they drop the first, and have no more care about him, because their theme is not men and their doings, but God's doings through men. On us, and in us, and by us, and for us, if we are His servants, Jesus Christ is working all through the ages. He is the Lord of Providence, He is the King of history, in His hand is the book with the seven seals; He sends His Spirit, and where His Spirit is He is; and what His Spirit does He does. And thus He continues to teach and to work from His throne in the heavens. He continues to teach, not by the communication of new truth. That is done. The volume of revelation is complete. The last word of the Divine utterances hath been spoken, until that final word which shall end Time and crumble the earth. But the application of the completed Revelation, the unfolding of all that is wrapped in germ in it; the growing of the seed into a tree, the realization more completely by individuals and communities of the principles and truths which Jesus Christ has brought us by His life and His death-that is the work that is going on to-day, and that will go on till the end of the world. For the old Puritan belief is true, though the modern rationalistic mutilations of it are false, "God hath more light yet to break forth "--and our modern men stop there. But what the sturdy old Puritan said was, "more light yet to break forth from His holy Word." Jesus Christ teaches the agesthrough the lessons of providence, and the communication of His Spirit to His Church-to understand what He gave the world when He was here. In like manner He works. The foundation is laid the healing medicine is prepared, the cleansing element is cast into the mass of humanity; what remains is the application and appropriation, and incorporation in conduct, of the redeeming powers that Jesus Christ has brought. And that work is going on, and will go on, till the end. Now these truths of our Lord's continuous activity in teaching and working from heaven may yield us some not unimportant lessons. What a depth and warmth and reality the thoughts give to the Christian's relation to Jesus Christ! We have to look back to that Cross as the foundation of all our hope. Yes! But we have to think, not only of a Christ who did something for us long ago in the past, and there an end, but of a Christ who to-day lives and reigns, to do and to teach according to our necessities. What sweetness and sacredness such thoughts impart to all external events, which we may regard as being the operation of His love, and moved by the hands that were nailed to the cross for us, and now hold the sceptre of the universe for the blessing of mankind! What a fountain of hope they open in estimating future probabilities of victory for truth and goodness! The forces of good and evil in the world seem very disproportionate, but we forget too often to take Christ into account. It is not we that have to fight against evil, we are but at the best the sword which Christ wields, and all the power is in the hand that wields it. Great men die, good men die: Jesus Christ is not dead. Paul was martyred. He lives; He is the anchor of our hope. We see miseries and mysteries enough, God knows. The prospects of all good causes seem often clouded and dark. The world has an awful power of putting drags upon all chariots that bear blessings, and of turning to evil every good. You cannot diffuse education, but you diffuse the taste for rubbish, and something worse, in the shape of books. No good thing but has its shadow of evil attendant upon it. And if we had only to estimate by visible or human forces we might well sit down and wrap ourselves in the sackcloth of pessimism. "We see not yet all things put under Him"; but we see Jesus crowned with glory and honour, and the vision that cheered the first martyr-of Christ standing at the right hand of God-is the rebuke of every fear and every gloomy anticipation for ourselves or for the world. What lessons of lowliness and of diligence it gives us! The jangling people at Corinth fought about whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas were the man to lead the Church, and the experience has been repeated over and over again. "Who is Paul? Who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man. Be not puffed up one against another. Be not wise in your own conceits." You are only a tool, only a pawn in the hand of the great player. If you have anything, it is because you get it from Him. See that you use it, and do not brag about it. Jesus Christ is the Worker, the only Worker; the Teacher, the only Teacher. All our wisdom is derived, all our light is enkindled. We are but the reeds through which His breath makes music. And shall the axe boast itself either against, or apart from, Him that heweth therewith? III. Lastly, we note the incompleteness of each man's share in the great work, As I said, the book which is to tell the story of Christ's continuous work from Heaven must stop abruptly. There is no help for it. If it were a history of Paul it would need to be wound up to an end and a selvage put to it, but as it is the history of Christ's working, the web is not half finished, and the shuttle stops in the middle of a cast. The book must be incomplete, because the work of which it is the record does not end, until He shall have delivered up the Kingdom to the Father, and God shall be all in all. So the work of each one is but a fragment of that great work. Every man inherits unfinished tasks from his predecessors, and leaves unfinished tasks to his successors. It is, as it used to be in the middle ages, when the men that dug the foundations, or laid the first courses of some great cathedral, were dead, long generations before the gilded cross was set on the apex of the needle-spire, and the glowing glass filled in to the painted windows. Enough for us, if we are represented, though by but one stone in one of the courses of the great building. Luke has left plenty of blank paper at the end of his second treatise, on which he meant that succeeding generations should write their partial contributions to the completed work. Dear friends, let us see that we write our little line, as monks in their monasteries used to keep the chronicle of the house, on which scribe after scribe toiled at his illuminated letters with loving patience for a little while, and then handed the pen from dying hands to another. What does it matter though we drop, having done but a fragment? Christ gathers up the fragments into His completed |