Christ, by Thine own darkened hour Live within my heart and brain! Let my hands not slip the rein.
Ah, how long ago it is
Since a comrade rode with me ! Now a moment let me see
1 Alice Meyuell.
i CORINTHIANS in. 9 85
Thyself, lonely in the dark, Perfect, without wound or mark.1
4. The fact that the work is God's is our strong encourage- ment. He who works for the redemption of men from the deepest evil of their life will not long want the sign that God works. The sign is so universal that we have perhaps ceased to call it a sign.
Tf A short time ago I saw a well-kept flower-garden blooming in the little angle of ground formed at the junction of two railway lines. The helpless flowers were thriving there in spite of the terrible forces that came so near them on every side. If you were to put an untaught savage inside the garden hedge and let him hear the screaming engines and see the files of carriages or the trucks laden with coal, timber, and iron converging towards this fairy oasis, he would be ready to say, " These beautiful things will be torn to shreds in a moment." But behind the garden fences there are the lines of strong, faithful steel keeping each engine and carriage and truck in its appointed place, and though the air vibrates with destructive force, and pansy, primrose, and geranium live in a world of tremors, not a silken filament is snapped, and not a petal falls untimely to the earth. In the very angle of these forces the frailest life is unharmed. So with the fine spiritual husbandries that foster faith in the souls around us. The air hurtles with fierce hostilities. The mechanisms of diabolic temptation encroach on every side upon our work. Public-house, gaming-club, and ill-ordered home, threaten disasters of which we do not like to think. The air quivers with anger of demons. Yet the work is God's, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. In the very angle of these demoniac forces the work shall thrive, for the hidden lines of His protecting power are round about it.2
Just where you stand in the conflict,
There is your place ! Just where you think you are useless,
Hide not your face ! God placed you there for a purpose,
Whate'er it be; Think you He has chosen you for it:
Work loyally.
1 Padraic Colum. a T. G. Selby.
S6 GODS FELLOW-WORKERS
Gird on your armour! be faithful
At toil or rest, Whiche'er it be, never doubting
God's way is best. Out in the fight, or on picket,
Stand firm and true; This is the work which your Master
Gives you to do.
5. The fact that we are linked with God in His service is our pledge of victory. If God works with us, success is sure. If God is doing this work, then God's strength, God's skill, God's know- ledge are employed upon it. We are no longer discouraged and enfeebled by the sense of our own incapacity, our own ignorance and inexperience, our own faint hearts and feeble hands. There is beside us an inexhaustible fountain of ability, from which we can draw. It is God's work. Therefore it must be triumphant. There is no place for misgiving or despondency. No sense of personal frailty, no calculation of opposing odds, no menaces of approaching evil, no symptoms of immediate failure — none of these can appal us. God's work is eternal. Nothing can prevail against it. There may be temporary defeats, partial fallings back. Men may come and men may go. But what then ? " All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away; but the word of the Lord endureth for ever."
H A noble cause cannot of itself make a man noble. We must despair of growing great, unless we can feel that we are given to the cause to work for it, and not it to work for us. In the old torch races of Pan, the rule was that each runner should hold his torch as long as it kept its light, but when he flagged he must hand it to another who stood ready girded to follow up the race. And so it must be with us. We must recognize the great end of all this panting, and running, and toiling, not that you or I should reach the goal, and be rich or honoured in men's mouths, but that the torch of truth that was put into our hands when we started should reach the people at the end all alight with truth as when we took it. Let it be our hands, if we can, that bring it there, and then the honour shall be ours ; but that must not be our end, and when we see it sinking and going out, let no petty conceit or unfledged pride keep us from giving it to a fresher and stronger man, with a hearty Godspeed to run the
i CORINTHIANS in. 9 87
next stage of the same great journey. Thus we win a broadness, and deepness, and fulness of character that sinks all little human ventures like the sea.1