The Pulpit Commentary — Isaiah — Volume 2 — Section 52

thoughts. Hezeki&h expresses what he felt when he lay on the "border-land." His idea is tb&t death is his creditor, &nd pressing for immediate p&ymeut &nd he calls on God to be Surety for hiru, and release him from the clutch of thi~ death. Some op~ressed, cry against aJvancing death. Others, &a Tennyson's "Mariana," cry for it, saying- "rm aweary, rm aweary, I would that I were dead 1• Can it be profit.able for us to dwell on this despairing mood of Hezekiah·? Perhaps, as we meditate, the clouds may part a little, and glints of glory may break 'through. Our soul may take wing and fly to God, and find rest in him. I. LIFE A BORDEN. It is such (1) in view of the responsibilities under which wt> come; it is (2) as a matter of feeling and sentiment often times. No man, indeed, ever ~om~s t-0 use life ~rig~t until he regards_ it as a sacre~ )m~den .. It will be heavy or light, 1t will crush or 1t will ennoble, accordrng to the spmt m which we accept it, and deal with it. Too readily we say that life always looks bright to youth and maiden. Is it so? We could find some of the saddest. poetry ever written which had been oomposed by the young. Every right-hearted youth loosens the home ties, stands free, and stoops to lift up his own life-burden with a great sigh of anxiety and fear. What does the man of middle age say? However brightly and bravely a man may take up his daily ::are, still he feels that each new child, and each lengthening year with its new claims, adds to his burden. Business life, in modern times, seems a heavier burden than it ever was-a daily bearing and struggling to win daily bread, because we, and those related to us, want so much more than bread. Ask the old men what they thiuk of life. The very best among them will reply, "I thank God for life, but be ouly knows what a burden it has been to me. His grace has enabled me to carry it, but sometimes ~ftentimes-it bas crushed me down on my knees." Or take the faculties with which we are endowed, and the spheres in which those faculties find expression and operation. This body: what a constant care to keep it in health, and to get it fed, clothed, and wisely ruled! And sometimes it lies like a heavy log upon our souls, and from under it we can scarcely get our breath I This mind. The infinite realms of knowledge stretch out on either side, and it is our agony that life will only let us touch, with a passing foot, the mere skirts and edges of one or two of them. The soul-our very selves--what a prison-house for us this body is I Wherever we go we must carry the body. Our sonla can "neither fly nor go." Quaintly, but effectively, our fathers drew an emblem. The skeleton was represented as the cage within which the living man was imprisoned. At some time in our livea we all have thanked God for the Book of Ecclesiastes, which is precisely this-a man who felt life as a burden, letting his heart out. But tum to consider- II. Gon IS THE ONLY TROE BunDEN-DEAnEn. If the three words, "Undertake for me," could be put into a Christian form of speech, they would be found to express that "full surrender," that" perfect submission," that" rest or faith," whioh is the secret of the "higher life," the true beginning and proper foundation of Scripture holiness. But, practically, how can the man who feels life to be a burden commit that burden to the Lord? If you do not believe in a living God, in the living Christ-God, actually present rulino- and overruling, you will never find out how. If God is away in the heaven~, and Christ back in the centuries, our text has no real meaning; it is a vague sentiment. But if God is here, and Christ is with us-in us; if the Father does see in secret, and the Son abide with us al ways ;-then it will be easy to unfultl the secret of the rolled burden. One idea at least we can give. If we have a heart-sorrow we can relieve it by making a cor,jidant. Robert Alfred Vaughan had long been ii~, but one morning his wife saw signs which struck her with hopelessness. In her grief she thought of going to unbosom her trouble to her friend Mrs. George Dawson. Ere she c~uld leave her house that friend came in, she hac.l come to open a uew sorrow to her fnend-her only girl had becu seized with fits of a kind which put in peril intellect and life. 'l'hose women lifted each others' burdens by opening them in the confidences of friendship. We lose our burdens by freely telling God all about thbm. •1:her~ is another way of rolling burdens on God, which is less easy to put into worc.ls-wh1ch 1s a matter of s?ul- feeling. We can give up the self-management of our lives. It can become a conscwus ruling thought with us that we live, not for self, but for God; we can inwardly rcl&li:i:e 011. xxxvm. 1-22.J 'l'HE BOOK OF '!'HE PROPHET ISAIAH.