The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1899-02-09
TAI IMAGES SERMON.
BURDEN BEARlNG"LAsT SUN
DAYS SUBJECT. q.
From Gal. vi, Verse e, as Follows:
Bear Ye One Another's Burdens,
and So Fulfil the Law Of Christi
But People Forget 1t. ...s ~

Every man for himself! If there be
room for only one more passenger in
the lifeboat, get in yourself. If there
be burden to lift, you supervise while
others shoulder it, You be the digit
while others are the cyphers on the
right hand side-nothing in themselves
but augmenting you. In opposition to
that theory of selfishness Paul ad-
vances in my text the Gospel theory:
Bear We one anothers burdens, and
so fulfil the law of Christ"
Everybody has burdens. Sometimes
they come down upon the shoulders,
sometimes they come down upon the
head, sometimes they come down upon
the heart. Looking over any assembly,
they all seem bright and easy; but
each one has burden to lift, and
some Of them have more than they
can lift. Paul proposes to split up
these burdens into fragments. You
of yours, and each one will take part
of the others, and so we will fulfil the
law of Christ.
Mrs. Appleton, of Boston, the daugh
ter of Daniel Webster, was dying after
long illness. The great lawyer, after
pleading an important case in the court
room, on his way home stopped at the
house of his daughter and went into
her sick-room. She said to him:
Father, why are you out to-day in
this cold weather without an over
coat?" The great lawyer went into
the next room and was in flood of
tears, saying: dying herself, yet
thinking only of me-" Oh, how much
more beautiful is care for others than
this everlasting taking care of our
selves. High up in the wall of the
Temple of Baalbec there are three
stones, each weighing eleven hundred
tons. They were lifted up by style
.Sof machinery that is now among the
lost arts. But in my text is the Cos
pei machinery, by which the vaster and
the heavier tonnage of the worlds
burden is to be lifted from the crushed
heart of the human race. What you
and I most need to learn is the spirit
of helpfulness.
Encourage the merchant. If he have
a superior style Of goods, tell him so.
If he have with his clerks adorned the
show windows and the shelves, COM
business locality, if he have had great
success, if he have brilliant prospects
for the future, recognize all this. Be
not afraid that he will become AFRO
CANT and pulled up by your approval.
Before night some shop-going person
will come in and tell him that his
prices are exorbitant, and that his
goods are of an inferior quality, and
that his show window gave promise Of
far better things than he found inside.
Before the night of the day in which
you say encouraging words to that
merchant there will be some crank,
male or female, who will come into
the store and depreciate everything,
and haul down enough goods from the
shelves to fit out a family for whole
winter without buying a cents worth.
If the merchant be grocer, there will
be some one before night who will
come into his establishment, and taste
of this and taste of that and taste of
everything else, in that way stealing
all the profits of anything that he may
purchase three apples while
he is eating one orange. Before the
night of the day when you approve
that merchant he will have a bad debt
which he will have to erase, a bad
debt made by some one who has moved
away from the neighborhood without
giving him any hint of the place of
destination. Before the night of the
day when you, have uttered encour-
aging words to the merchant, there
will be some woman who will return
to his store and say she has lost her
purse, she left it there in the store,
she brought it there, she did not take
it away, she knows it is there, leav-
ing you to make any delicate and COM
plimentary inference that you wish to
make. Before night that merchant
will hear that some style Of goods of
which he has large supply is going
out of fashion, and there will be some
one who will come into the store and
pay a bill under protest, Saying he has
paid it before, but the receipt has been
lost. Now, encourage that merchant
not fearing that he will become AFRO.
giant or pulled up, for there will be
before night enough unpleasant things
said to keep him from becoming apo
plectic with plethora Of praise
Encourage newspaper men. If va,
knew how many annoyances they have
if you understood that their most elab
crate article is sometimes flung OH
because there is such great pressure
on the columns, and that an accurate
report Of a speech is expected, al
though the utterance be so indistinc
the discourse is one long stenographit
guess, and that the midnight which
finds you asleep demands that thew bt
awake, and thay are sometimes GROUND
between the wheels of our great brai1
manufactures; sickened at the otter
approach of men who want commit
mentary newspaper notices, or who
want newspaper retraction; one daJ
q sent to report burial, the next DAY