that a child should be by the riverside at ?uch an hour. He bowed his rugged Shoulders, and placed the child carefully upon them. Now h® entered, the. dark waters, and pressed, oa towards - the

farther shore. But what could it mean? Certainly he had raised a child upon his arm; but a weight now pressed down upon him like a mountain. It bewed him to the waves. He struggled with all the force of his mighty strength and mightier will. In vain were his efforts. The sweat started from every pore. As he was just ready to sink under his burden, he eried out in astonishment and in fear, “Who art thou, wonderful child?” In that moment the child he bore seemed to grasp him in his arms, and at once placed him upon the river-bank. The storm was over. A glorious vision stood before him. “I am Christ, whom thou hast faithfully served, unseen: ‘inasmuch as ye have done it unto these my servants, you have dene unto me.’” Down at His. feet, humbled to the dust, Arprobus fell and worshipped. “No longer,” said the Master, “shalt thou be called Arprobus, but Christopheros (Christ-bearer); for thou hast borne Christ.” Ever after, the happy servant sought to bear, for the Master’s sake, whatever Lurd.cn H« pleased to place upon him.