i84 THE BURDEN-BEARING GOD
make a firing party to shoot the mutineer ; and no man knows who fired the shot, but one man did fire it. And although there may have been companions, it was his rifle that carried the bullet, and his finger that pulled the trigger. We say, " The woman Thou gavest me tempted me, and I did cat." 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." 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 culjoa ; mea maxima culpa — " My fault, my exceeding great fault." No man can bear that burden for me.
^ Mr. Gladstone sometimes so far yielded to his colleagues as to sanction steps which he thought not the best, and may in this have sometimes erred ; yet compromises are unavoidable, for no Cabinet could be kept together if its members did not now and then, in matters not essential, yield to one another. When all the facts of his life come to be known, instances may be disclosed in which he was the victim of his own casuistry or of his defer- ence to Peel's maxim that a minister should not avow a change of view until the time has come to give effect to it. But it will also be made clear that he strove to obey his conscience, that he acted with an ever-present sense of his responsibility to the Abnighty, and that he was animated by an unselfish enthusiasm for humanity, enlightenment, and freedom.^
3. Closely connected with the burden of responsibility there is another — the burden of the inevitable consequences of transgression, not only in the future, when all human bonds of companion- ship shall be broken, and each man shall " give account of himself to God," but here and now. 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 notliiug 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 ; but if thou scomest, tliou alone shalt bear it."
* J. Bryce, Stiuliea in Contemporary Biography, 462.
PSALM Lxviii. 19 185
^ While Farrar dared not set limits to the infinite mercy of an all-merciful God and Father, none ever pointed with sterner finger to the ineluctable Nemesis that attends on sin. " The man who is sold under sin is dead, morally dead, spiritually dead ; and such a man is a ghost, far more awful than the soul which was once in a dead body, for he is a body bearing about with him a dead soul. Better, far, far better for him to have cut off the right hand, or plucked out the right eye, than to have been cast as he has been, now in his lifetime — and as he will be cast until he repents, even beyond the grave, into that Gehenna of aeonian fire ! It shall purify him, God grant, in due time ; but oh ! it shall agonize, because he has made himself, as yet, incapable of any other redemption. So that if any youth have wickedly thought in his heart that God is even such an one as himself — that he may break with impunity God's awful commandments, that he may indulge with impunity his own evil lusts, let him recall the sad experience of Solomon, ' Walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.' Let him remember the stern warning of Isaiah, * Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil ; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness ; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter ! Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so shall their root be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust : because they have cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.' " ^
4. The burdens grow with the growing life of man, so that the more the man has the more he has to carry ; the severer the test of what he is in himself, of his conscience and heart, his sympathy and will, his faith and love. The boy strong, agile, without work and without want, is as free from care as a frisky kitten. The man solitary, without friend or home or responsibility, carries all his cares under his hat, and the thinner his life, the less there is of anxiety. But the father of a family is the bond of the house, the support of wife and children, and must bear himself erect under the cares of the home, of business, of parish, and of State. Add life, and you add care. Enlarge your world, and you increase your burdens. All strong emotions, all really great ideas, outleap our individual life, and carry us to the larger, deeper, fuller life of the world. Therefore the greatest life is the most burdened. ^ R. Farrar, Life of Dean Farrar, 26a.