Notes of a sermon preached in Union Church on Sunday morning, January 3, by the Rev, C. E. Dar. went, St, Luke XXI. 34. "Bat take heed to yourselves lest haply your wearrs be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness and cares of this life."
To many who read this so chapter, with its lurid deseripy of the last things, of wars and and such like dire portents, seem as if our bord had yoked sins of the deepest dye, felting and dr "with a sin id, that it hardly strikes the ma of us asa really heinous -in at all- overcarefulness and We consider that that is a mi tune, an undesirable state of mind, but not so bad as But here it is, Jesus warns us against it in this most solemn address that still strikes the heart with Be not overcharged with cares of this life." Now, this is the first Sunday of a New Year, a year more fraught with tremendous pos sibilities than any year we have ever known. Tt is thus evitable that our sind ly a prey to great anxieties; as to our countries, as to dear friends who may be involved in the war: for there are probably few who have not someone affected: ax to business, our very living; and as to the great which we never cease to thi about, the cause of Christ. in the arid! What more natural than that we are all anxious, burdened, full of care, attempting, as writers in the papers do, to forcerist the fu ture, and forestall damage to our selves by our prescience! To be aux ious is all so natural: It is specially so this y ult it is true in a mei sure of all years and all life. wonder, we vex ourselves, we strain our imagination to see into the future. This age in which we live is notorious for its anxieties. The well known Rev. D. Crawford—the author of "Thinking Black" says that on his return home from twenty-three years in Africa, the thing that struck him most was the anxious look, or the want of happiness on the faces of the majority of people he met on the streets. I presume we shall agree that there is a great deal of anxiety in human life today. The proof of it is the increase of lunacy, and the numbers of people who break down' various ways, with no definite disease, but just what it is called 'a general breakdown.'
What then does the Saviour, who knew human life, and who bore in hie heart the tremendous. ces-Ponsibility of saving the world, say about this careworn spirit of today? He treats it most seriously, Placing it here among sins ike drunkenness which shuts a man out from the kingdom of heaven. Yet he shews no sympathy to those who treat the future lightly, to the people who are not disturbed, just because they do not think about it at all. Neither can the people who make small isms over Christians insuring, insinuating that they have no faith in God. His star ment of -the case is the supreme proof of the marvellous balance of the mind of the Saviour. He is against rreese of care—against overdriven and foolish worked-up care, that does no good at all. chat "Jonly paralyzes the faculties, Take heed lest haply. your hearts be orercbarged with surfering and kenness and cares of this life, does not say that we have aot ent, of to drink, and npt to be hut, "take heed that ye he not overcharge! with gluttony, drinking and anxiety, We have not to arereat,—oner-drink and be river-careful, and overanxious. The word he uses means being weighted down, carrying a pack that is ridiculously beyond our strength. This command, that he gives, while he is conjuring up x picture of the final events of our world's tragic history, is a warning as to the way we are to take the wars, the earthquakes and famines that presage His coming, when they do arrive. We have to think about them, and dwell on'them, and shay our life in view of such tremendon eventualities: but there is a wrong and a right way of looking forward to these events that herald His coming. There is the paralyze ing way, the way of fear and anxthat makes us incapable of a proper fulfilment of our duties now and there is the way of right and sane calm forward looking like His own, the way of care that is not be. ing rer-anxious care.
Be not orer-charged."" O how wise! There is no preterition of Stoic impassiveness, the stony kind; no indifference to trouble: there 's justification for those who fight ity by denying that there is such a thing as care at all. There is no foolish excess of calmness, no heartless freedom from a prover care. What Jesus says is: "Be not overcharged." What a great word that it! Overcharged! Being charged is natural and proper and useful, but not being orer-charged. How simple is the principle! What library of wisdom Jesus packs into a word. An engine can drive the machinery it has been given it to drive if worked up ito ite limit; if it has 70 horse-power and you to 90 there will be trouble.
ise engineer orer-drives his en-'And when we come to living Rip Teewpafinlkethis wonderful
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.