Page:Bear ye one another's burdens.djvu/10

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

6

the new commandment that we should love one another as He has loved us, the exercise of that sympathy, for the working of which He made of Himself and Christians one body, binding them to mutual help and dependence, that "whether one member suffer all the members suffer with it, or one member be honoured all the members rejoice with it."

No man ever came into this world, certainly none was ever incorporated in the Christian Church with license or power to live to himself or by himself. Christ has constituted us all in Him members one of another. Faculties and gifts He has bestowed on some, which cannot be used but in communicating to others; needs He has created, and burdens imposed, for the relief of which men must look to their brethren. Hence the richly endowed are to hold their possessions in common, and to distribute them liberally according as every man has need; hence the burden of the suffering and oppressed is to be borne by the free. "Here take of my good things," we are to say to the needy, "for