Christian World Pulpit, xliii. 83 (D. Burns) ; xlvii. 3 (Q. G. Bradley) ;
Iv. 265 (C. Gore) ; Iviii. 250 (A. H. M. Sime) ; Ixviii. 329 (H.
H. Henson). Churchman's Pulpit : St. Mark, St. Philip, and St. James, xiv. 393 (H. F.
R. Compston).
Weariness in Well-Doing,
And let us not be weary in well-doing : for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. — Gal. vi. 9.
1. St. Paul had been amongst these Galatians. He had planted the gospel amongst them, and formed their churches, and knew how zealous they were at the outset for the glory of Christ ; and so beloved was he amongst them that if necessary they would have taken out their very eyes for him ; but he had heard that a change had come over them. He had to say to them : " Ye did run well ; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth ? " He knew there were many who had begun to grow weary, and that there was a possibility of many more growing weary and fainting, and consequently the cause of Christ beginning to de- cline ; therefore he wrote them this Epistle, and in these closing verses, in this pathetic and impressive way, said : " Let us not be weary in well-doing : for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." With that perfect courtesy of which the Apostle was such an example, he identifies himself with the people to whom he is writing. He supposes for the moment that he might be inclined to the very same failing, which he perceived in them. He is identifying himself with them as subject to the same passions and feelings, so he does not say, " Do not ye be weary in well-doing," but he says, " Let us not be weary in well-doing : for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not."
2. Let us grasp what the Apostle really does say. This is the same St. Paul who includes in the catalogue of his own trials " in weariness and painf ulness and watchings." There is physical fatigue, and mental fatigue, and spiritual fatigue. Your ardent, eager worker is not denied his hours of depression when he is a tired man. More precious to Him who sees in secret, perhaps, are some tears of disappointment than the equanimity of him
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whose high hopes have never been disappointed because he never had any high hopes to disappoint. Did not Christ Jesus know weariness of body and heaviness of soul ? No Christian is exempt from these feelings but he to whom the thought of the Kingdom is a pleasant, pious speculation, and never a sacred burden on the heart ; to whom the prayer for it is never an agony, and the care for it never a cross. St. Paul knew all this and more ; for he knew the inward discouragements also. He knew the deception and instability of his own heart. He knew the tempting voices of ease and pleasure, the luxuries of the intellectual life, and the in- dolence with which the flesh is so curiously sympathetic. And to be up and at it, day in and day out, unrecognized and unre- warded, nobody apparently wanting you or your help or your message, or caring much whether you come or go, labour of body and agony of soul expended seemingly to so little purpose — be knew all this, and, knowing it, stood and cried, " In doing beauti- ful things be not guilty of the crowning baseness of cowardice, tiring, fainting, deserting the divinest life, hope and service — the one thing worth doing, the one life worth living. Do not play the coward, in baseness of heart abandoning the doing of good and beautiful deeds." This is St. Paul's adjuration to the Christian Church.
^ I wish it were possible by any conceivable turn of the English phraseology to give the exact force of this epigrammatic saying, "Let us not be weary in well-doing." I can, perhaps, partially explain it by saying that a frequent antithesis in Greek is between xaXbg and xaxos, what is good and what is bad, or, more strictly, what is beautiful and what is base. These two words are used antithetically in this epigram. " In doing beautiful things let us not be base," would be, of course, a very weak equivalent, though it would preserve some of the literal form of the saying. But this word "to be base" is the technical word for to turn coward, to lose heart, and so to tire at some hilly or difficult ground because of a weakness and infirmity of heart. In doing the beautiful iu life let us not turn coward, let us not lose heart. That is the true meaning, although, as you will infer, little or nothing of the striking epigrammatic form is preserved. This word " to be base " or " to turn coward " is a tribute to the belief that the crowning typical baseness is cowardice, the flagging, fainting, tiring of the soul. I quarrel altogether with the translation " to be weary." To be weary in our well-doing is a luxury denied to
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nobody. The baseness is in the cowardice, it is in the losing heart. It is in the wearying of it, if you Hke, although I cannot altogether assent even to that translation, for I have known men and women a little weary of it all — the strain and the struggle and the disappointment of " doing good " — who, nevertheless, are quite untainted by the baseness of cowardice, who have never lost hope or heart, who are still prepared under dark skies to plod and plod with a quiet, unfaltering resolution that unsuccess cannot discourage, until their long day's work is done, and the welcome signal comes for home and sleep.^