Burden bearer

“ He laid a burden on me and this [Pg 363] burden must I bear even though I may bear with it all the pain that is greater than the pain of the earth, greater than the ceaseless travail of the sea, even though I may bear with it that bitterest of all bitter fruits the labour that is nothing worth. ”

“ You are hardy and valiant, life said; your shoulders are fitted to bear burdens, and bear them you shall. Here before you is a cruel burden, and you cannot turn aside. All the strong ones shall be chosen to suffer for the weak. ”

“ Alas! were there a hundred of us he would still have to bear the heaviest burden alone.
All humanity at this hour is bearing a very cruel burden. Every minute aggravates its sufferings, and will no one, no one come to its aid? ”

“ My little sorrows, as they hide and peep,
My little joys, as they disport and leap,
My little vanities, my budless May.
The burden of my virtues and my sins,
The burden of authority that grins
At every effort, ah, the burden kills ”

“ Therefore let us examine alone by ourselves the weight of our misfortunes, as if they were burdens. For the body is weighed down by the burden of what presses on it, but the soul often adds to the real load a burden of its own. ”

“ If I falter and stumble under my own heavy load, which I have borne so querulously, so clumsily, shall not I say a word which can help a fellow-sufferer to bear his load more easily, help him to avoid the mistakes, the falls into which my own perversity has betrayed me? To make another's burden lighter is to lighten one's own burden ”

“ An end should be put to the burden which weighs upon the higher classes—the burden, I mean, of having to be ready every moment to expose life and limb to the mercy of anyone who takes it into his rascally head to be coarse, rude, foolish or malicious. ”

“ These burdens were fastened on at birth by His enemy, and as we grow they grow; and each year we carry them they get heavier and heavier, so that sometimes a very large burden has to be carried by a very weak person. ”

“ It means the burden lifted; the heavy burden of labour and of care. It means leave to rest, the which, even if it be unused, is a new mercy every moment. To the old it means so much of the pride of life as no one would deny them, the late revelation of unknown delights, an hour of idleness, a distant journey, a dainty or a purchase indulged in without anxious thought, the hundred and one things desirable that a competence assures. ”

“ The burdens that are hard to bear are those we lay upon ourselves. What a 320 burden to themselves, and to every one around them, are the lazy and the unemployed! If it is a man, prayers should be offered up for his family and his dependents,—for who is so morbid and melancholy, so pettish and fretful, so devoured by spleen and ennui, as the man with nothing to do? ”

“ Father and mother both held forth to her in the same tone: 'You have the battle of life before you; it is a terrible one, and the world is relentless. Not only is it your right, but your very duty, to spare every penny you can; for, if anything happened to prevent your earning money, you would become a burden upon us—a burden we would gladly strive to bear, but the thought of which would be very hard for yourself. ”

“ But if our difficulties are not self-made, if they are not due either to ignorance or presumption, is it not even then better for us to know that we are all carrying the same burden, the common burden of humanity, if haply we may find, that for the heavy laden there is but one who can give them rest? ”

“ But as he thought of the helpless cripple, lying there unable to move without assistance, with all his prospects blighted and his very life a burden to him, he began to realise that the past was not cancelled, that he had a life’s debt yet to pay, and a life’s wrong for which, as far as possible, to make amends. ”

“ He calls those who are laden to rest; and yet He does not take away either burden or labour, but He exchanges them for another burden, another labour, but a light burden, a sweet yoke, wherein rest or refreshment, even though it appear not, nevertheless is found. ”

“ We ask that you shall not levy upon us direct burdens for public purposes, to which very few other classes contribute. We ask that you shall not throw upon us, who, according to your own account, are the only class that is in a state of prolonged distress, the burden of your system. ”

“ The burden of life became still less endurable face to face with the existence of evil and with the wretchedness of our social arrangements. With so much toil and trouble, squalor, ignorance, crime, and every conceivable kind of bodily and mental suffering all about me, why should I be privileged to live in luxury and idleness? ”

“ Simple weariness of the burden which he has not strength of body or mind to carry and ought never to have assumed is one attitude to be reckoned with, and failure to realize or in his heart accept the binding nature of his obligations is another. ”

“ There is a burden of care in getting them, fear in keeping them, temptation in using them, guilt in abusing them, sorrow in losing them, and a burden of account, at last, to be given up concerning them. ”

“ The measure of our miseries is already full; our condition begins to be insupportable, and the life we lead is worse than that of beasts of burden. When these have gone their day's journey, their load is taken off, food is given them, and they are allowed to take rest; we, on the contrary, are always under arms, nor do we ever take our clothes off. ”

“ The generally good and kind-hearted man, who has all his life been used to see his beasts of burden dragging a few pounds' weight above their proper and merciful load, soon comes to regard the extraordinary measure as the proper burden, and to look upon the hapless brute, which is pining away by inches, in imperceptible and insensible decay, as merely performing the work, and filling the station, to perform and fill which it was created. ”

“ But if ever—in distress, peril, shame, poverty, or whatever anguish is most poignant, whatever burden heaviest—you should require a life to be given wholly, only to make your own a little easier, then summon me! ”

“ Well then, why not pass on a burden too heavy for our years to some other body, whose youth and vigor will do double duty—for itself and us—and quite willingly besides, not even perceiving the extra labor imposed upon it? ”

“ Looking at the problem in a broad human light, it is difficult to say which is the graver evil, the additional burden of the domestic work, so far as it is done, or the habitual neglect of it, where it is evaded. ”

“ Let our burdens be reduced to light running order.—Homiletic Monthly.
Practical Christian Sympathy.
I. Consider the burdens you can bear for others.—All have to bear burdens. Some man can only bear for himself. Others he can be helped to bear, such as the burden of carnal tendency, persecution, anxiety over loved ones, affliction that is not punishment.
II. Consider how we may bear the burdens of others.—1. We can bear them on our hearts in prayer. 2. We can lighten the burden by friendly help. 3. We can by the strength of our sympathies come under the burdens of others. ”

“ Constance said, amiably. "What I feared was that it might become a custom—an unnecessary burden."
Gordon signalled an approaching car. "A burden? Mrs. Stuart, the burden of walking home by moonlight with the wrong woman is one which men generally manage to shift." ”

“ In times of depression individuals are thrust out who become a burden on the country all the rest of their lives, either by idleness, beggary or crime. It must not be forgotten that each of these at present costs the community a far greater sum than they would cost if provided with labour. ”

“ We must bear the infirmities of the weak.—Very tiresome is a continual touchiness in a neighbour, or the perpetual recurrence of the same faults in a pupil or child. But if by self-restraint and right treatment God should enable you to cure those faults, from how much shame and sorrow do you rescue them, from how much suffering yourself.
3. We must bear one another’s trials.—With one is the burden of poverty; with another it is pain or failing strength, the extinction of a great hope, or the loss of some precious faculty. A little thing will sometimes ease the pressure. ”

“ Placing the blame did not save the worker or his family from starvation. A great amount of hardship and suffering was caused in past generations by putting so much of the burden upon the hapless employee. ”

“ We are not justly used or fairly treated in being always poor and hard worked." Of course, all this is both sinful and unreasonable; neither does it in any manner serve to lighten their load; and yet they must go on, bending, staggering under the burden too heavy for them to bear, till they sink, utterly exhausted and worn out. ”

“ But while men are disputing about the agency which ought to remove the burden, it is lying sore upon those beneath it—it is crushing them to death! It is true that “private charity” has done something; according to the world’s standard, has done much. But, after all, the present emergency has been mocked rather than met, and day by day the crowd of sufferers is increasing, and the growing severity of the season is intensifying their suffering. ”

“ Many a poor creature, dis- couraged and heart-sick, as well as miserably poor of this world's goods, could testify to the ministration to both bodily and spiritual needs; and scores in want of employment or perhaps unfitted to their present employment could tell of a changed burden, that from its lightness and because it better fitted their shoulders seemed no burden at all. ”

“ “It has been well said that no man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when to-morrow’s burden is added to the burden of to-day, that the weight is more than a man can bear. ”

“ What had the world to offer her but new torment and new misery? But the sea—the blue dark sea was wide, and cold, and deep, and its waves promised her in insidious tones to relieve her at once of the rage of her fever, and of the burden of her life. Selene did not pause, did not reflect; she remembered neither the children whom she had so long cared for as a mother, nor her father, whose comfort and support she was—vague voices in her brain seemed to be whispering to her that the world was evil and cruel, and the abode of all the torment and care that gnawed at her heart. ”

“ Now is a bearable burden. What buckles the back is the added weight of the past's mistakes and the future's fears. ”

“ Since here, for brutal courage far renown’d, I live an idle burden to the ground, (Others in council famed for nobler skill, More useful to preserve, than I to kill,) Let me—But oh! ”

“ no word of commiseration can make a burden feel one feather's weight lighter to the slave who must carry it. ”

“ She did not suspect that the Abbess, even there, was hovering above the house, herself estimating the stresses and watching for the moment when a burden harms and not strengthens. ”

“ The sovereign people determines life and death and happiness under conditions where experience and experiment alike show thought to be most difficult. "The intolerable burden of thought" is a burden when the conditions make it burdensome. ”

“ Do you wish to know what is taking place?—Sometimes, when endurance is at an end and strength exhausted, bending beneath the weight of misery, without shoes, without bread, without clothing, without a shirt, consumed by fever, devoured by vermin, poor artisans torn from their workshops, poor husbandmen forcibly taken from the plough, weeping for a wife, a mother, children, a family widowed or orphaned, also without bread and perhaps without shelter, overdone, ill, dying, despairing,—some of these wretched beings succumb, and consent to "ask for pardon!" ”

“ Now, can one come in contact incessantly night and day with all this distress, all these misfortunes, and this poverty, without having about one's own person a little of that misery, like the dust of labor? ”

“ I have never known what I fear many of you unfortunately have known, actual poverty—the pain of to-day's hunger and cold, and the fear of to-morrow's, or the dread of a master's voice, or the hopeless despair of unemployment. I have, I truly believe, lived as happy a life as anyone could wish to live, save for the misery of seeing so much cruel wrong and needless suffering around me. ”

“ Ah, what sad havoc do sickness and pain make of the poor body; but sadder still when they trample on the bright inhabitant within, and make it a slave to tremble at their bidding! "Bring chains—bring chains," cries the fell destroyer; and ere she has time to rally her forces around her, or even think of resistance, the poor Soul has become a helpless captive, and Disease wears a smile of triumph upon her ghastly cheek, and again lifts up her voice to shout "victory." ”

“ That degree of poverty which involves in it the inability to procure the necessaries of life without the charitable assistance of the Public, is, doubtless, the heaviest of all misfortunes; as it not only brings along with it the greatest physical evils, pain,—and disease, but is attended by the most mortifying humiliation, and hopeless despondency. ”

“ But meanwhile it has taught the poor to look to it in all contingencies, and to live from hand to mouth, and when the crisis comes, as come it must, their suffering is ten times more acute because they have no reserves to fall back upon. ”

“ And since, when I returned to the fortress, not one of my followers accompanied me (for I was penniless) I began to ponder deeply.
"A curse, a curse on a life of poverty! There is sound sense in the verse:
Even relatives are sure
Scornfully to treat the poor;
Pride is docked, and virtue's moon
Loses luster, waning soon;
Friends that were, disgusted fly;
Sorrows breed and multiply;
Comes the imputation then
Of the sins of other men.
When man is crushed by poverty
And stricken down by fate,
His best of friends become his foes,
And tried affection, hate. ”