" Blessed be the Lord, who daily beareth our burden,
Even the God who is our salvation."
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i82 THE BURDEN-BEARING GOD
^ In the Authorized Version this verse reads tlms : " Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits," the last two words being in italics, to show that they are not in the original. In point of fact, the Hebrew is equally capable of both interpreta- tions, and may be rendered either, " Blessed be the Lord, who daily burdens us," that is, " with benefits " ; or, " Blessed be the Lord, who daily beareth our burden." The great objection to the rendering which has become familiar to us all, " who daily loadeth us ^oith benefits," is that these essential words are not in the original, and need to be supplied in order to make out the sense. Whereas, on the other hand, if we adopt the suggested emenda- tion, " who daily beareth our burden," we get a still more beauti- ful meaning, which requires no forced addition in order to bring it out. There is a still more attractive rendering found in several of the ancient versions : " Blessed be the Lord who daily beareth us."
The Inevitable Burden.
Perhaps the most perplexing element in life is the wide sway of the Inevitable. The area of our freedom of choice is so pain- fully limited that, though we are turned into a capacious garden, stored with an incalculable wealth of flower and fruit, yet we oan do so little ourselves, and are of so little account, that we are fain to despise our inheritance and neglect the oare of our flower-beds and the watch of the fruit-trees. The life we contrive for our- selves is unexpectedly broken up or overpressed, till it has none of the shape and little of the beauty we intended ; indeed, it some- times seems little more than a central tjhoroughfare for the irre- sistible steeds of fate. The youth descriee his far-off goal, and with measureless pluck and brightest hope sets out resolved to reach it, but is tripped up before he has travelled many yards ; and though he rises, gains his feet and attempts the herculean task a hundred times, it is to find himself nearer indeed, but only to what is now a receding mark. The man of business builds his barns larger in time for them to be burnt by the desolating fire, or sends his boat to sea to be destroyed by the despotism of the storm. Pettiness and weariness eat the heart out of the life of artist and artisan, patriot and poet, and make existence and toil
PSALM Lxviii. 19 183
poor and bitter as the apples of Sodom. Thus life not only has its burdens but, in a true and not ignoble sense, it is itself a burden.
1. 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 affec- tion, 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."
^ Er. M'^Laren began to feel more keenly the inevitable solitariness of old age, as one by one his contemporaries left him. Eeviewing old days in Lancashire, he said on one occasion, " There were three — Stowell Brown went home ; there were two — Charles Williams gone — and I am left alone, it is very solitary." Two of his sisters reached ninety years of age and beyond it, but between 1903 and 1906 they, and two brothers-in- law and a sister-in-law, died. Eeferring to these family losses, he writes : " I feel as if we were like shipwrecked sailors clinging to the keel of an upturned boat, and seeing one after another lose their hold and sink. But thank God, we shall rise, and not sink when our hands can no longer grasp the seen. Each departure brings us sensibly more face to face with our soon-coming turn. May the gate open a little as we draw nearer it, and give us some beam of the light within. Let us keep nearer to the Lord of life and we shall be ready for our passing into life." ^
2. Then again there is the burden of responsibility, which each has to bear for himself. A dozen soldiers may be turned out to
1 E. T. M'Laren, Dr. M<=Laren of Manchester, 242.