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means peace and power. Necessity will then be but the iron band inside the golden crown.^
2. As Christ's followers, this necessity is ours. — " We must work." Christ associates His disciples with Himself in His Divine enterprise of mercy. They, too, are commissioned to " destroy the works of the devil," and the range of their activity must be co- extensive with their Lord's. Physical suffering, and all that makes for physical suffering — unjust conditions of living, insanitary dwellings, inadequate and misdirected education, harsh and unequal laws, oppressive social conventions — all the perennial springs of human misery and disgrace are within the sphere of that redemptive mission which was Christ's in Palestine nearly two millenniums ago, and is Christ's still, wherever His true disciples are found. Has He not identified Himself with them, clothing them with the authority of His own person ? " He that heareth you heareth me ; and he that rejecteth you rejecteth me." " We must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day." The exemplary worth of Christ's conduct follows from this identity of His mission with ours, and the abiding importance of the Gospel but reflects the conviction of men that in the life therein recorded they can learn their own practical obligations.
^ The work which Christ appeals to us to do is not left to our single-handed weakness or timidity. We are sustained by the example and the co-operation of a goodly fellowship, the goodliest and mightiest fellowship that ever banded together to cheer a fainting soul ; no less a fellowship than God and Christ and all things. " For my Father worketh even until now," said Jesus — no night for Him — " and I work," and " all things," said His Apostle, " work together." Was ever band of workers like this : God, His Son, and all His universe, working for ever, working together, for good? Should the thought of that magnificent, harmonious fellowship, whose work is from everlasting to ever- lasting, marching triumphantly on through the generations, not brace the weakest will, strengthen the faintest heart, nerve the slackest hands of men whose day at the longest is short and rounded with a sleep ? So Christ's appeal is charged with all the forces of heaven and of earth, when He says, " We " — not I, as the Authorized Version has it — " we must work the works of him that sent me." We — for He is not ashamed to call us brethren ; and we. His brethren, must work. The Divine necessity lies upon
* M. D. Babcock, Thoughts/or Every -Day Living, 40.
414 A TIME TO WORK
men whose hearts can be touched by an appeal of Christ, and by the weird power of the night that is coming to bring to an end all the work of the day, be it never so faithful and never so earnest.^
3. God has appointed a work for each and all — ^Vain are the complaints so often made, that we have no distinct work in life appointed for us ; that we stand idle because we have not been called into the vineyard to labour. God has made duties for us, and placed us in the midst of them, just as He has made light for the eyes, and air for us to breathe. There is not an action of our life that may not become an act of worship, if it is consecrated by the love of God in the heart of the doer. But the common round of our common daily life is full of occasions of Christian duty. Who is he that stands idle because he is not hired ? One it must be who can find neither poverty, nor ignorance, nor wickedness at his hand ; who cannot influence one person by the Christian tone of his own life ; who cannot sweeten the daily life of his home with kindness ; who never comes near a sinner rushing headlong to his ruin ; who cannot even find a child to encourage in struggling with an evil temper, or a stricken heart to be consoled by a word of sympathy.
^ In the summer vacation of 1856 I remained behind for a few days. A message came from Eoyston that there was a German woman dying there who could not speak English, and was a Catholic. They asked if anybody could go to her from the College. Dr. Vaughan, who spoke German, at once volunteered to go. He asked me to go with him, and I drove him to Eoyston, which was thirteen miles from the College. In was in the month of July, and I remember it was a very hot drive. He found the poor woman alive, heard her confession, and gave her the Last Sacraments. I believe she died the next day. Some forty years afterwards, on my recalling this to his memory, he said, " Ah yes ; I remember it well, and I have often quoted it as an instance that we never know how anything we learn may be turned to God's account. He has His own design in prompting us to acquire, say, a language, and I have often cited this example of my visit to that poor German woman as an illustration of this, for it was the only occasion in my whole life that I ever had any practical need of the German language. I have no doubt that God inspired me to study German for the sake of that poor woman's salvation." *