together by a 'for,'
these two sayings: 'Work out your own salvation'; 'It is God that
worketh in you.' So here he has been exhorting the Galatian Christians
to restore a fallen brother. That is one case to which the general
commandment, 'Bear ye one another's burdens,' is applicable.

I cannot here enter on the intervening verses by which he glides from
the one to the other of these two thoughts which I have coupled
together, but I may just point out in a word the outline of his course
of thought. 'Bear ye one another's burden,' says he; and then he thinks,
'What is it that keeps men from bearing each other's burdens?' Being
swallowed up with themselves, and especially being conceited about their
own strength and goodness. And so he goes on: 'If a man think himself to
be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.' And what is the
best cure for all these fancies inside us of how strong and good we are?
To look at our work with an impartial and rigid judgment. It is easy for
a man to plume himself on being good, and strong, and great; but let him
look at what he has done, and try that by a high standard, and that will
knock the conceit out of him. Or, if his work stands the test, then 'he
shall have rejoicing in himself, and not' by comparing himself with
other people. Two blacks do not make a white, and we are not to heighten
the lustre of our own whiteness by comparing it with our neighbour's
blackness. Take your act for what _it_ is worth, apart altogether from
what other people are. Do not say, 'God! I thank thee that I am not as
other men are . . . or even as this publican'; but look to yourself. There
is an occupation with self which is good, and is a help to brotherly
sympathy.

And so the Apostle has worked round, you see, to almost an opposite
thought from the one with which he started. 'Bear ye one another's
burdens.' Yes, but a man's work is his own and nobody else's, and a
man's character is his own and nobody else's, so 'every man shall bear
his own burden.' The statements are not contradictory. They complete
each other. They are the north and the south poles, and between them is
the rounded orb of the whole truth. So then, let me point out that:

I. There are burdens which can be shared, and there are burdens which
_cannot_.

Let us take the case from which the whole context has arisen. Paul was
exhorting the Galatians, as I explained, in reference to their duty to a
fallen brother; and he speak