is simply His secret for the alleviation of human life, His
prescription for the best and happiest method of living. Men harness
themselves to the work and stress of the world in clumsy and unnatural
ways. The harness they put on is antiquated. A rough, ill-fitted
collar at the best, they make its strain and friction past enduring,
by placing it where the neck is most sensitive; and by mere continuous
irritation this sensitiveness increases until the whole nature is
quick and sore.
This is the origin, among other things, of a disease called
"touchiness"--a disease which, in spite of its innocent name, is one
of the gravest sources of restlessness in the world. Touchiness, when
it becomes chronic, is a morbid condition of the inward disposition.
It is self-love inflamed to the acute point; conceit, _with a
hair-trigger_. The cure is to shift the yoke to some other place; to
let men and things touch us through some new and perhaps as yet unused
part of our nature; to become meek and lowly in heart while the old
sensitiveness is becoming numb from want of use.
It is the beautiful work of Christianity everywhere to adjust the
burden of life to those who bear it, and them to it. It has a
perfectly miraculous gift of healing. Without doing any violence to
human nature it sets it right with life, harmonizing it with all
surrounding things, and restoring those who are jaded with the fatigue
and dust of the world to a new grace of living. In the mere matter of
altering the perspective of life and changing the proportions of
things, its function in lightening the care of man is altogether its
own.
The weight of a load depends upon the attraction of the earth. Suppose
the attraction of the earth were removed? A ton on some other planet,
where the attraction of gravity is less, does not weigh half a ton.
Now Christianity removes the attraction of the earth; and this is one
way in which it diminishes man's burden. It makes them citizens of
another world. What was a ton yesterday is not half a ton today. So
without changing one's circumstances, merely by offering a wider
horizon and a different standard, it alters the whole aspect of the
world.
Christianity as Christ taught is the truest philosophy of life ever
spoken. But let us be quite sure when we speak of Christianity that we
mean Christ's Christianity. Other versions are either caricatures, or
exaggerations, or misunderstandings, or shortsighted and surface
readings. For the most part their attainment is hopeless and the
results wretched. But I care not who the person is, or through what
vale of tears he has passed, or is about to pass, there is a new life
for him along this path.