i CORINTHIANS in. 9 71
and there about the edifice, but Eobert the builder — or at least the Master of building, cut his on no stone of it.1
We are Fellow-workers with One Another.
The men who had ministered at Corinth, and around whose names factions were forming, differed in their gifts. St. Paul was the wisest master-builder who dealt with massive fundamentals. The elaboration of his artistic successors would not have counted for much without Pauline teaching for corner and foundation- stone. Some people would have liked to see more paint, gilding, embellishment on his granite. The task of Apollos was chiefly one of garniture, useful and fitted to attract, but vain without the bulwark of well-tested logic behind and beneath it. Gifts are diverse no less than the crowns which shall recompense the faithful use of gifts, but the work is one.
Tf Convenience, that admirable branch system from the main line of self-interest, makes us all fellow-helpers in spite of adverse resolutions. It is probable that no speculative or theological hatred would be ultimately strong enough to resist the persuasive power of convenience: that a latitudinarian baker, whose bread was honourably free from alum, would command the custom of any dyspeptic Puseyite; that an Arminian with the toothache would prefer a skilful Calvinistic dentist to a bungler stanch against the doctrines of Election and Final Perseverance, who would be likely to break the tooth in his head; and that a Plymouth Brother, who had a well-furnished grocery shop in a favourable vicinage, would occasionally have the pleasure of furnishing sugar or vinegar to orthodox families that found themselves unexpectedly "out of" these indispensable commodities.2
If There was a story that when the Anglo- Catholic Library was being discussed, Mr. Keble said to Dr. Moberly, " Well, you shall undertake the Anglo part and I the Catholic, and we will fight over the hyphen." 3
(1) In the building of Solomon's Temple there were counted out by the king seventy thousand men for the sole purpose of
1 Ruskin, The Bible of Amiens {Works, xxxiii. 131).
2 George Eliot, Janet's Repentance.
3 C. A. E. Moberly, Dulce Domum, 82.
72 GOD'S FELLOW-WORKERS
bearing burdens. No doubt this grew irksome to these men, and they would many a time wish for some other work on the structure, and perhaps envy the men who were skilful to work in gold, and in silver, in brass, in iron, in purple, in blue, and in crimson. But without them the Temple could never have been built. Their work was absolutely essential. And so it seems that in the building of the spiritual temple, many have been counted out by the king just to bear burdens. Tedious and wearisome as their lots are, yet nothing they do that makes for spiritual growth, purity of life, or cleanness of soul, can fail to subserve God's great purpose of erecting a world-wide spiritual temple upon this sin-stained world.
If There was a sharp discussion the other day in a gentleman's kitchen. One speaker said to another, " I am ashamed of you ; we ought not to be in the same house together ; you are common and vulgar-looking, besides being scratched and chipped all over. Look at me ; there is not a flaw upon all my surface ; my beauty is admired ; my place in the house is a place of honour." The other speaker was not boisterous, there was no resentment in the tone of the reply: "It is true that you are beautiful, and that I am very common, but that is not the only difference between us. See how you are cared for ; you are protected by a glass shade ; you are dusted with a brush made of the softest feathers; everybody in approaching you is warned of your delicacy. It is very different with me\ whenever water is wanted I am taken to the well; when servants are done with me they almost fling me down ; I am used for all kinds of work ; and there never was a scullery-maid in the house who did not think herself good enough to speak of me with contempt." It is so with men. Some of us live under glass shades ; others of us are as vessels in common wear ; but we could not change places ; each must do his proper work, and each will have his appropriate reward.1
Is it the work that makes life great and true?
Or the true soul that, working as it can, Does faithfully the task it has to do,
And keepeth faith alike with God and man ?
Ah ! well ; the work is something ; the same gold Or brass is fashioned now into a coin,
Now into fairest chalice that shall hold To panting lips the sacramental wine: 1 J. Parker.
i CORINTHIANS in. 9 73
Here the same marble forms a cattle-trough
For brutes by the wayside to quench their thirst,
And there a god emerges from the rough
Unshapely block — yet they were twins at first.
One pool of metal in the melting pot A sordid, or a sacred thought inspires;
And of twin marbles from the quarry brought One serves the earth, one glows with altar-fires.
There's something in high purpose of the soul
To do the highest service to its kind ; There's something in the art that can unroll