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towards his friend: also a burden other than his

own to bear. He has to prevent his friend's sympathy becoming a pain. He is bound by the law of love to receive that sympathy. If he reject it, he makes it into suffering. There are those who say, "I will bear my grief alone, keep my own. heart to myself;" who have pride in their loneliness of pain. There are others, who enthralled by their own sensitiveness, cannot bear that another should touch them, and who refuse all Sympathy.

I think this is a sin against the law of Love. For it awakens a sense of repulse or offence. Or, it makes the sympathiser despondent, ashamed, and chilled. Love given is thrown back, and its stream is checked. The giver of sympathy, thus repulsed, suffers by your pride or your sensitiveness. You have injured love, and turned its pleasure into a pain. Remember, then, your sorrow does not free you from the demands of the law of charity. It requires of you reciprocation of love. We ought not only to sacrifice our ease to bear the burdens of another's sorrow; but also our pride and our reserve to allow others to bear our

sorrow.

So far for sorrow.
of it be as great a burden as sorrow.

But joy may for the moment
The heart

may be o'erfraught with delight, and nigh to breaking with it. When Lear awoke from his madness and saw Cordelia bending over him, and love in her eyes, he all but died of joy. We have no right, but have great wrong if we treat with indifference the joy of the child or the rapture of youth. "They want no sympathy," we say, or even with a scoff, "he is happy, let him alone!" Have you never repulsed young or old with a cold look when they came up full of their delight, longing for you to share their pleasure? It is an unkindly act, and I ask you never to do it again. Think rather that joy is a burden you have to bear for others. Make the delight of others brighter by sympathy. Do not blow with a cold wind upon the rose in flower, lest you wither its leaves. 'Rejoice," said St. Paul, with his large knowledge of the needs of love, "rejoice with them that do rejoice."

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These are some examples of the workings of this mode of the law of love. It is but a part of the law, but St. Paul says that it fulfils the whole. How can we be sure that if we bear our brother's burden, we can also forgive him, veil his faults, forbear to be angry with his peculiarities? The answer is "He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in that which is greatest."

And why?

Because all action flows from the fountain of love and life within. Outward motives for lovingkindness rise and fall, ebb and flow with the wind of circumstance. But love, such as Christ's, is independent of the outward, and rescues the poor child with the same ardour with which it saves a country. Your power to solve the smallest problem of love ensures your ability to solve the deepest difficulties. The same love that gave up rest to feed the multitudes, or to appease a petty quarrel, died for love and truth on Calvary. The love which wrought a little peace between two disciples ensured that sacrifice of self which became the peace of mankind. The same law which binds the dewdrop into a sphere, binds the planets into spheres. There is no small or great to love. To have the principle secures the practice. He who can bear his brother's burden does possess the principle, and will fulfil every mode of the law with equal power. He who is righteous in one point to love, can be righteous in all points-fulfils the whole law of Christ.

Giving and receiving, bearing and forbearing, sharing every burden, leaving nothing untouched, nothing uncared for; supporting, comforting, uplifting, watching to support, seeking to be helped because you have given help, giving and permitting

sympathy, strengthening and being strengthened— there are those who thus fulfil the law of love. And this is their reward. The more they love, the more they have power of love. Love is its own reward. And loving thus you bind yourself to God. For what is the reward of God Himself? Where is His joy? Where His life; where His eternity? It is that in for ever loving He for ever accumulates eternal Joy, and Life, and Power.

THE SALT OF THE EARTH

"Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men."

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MATTHEW V. 13.

AT the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, Christ declared the moral requisites for entering the Kingdom of God—humility, meekness, hungering and thirsting after righteousness, mercifulness: and after these, the moral result of such an entrance— that the pure in heart see God." Then he laid down the relations of the members of the kingdom to their fellow men. They were to be peacemakers, and they would be persecuted for righteousness' sake; and their reward for the first was that men would know they were children of God -and for the second that the Kingdom of Heaven was within them. He passes on in my text to

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