Thy kingdom should delay to come ?
2. As we are fellow-workers with God let us work in harmony with God and by God's method.
(1) It behoves us to work in harmony with Him. Co-opera- tion with God is a question of knowing, of being conscious of it. It is impossible to divorce ourselves from God. In spite of us He will realize His will in us. He cannot overcome our will, but even through our opposing will He will accomplish His purpose. But we may be willing fellow-workers. It is the difference between opposition to God's will, together with the shamefaced confession that we cannot help doing His work, and willing co-operation with His will, together with the consciousness of being recognized by Him as fellow-workers.
^[ Says Euskin, " You will find it needful to live, if it be with success, according to God's Law ; and the first uttered article in it is, ' In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread.' " 1
U The conduct of life becomes like the experience of the brave Nansen in his attempt to reach the Pole. Men had struggled northward through weary days from the Greenland side, only to find at the end of each day's march that they had been swept farther south by a current which moved the whole pack of ice
1 E. T. Cook, The Life of Euskin, ii. 329.
i CORINTHIANS m. 9 83
beneath their feet. Then the Norwegian explorer made himself a labourer together with God, through the Siberian approach, and gave himself to the mighty sweep of the polar current, so that the law which he had discovered bore him towards the realization of his dream. It is the same with every honest desire to do right. The current of God's laws is under you ; the movement of things is with you ; you are a labourer together with God.
(2) If we are working in willing co-operation with God, we will be content to work by God's method. And if we wish to know what God's method is, we have but to look at Jesus Christ. Now we know that the method of God for Jesus Christ involved self-sacrifice, pain, weariness, utter self-oblivious devotion, as well as gentleness, tenderness, infinite pity, and love running over. If we felt that side by side with us, like two sailors hauling on one rope, " the Servant of the Lord " was toiling, would it not burn up all our selfishness, and light up all our indifference, and make us spend ourselves in His service ?
]f Men's lives bear the aspects of deserts and wildernesses, and God wants them to be as beautiful as the Garden of Eden — aye, more beautiful. The "paradise of God" in the book of Eevelation is a far more lovely garden than the Garden of Eden ; the first was the garden of innocence, the latter is the garden of holiness. Man fell from innocence; he may attain unto the garden of holiness ; but the attainment is made possible by the awful happenings in the Garden of Gethsemane. Now if we are to be fellow-workers in creating the garden of holiness we too must know something of the agonies of Gethsemane. We must know " the fellowship of his sufferings." We can do nothing of this high gardening except through the ministry of sacrificial blood. When we are willing to bleed, in order that other lives may be beautiful, we shall be sharing the travail of the whole creation. It is no use playing at spiritual gardening ; it is a thing of agony and bloody sweat.1
Whose is the speech That moves the voices of this lonely beech ? Out of the long West did this wild wind come — Oh strong and silent ! And the tree was dumb,
Eeady and dumb until The dumb gale struck it on the darkened hill.
1 J. H. Jowett.
84 GOD'S FELLOW-WORKERS
Two inomories, Two powers, two promises, two silences Closed in this cry, closed in these thousand leaves Articulate. This sudden hour retrieves
The purpose of the past, Separate, apart — embraced, embraced at last.
"Whose is the word? Is it I that spake? Is it thou? Is it I that heard?" " Thine earth was solitary ; yet I found thee ! " "Thy sky was pathless, but I caught, I bound thee,
Thou visitant divine." "0 thou my Voice, the word was thine." "Was thine."1
3. The fact that our work is conjoined with the Divine is the root of motive. It ought ever to be an adequate inspiration to us that the work is God's, and that He has called us into His fellow- ship. Is not the motive that stirs in His heart and moves His stupendous activities without ceasing sufficient for us ? What is good enough to engage the majestic energies of God is surely good enough for us. Does the work that beseems His matchless sovereignty need commendation from us, or the high seal of our rank and prestige ? Into the work He touches with His sceptred hand on the one side, and which we are permitted to touch with our feeble hands of flesh on the other, He reflects all the glory of His attributes.
TJ It is said that when Phidias was preparing the figures for the Acropolis, the work was perfect even in the smallest details, although these figures were to stand upon a background so high that nobody could see them. A sculptor was working at the hair of one of them with minute fidelity, when some one said to him, " What is the use of that expenditure of time and labour ? Nobody will ever see your work." The workman replied, " Yes, the gods will see it ! "