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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
‘Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.’
Gal_6:2
I. Mutual help.—Nowhere are examples of ‘mutual help’ so numerous and striking and beautiful as are to be found in the lowest abysses of poverty. Ah! yes, we who live where want and suffering most abound can bear witness to the truth of this. Our people are not thrifty, but they are generous; they are self-forgetful, but they are mindful of one another when real trouble comes. They fail in many things, but they excel all classes of the community in this thing. Here is the strength of the poor: they do assist each other; they do share with each other; they do stand by each other in ways which are often sublime in their meaning and heroic in their measure. But this strength of the poor has its accompanying weakness, and that weakness is this: ‘the mutual aid’ which characterises the poor above every other class is not organised. It is chaotic. It works on no definite lines. It is not continuous. It is not disciplined and made to work for designed and continuously practical ends. And the result is that this magnificent force of ‘mutual aid’ among the poor, which, if properly organised, would of itself work out the social salvation of the poor, is largely unutilised and lost. The remarkable development of trades unions, of friendly societies, of benefit societies, of loan clubs, which have sprung into existence of late years, is a sufficient indication of what the poorer classes can accomplish if they will but turn their minds seriously and perseveringly to this great and urgently required work. It is a work which the whole nation is waiting to see done. It is work which can only be done by the poorer working classes themselves. It is a work which must be done before better housing conditions, more adequate means of living, improved social habits, and increased happiness can come to those who now suffer most from these evils. ‘Mutual help,’ which is ‘self-help’ multiplied, is the law of progress for all men, specially men who are low down the scale of material prosperity.
II. History nowhere tells us of a nation which has reached greatness and goodness without the uplifting force of religion.—And so we come to our second condition for the social plus the spiritual salvation of the suffering masses, viz. Christian conviction and Christian practice. There was a time when secular Socialists cried, ‘Down with religion’! we will have none of it.’ But that cry was not re-echoed by the general body of the poor. Their instinct was too strongly on the side of religion. They felt that, however much religious people and religious teachers had failed to come up to their own professed ideals, religion was still necessary for human life. And so secular Socialism is changing its tone about religion. But this service which religion can do for the suffering poor is one for which there need be no waiting for outside action. The poor can obtain it for themselves. They can help themselves in this matter just as truly and effectively as they can in the matter of ‘mutual aid.’ Indeed, if they do not make religion a personal matter, if they do not seek out Jesus Christ for themselves and have direct and daily communication with Him, neither religion nor churches nor Christian workers will bring them the saving they need, and which their pitiable conditions cry for. That famous utterance of Jesus Christ, ‘Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God,’ is a principle which applies to all human life, but specially to crushed and afflicted human life. A poor man needs the new birth, which comes from the Holy Spirit of God, more than any man. He needs it, not because he is a greater sinner than a man who is not poor, but because he needs more courage, more hope, more patience, more high thought and feeling, more contentment, more strength to endure his hard lot, than men who are socially better off than himself. But the poor man needs this ‘new birth,’ of which our Lord spoke, not merely that he may endure his lot, but also that he may improve his lot. In the early days of the Church the first Christians were mostly of the slave class. How did they become free and prosperous and powerful? The change was entirely due to the religion of Christ. It found them as slaves; it raised them to freedom, and to civil rights, and to prosperity. And the same result can be obtained in our crowded and poverty-stricken English cities, if only the poorer members of our communities will but recognise and lay hold of the spiritual and social salvation which is waiting for them in the Gospel of Christ. There lies their hope. There waits certain deliverance from their own human weakness and the crushing power of misfortune. Let the sufferers from cruelties of our modern civilisation turn their despairing souls to Him Who was the Carpenter of Nazareth, but who is now the Lord of Glory. Let them follow as He leads; let them do as He commands, and He will so transform them from weakness into might, from deadly despair into beautiful hope, from earth-meanness into God-like dignity, that life, instead of being, as it is now to the vast majority of them, a heavy burden, shall become a glorious privilege, and a blessed and blessing thing.
Rev. Canon Henry Lewis.