loyalty to Jesus, and partly because of the responsibility which the very constitution of society lays upon every one of us, to diffuse what he possesses, and to be a distributing agent for the life that he himself enjoys.  Brethren! there is no possibility of Christian men or women being fully faithful to the Saviour, unless they recognise that the duty of being a fellow-labourer with God inevitably follows on being a possessor of Christ’s salvation; and that no Apostle, no official, no minister, no missionary, has any more necessity laid upon him to preach the Gospel, nor pulls down any heavier woe on himself if he is unfaithful, than has and does each one of Christ’s servants.

So ‘we are fellow-labourers with God.’  Alas! alas! how poorly the average Christian realises—­I do not say discharges, but realises—­that obligation!  Brethren, I do not wish to find fault, but I do beseech you to ask yourselves whether, if you are Christians, you are doing anything the least like what my text contemplates as the duty of all Christians.

May I say a word or two with regard to another aspect of this solemn call?  Does not the thought of working along with God prescribe for us the sort of work that we ought to do?  We ought to work in God’s fashion, and if we wish to know what God’s fashion is, we have but to look at Jesus Christ.  We ought to work in Jesus Christ’s fashion.  We all know what that involved of self-sacrifice, of pain, of weariness, of utter self-oblivious devotion, of gentleness, of tenderness, of infinite pity, of love running over.  ’The master’s eye makes a good servant.’  The Master’s hand working along with the servant ought to make the servant work after the Master’s fashion.  ’As My Father hath sent Me, so send I you.’  If we felt that side by side with us, like two sailors hauling on one rope, ‘the Servant of the Lord’ was toiling, do you not think it would burn up all our selfishness, and light up all our indifference, and make us spend ourselves in His service?  A fellow-labourer with God will surely never be lazy and selfish.  Thus my text has in it, to begin with, a solemn call.

It suggests

II.  A signal honour.

Suppose a great painter, a Raphael or a Turner, taking a little boy that cleaned his brushes, and saying to him, ’Come into my studio, and I will let you do a bit of work upon my picture.’  Suppose an aspirant, an apprentice in any walk of life, honoured by being permitted to work along with some one who was recognised all over the world as being at the very top of that special profession.  Would it not be a feather in the boy’s cap all his life?  And would he not think it the greatest honour that ever had been done him that he was allowed to co-operate, in however inferior a fashion, with such an one?  Jesus Christ says to us, ’Come and work here side by side with Me,’ But Christian men, plenty of them, answer, ’It is a perpetual nuisance, this continual application for money! money! money!