THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN LIFE.
By H. W. S.
As to what it is—it is simply letting the Lord carry our burdens and manage our affairs, instead of trying to do it ourselves. Most Christians are like a man who was toiling along the road bending under a heavy burden, when a wagon overtook him, and the driver kindly offered to help him on his journey. He joyfully accepted the offer; but when seated continued to bend beneath his burden, which he still kept on his shoulder. "Why do you not lay down your burden?" asked the kind-hearted driver. "Oh!" replied the man, "I feel that it is almost too much to ask you to carry me, and I could not think of letting you carry my burden too." And so Christians, who have given themselves into the care and keeping of the Lord Jesus, still continue to bend beneath the weight of their burden, and often go weary and heavy laden through the whole length of their journey. I knew a lady who had a very heavy burden. It took away her sleep and her appetite, and there was danger of her health breaking down under it. One day, when it seemed especially heavy, she noticed lying on the table near her a little tract called "Hannah's Faith." Attracted by the name, she picked it up and began to read it, little knowing, however, that it was to create a revolution in her whole experience. The story was of a poor woman who had been carried triumphantly through a life of unusual sorrow. She was giving the history of her life to a kind visitor on one occasion; and at the close the visitor said, feelingly, "O Hannah! I do not see how you could bear so much sorrow." "I did not bear it," was the quick reply, "the Lord bore it for me." "Yes," said the visitor, "that is the right way. We must take our troubles to the Lord." "Yes," replied Hannah, "but we must do more than that; we must leave them there." Most people," she continued, "take their burdens to Him, but they bring them away with them again, and are just as worried and unhappy as ever. But I take mine and I leave them with him, and come away and forget them. And if they come back, I take them again; and I do this over and over, until at last I just forget I have any troubles, and am at perfect rest." My friend was very much struck with this plan, and resolved to try it. The circumstances of her life she could not alter; but she took them to the Lord, and handed them over into his management, and then she believed that he took them, and she left all the responsibility and the worry and anxiety with him. As often as they returned, she took them back; and the result was that, although the circumstances remained unchanged, her soul was kept in perfect peace in the midst of them. She felt that she had found out a blessed secret; and from that time she never again tried to carry one of her own burdens, nor to manage anything for herself.—H. W. S.