ungus of living,
active, breathing humanity. The lazy lay a burden on their backs which
would appall men who have fought winds and waves, and searched the
bowels of the earth, and bound to their will the subtle forces of
electricity and steam.

The burdens we bind for ourselves we shall have to bear alone. God is
not going to help us, and angels stand afar off; good men and women
are not here bound by the injunction, "Bear ye one another's burdens."
The envious, the proud, the drunkard, the seducer, the complainer, the
lazy, etc., must bear their self-inflicted burdens, till they perish
with them.

If the kingdom of heaven could be taken by some wonderful _coup
d'etat_, many would be first that are now last. But of great deeds
little account is to be made. They are indigenous in every condition
of society. It is a great life that is never a failure. A great life
composed of a multitude of little burdens, cheerfully borne, and
little charges faithfully kept. And this is a kind of Christian
warfare, that is specially to be carried on in the sphere of the home.
Many a professor, faithful in all the weightier matters of the law and
the sanctuary, and blameless in the eyes of the world, is a rock of
offence in his own household. His wife doubts his religion, his
children fear him, and his servants call him a hard master. He pays
all his tithes of mint, anise, and cummin to the church and society,
but as regards the little burdens of his own household, he is worse
than a publican.

Small burdens make up the moral and religious probation of a majority
of women, for they have but rare occasion for the exercise of such
faith and fortitude as commands the eye of the world. But these
burdens, though apparently small and contracted in their sphere, are
not only very important in their results, but often singularly
irritating. Sickly, fretful children--impertinent, lazy servants--a
thoughtless, irregular husband--a hundred other burdens so small she
does not like to say how heavy she feels them to be and how sorely
they weary her,--these are "her warfare;" and because the Master has
laid them upon her, shall she not bear them? The world may call them
"little burdens," but there is nothing small in the eyes of Infinity.

In no way can a woman cultivate beauty and strength of character so
well as in the patient bearing and carrying of the small burdens that
every day await her--the headaches and toothaches--the weariness and
wea