Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1875 — The Crosses Christians Bear. [ARTICLE]

The Crosses Christians Bear.

Some do not fear personal danger so much a 3 responsibility for others. To be a decided Christian is to be a marked man, whose errors are a scandal to tha weak, a burden lo the tender, and an excuse to the wicked. But the same burden is upon the shoulders of every living nfan; and it only presses specially upon the Christian because he has a second and deeper life to live. There is no little child whose behavior does not make 111-be-lmved children either ashamed or shamefless. There is no young man or maiden whose very look lias not an effect upon the words and acts of some comrade, since God has allowed the cruel frost of utter isolation to close over .no human heart. The merchant influences the morality of trade; the lonely student cannot deepen the flood of thought without also cleansing'or 1 defiling it. To dread responsibility is to dread life. It'is only a statue that sets no example to creatures who have hands which can help or hinder, and eyes which can flash with rage or soften into sympathy. You will not be a Christian because you shrink trom danger or trom responsibility? Then why have you submitted for so many years to be alive ? To be a Christian is to labor. A cross has to be borne, a race has to be run, there are unearthly enemies with whom to wrestle, therefore, men shrink from the din of battle and the dust of pilgrimage. But yet the sap and salt, the freshness ancl the vigor of our daily life would be lost if there were no contests, no campaigns, no victories. What names are great in history? whose monuments are sacred? whose birthplaces are venerated ? Those which belonged to men who scorned delights and lived laborious days; soldiers, who slept on the ground and hungered and bled; writers, who built the, lofty line in solitary days and sleepless nights, with painful thought and deep experience; reformers, who stood alone against the world; martyrs, whom they burned. These are the men whose lives we applaud. But even the most ignoble ancl dishonorable life is full of labor and vexation. To refuse all toil is to groan under the hatred of strangers and the reproaches of kinsc men; to indulge every appetite is to writhe under & hundred diseases. The reveler of to-night aches and frets to-morrow. Indolence never knows the joy of bounding pulses and a well-braced system. No man is so heavily laden as he who bears no cross; none so miserable as the man of pleasure. —Christian Advocate.