CHAPTER XII.
For every man shall bear his own burden .-- Gal.

vi.

5.
"BRETHREN! every man has his burden.

If God designed our lives to end at the grave, may we not believe that He would have freed an existence so brief from the cares and sorrows to which, since the beginning of the world, mankind has been subjected?
Suppose that I am a kind father, and have a child whom I dearly love, but I know by a divine revelation that he will die at the age of eight years, surely I should not vex his infancy by needless preparations for the duties of life?
If I am a rich man, I should not send him from the caresses of his mother to the stern discipline of school.

If I am a poor man, I should not take him with me to hedge and dig, to scorch in the sun, to freeze in the winter's cold: why inflict hardships on his childhood for the purpose of fitting him for manhood, when I know that he is doomed not to grow into man?
But if, on the other hand, I believe my child is reserved for a more durable existence, then should I not, out of the very love I bear to him, prepare his childhood for the struggle of life, according to that station in which he is born, giving many a toil, many a pain, to the infant, in order to rear and strengthen him for his duties as man?
So it is with our Father that is in heaven.