I am giving you will ever be fulfilled. 'Bear ye one another's
burdens.' You will never do that unless you have Christ as the ground of
your hope, and His great sacrifice as the example for your conduct. For
the hindrance that prevents sympathy is self-absorption; and that
natural selfishness which is in us all will never be exorcised and
banished from us thoroughly, so as that we shall be awake to all the
obligations to bear our brother's burdens, unless Christ has dethroned
self, and is the Lord of our inmost spirits.

I rejoice as much as any man in the largely increased sense of mutual
responsibility and obligation of mutual aid, which is sweetening society
by degrees amongst us to-day, but I believe that no Socialistic or other
schemes for the regeneration of society which are not based on the
Incarnation and Sacrifice of Jesus Christ will live and grow. There is
but one power that will cast out natural selfishness, and that is love
to Christ, apprehending His Cross as the great example to which our
lives are to be conformed. I believe that the growing sense of
brotherhood amongst us, even where it is not consciously connected with
any faith in Christianity, is, to a very large extent, the result of the
diffusion through society of the spirit of Christianity, even where its
body is rejected. Thank God, the river of the water of life can
percolate through many a mile of soil, and reach the roots of trees far
away, in the pastures of the wilderness, that know not whence the
refreshing moisture has come. But on the wide scale be sure of this: it
is the law of Christ that will fight and conquer the natural selfishness
which makes bearing our brother's burdens an impossibility for men.
Only, Christian people! let us take care that we are not robbed of our
prerogative of being foremost in all such things, by men whose zeal has
a less heavenly source than ours ought to have. Depend upon it, heresy
has less power to arrest the progress of the Church than the selfish
lives of Christian professors.

So, dear friends, let us see to it that we first of all cast our own
burdens on the Christ who is able to bear them all, whatever they are.
And then let us, with lightened hearts and shoulders, make our own the
heavy burdens of sin, of sorrow, of care, of guilt, of consequences, of
responsibility, which are crushing down many that are weary and heavy
laden. For be sure of this, if we do not bear our brother's burdens, the
load