'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the
law of Christ. . . . 5. For every man shall bear his
own burden.'--GAL. vi. 25.
The injunction in the former of these verses appears, at first sight, to
be inconsistent with the statement in the latter. But Paul has a way of
setting side by side two superficially contradictory clauses, in order
that attention may be awakened, and that we may make an effort to
apprehend the point of reconciliation between them. So, for instance,
you remember he puts in one sentence, and couples together by a 'for,'
these two sayings: 'Work out your own salvation'; 'It is God that
worketh in you.' So here he has been exhorting the Galatian Christians
to restore a fallen brother. That is one case to which the general
commandment, 'Bear ye one another's burdens,' is applicable.
I cannot here enter on the intervening verses by which he glides from
the one to the other of these two thoughts which I have coupled
together, but I may just point out in a word the outline of his course
of thought. 'Bear ye one another's burden,' says he; and then he thinks,
'What is it that keeps men from bearing each other's burdens?' Being
swallowed up with themselves, and especially being conceited about their
own strength and goodness. And so he goes on: 'If a man think himself to
be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.' And what is the
best cure for all these fancies inside us of how strong and good we are?
To look at our work with an impartial and rigid judgment. It is easy for
a man to plume himself on being good, and strong, and great; but let him
look at what he has done, and try that by a high standard, and that will
knock the conceit out of him. Or, if his work stands the test, then 'he
shall have rejoicing in himself, and not' by comparing himself with
other people. Two blacks do not make a white, and we are not to heighten
the lustre of our own whiteness by comparing it with our neighbour's
blackness. Take your act for what _it_ is worth, apart altogether from
what other people are. Do not say, 'God! I thank thee that I am not as
other men are . . . or even as this publican'; but look to yourself. There
is an occupation with self which is good, and is a help to brotherly
sympathy.
And so the Apostle has worked round, you see, to almost an opposite
thought from the one with which he started. 'Bear ye one another's
burdens.' Yes, but a man's work is his own and nobody else's, and a
man's character is his own and nobody else's, so 'every man shall bear
his own burden.' The statements are not contradictory. They complete
each other. They are the north and the south poles, and between them is
the rounded orb of the whole truth. So then, let me point out that:
I. There are burdens which can be shared, and there are burdens which
_cannot_.
Let us take the case from which the whole context has arisen. Paul was
exhorting the Galatians, as I explained, in reference to their duty to a
fallen brother; and he speaks of him--according to our version--as
'overtaken in a fault.' Now, that is scarcely his idea, I think. The
phrase, as it stands in our Bibles, suggests that Paul is trying to
minimise the gravity of the man's offence; but just in proportion as he
minimised its gravity would he weaken his exhortation to restore him.
But what he is really doing is not to make as little as possible of the
sin, but to make as much of it as is consistent with the truth. The word
'overtaken' suggests that some sin, like a tiger in a jungle, springs
upon a man and overpowers him by the suddenness of the assault. The word
so rendered may perhaps be represented by some such phrase as
'discovered'; or, if I may use a 'colloquialism,' if a man be caught
'red-handed.' That is the idea. And Paul does not use the weak word
'fault,' but a very much stronger one, which means stark staring sin. He
is supposing a bad case of inconsistency, and is not palliating it at
all. Here is a brother who has had an unblemished reputation; and all
at once the curtain is thrown aside behind which he is working some
wicked thing; and there the culprit stands, with the bull's-eye light
flashed upon him, ashamed and trembling. Paul says, 'If you are a
spiritual man'--there is irony there of the graver sort--'show your
spirituality by going and lifting him up, and trying to help him.' When
he says, 'Restore such an one,' he uses an expression which is employed
in other connections in the New Testament, such as for mending the
broken meshes of a net, for repairing any kind of damage, for setting
the fractured bones of a limb. And that is what the 'spiritual' man has
to do. He is to show the validity of his claim to live on high by
stooping down to the man bemired and broken-legged in the dirt. We have
come across people who chiefly show their own purity by their harsh
condemnation of others' sins. One has heard of women so very virtuous
that they would rather hound a fallen sister to death than try to
restore her; and there are saints so extremely saintly that they will
not touch the leper to heal him, for fear of their own hands being
ceremonially defiled. Paul says, 'Bear ye one another's burdens'; and
especially take a lift of each other's sin.
I need not remind you how the same command applies in relation to
pecuniary distress, narrow circumstances, heavy duties, sorrows, and all
the 'ills that flesh is heir to.' These can be borne by sympathy, by
true loving outgoing of the heart, and by the rendering of such
practical help as the circumstances require.
But there are burdens that cannot be borne by any but the man himself.
There is the awful burden of personal existence. It is a solemn thing
to be able to say 'I.' And that carries with it this, that after all
sympathy, after all nestling closeness of affection, after the tenderest
exhibition of identity of feeling, and of swift godlike readiness to
help, each of us lives alone. Like the inhabitants of the islands of the
Greek Archipelago, we are able to wave signals to the next island, and
sometimes to send a boat with provisions and succour, but we are parted,
'with echoing straits between us thrown.' Every man, after all, lives
alone, and society is like the material things round about us, which are
all compressible, because the atoms that compose them are not in actual
contact, but separated by slenderer or more substantial films of
isolating air. Thus there is even in the sorrows which we can share with
our brethren, and in all the burdens which we can help to bear, an
element which cannot be imparted. 'The heart knoweth its own
bitterness', and neither 'stranger' nor other 'intermeddleth' with the
deepest fountains of 'its joy.'
Then again, there is the burden of responsibility which can be shared by
none. A dozen soldiers may be turned out to make a firing party to shoot
the mutineer, and no man knows who fired the shot, but one man did fire
it. And however there may have been companions, it was his rifle that
carried the bullet, and his finger that pulled the trigger. We say, 'The
woman that Thou gavest me tempted me, and I did eat.' Or we say, 'My
natural appetites, for which I am not responsible, but Thou who madest
me art, drew me aside, and I fell', or we may say, 'It was not I; it was
the other boy.' And then there rises up in our hearts a veiled form, and
from its majestic lips comes 'Thou art the man'; and our whole being
echoes assent--_Mea culpa; mea maxima culpa_--'My fault, my exceeding
great fault.' No man can bear that burden.
And then, closely connected with responsibility there is another--the
burden of the inevitable consequences of transgression, not only away
yonder in the future, when all human bonds of companionship shall be
broken, and each man shall 'give account of himself to God,' but here
and now; as in the immediate context the Apostle tells us, 'Whatsoever a
man soweth, that shall he also reap.' The effects of our evil deeds come
back to roost; and they never make a mistake as to where they should
alight. If I have sown, I, and no one else, will gather. No sympathy
will prevent to-morrow's headache after to-night's debauch, and nothing
that anybody can do will turn the sleuth-hounds off the scent. Though
they may be slow-footed, they have sure noses and deep-mouthed fangs.
'If thou be wise thou shalt be wise for thyself, and if thou scornest
thou alone shalt bear it.' So there are burdens which can, and burdens
which cannot, be borne.