we are not required to burthen ourselves in order to ease others, but so to participate their burthens that they may partake of our easep : thus to " bear one another's burthens is eminently to fulfil the law of Christ C]
Having thus marked the import of the injunction in our text, we proceed to shew,
II. Its reasonableness —
The whole of God's " law is good," and the service it requires is reasonable. But the duty enjoined in our text, though arduous to a selfish mind, is parti- cularly reasonable. For consider,
1. What obligations we owe to God for the supe- rior comforts which we enjoy —
[It is God who assigns to all their lot, not only in respect to the situation in which they are bornr, but in all the changes, whether prosperous or adverse, which they experience through life8. Whatever therefore we have above others, " it is God alone who has made us to differ1." And how eminently is this the case with respect to the ravages of war which during these last twenty years have desolated almost the whole of Europe, but have never reached our happy land ! Compare our state with that of a great part of Germany at this present moment u, and then say, whether a compassionate regard for our suffering fellow-creatures be not called for at our hands, and whether such an expression of it as our text requires, be at all un- reasonable ? Methinks, it is not possible to have even the most indistinct view of our obligations to God, without saying from our hearts, " What shall I render unto the Lord for all the benefits that he hath done unto me ?"]
2. What we ourselves should desire, if we were reduced to the state in which myriads of our fellow- creatures now are —
[It is not easy to place ourselves in the situation of per- sons of whom we hear only by report : but yet we may conceive what we ourselves should desire, and what we should think reasonable, if we were perishing with cold and nakedness and hunger, whilst others, embarked in the same cause with ourselves, were exempt from those sufferings, and were enjoying comparative ease and affluence. Should we not wish them to
p 2 Cor. viii. 13, 14. <i Gal. vi. 2. r Acts xvii. 26, 28.
■ 1 Sam. ii. 6, 7. * 1 Cor. iv. 7.
u This Sermon was preached in 1814, on occasion of a collection for the relief of tl e most grievous distresses in Germany.