Article September 16, 1911 Issue

BURDENS: AN INTERROGATORY

CLARKE MC CUE.

"HE is carrying such a heavy burden!" Is such a comment just to the one hearing it? Is it just to the one uttering it? The statement is direct. It would have the hearer believe that it is based on knowledge. An unwarranted assumption, is it not?

Paul said, "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ." Does this injunction mean that we are literally to take on the burdens of others? If so, would we not be rather unwelcome porters and our proffer of help laid open to rebuke? For would mortal mind consent to trust its treasured baggage to the hands of strangers? Then, too, are not burdens conjured frequently at the behest of self-pity or through a desire for martyrdom? Therefore, is it not at once apparent that such baggage can have no weight in reality? Why, then, retard the traveler by confirming his own false and nurtured belief? Why be moved and mistake pity for compassion? Why seek to share in the self-pity of another when that self-pity is distinctively that other's own property? Can one learn a lesson for another?

Fulfilment of Truth's law is thus interpreted by Mrs. Eddy in "An Allegory" : "Then he who has no baggage goes back and kindly binds up their wounds, wipes away the blood stains, and would help them on; but suddenly the Stranger [the ever-present Christ] shouts, 'Let them alone; they must learn from the things they suffer. Make thine own way' " (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 327). Why place possible obstructions in the way of a fellow traveler by giving utterance to a falsity? Is not the belief in a burden born out of things past or fear of the future? Is either existent in reality?

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