to keep what we have already attained, if we are to make our own lives sweet and beautiful, if we are to be invested with any increase of capacity, or led to any higher heights of nobleness and Christlikeness, we must copy, and make a conscious effort to copy, these two things, which marked the Apostle’s estimate of himself—­a distinct recognition that we are only reservoirs and nothing more—­’What hast thou that thou hast not received?  Why then dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it?’—­and a humble waiving aside of the attempt to determine what it is that we are.  For however clearly a man may know his own powers and achievements, it is hard for him to estimate the relations of these to his whole character.

So, dear brethren, although it is a very homely piece of advice, and may seem to be beneath the so-called dignity of the pulpit, let me venture just to remind you that self-conceit is no disease peculiar to the ten-talented people, but is quite as rife, if not a good deal rifer, among those with one talent.  They are very humble when it comes to work, and are quite contented to wrap the one talent up in a napkin then; but when it comes to self-assertion, or what they expect to receive of recognition from others, they need to be reminded quite as much as their betters in endowment—­’By the grace of God I am what I am.’

III.  And so, lastly, one word about the responsibility for our co-operation with the grace, in order to the accomplishment of its results.

‘The grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain,’ says Paul.  ’Not I, but the grace of God which was with me, and so I laboured more abundantly than they all.’  That is to say, God in His giving love; Christ with His ever out-flowing Spirit, move round our hearts, and desire to enter.  But the grace, the love, the gifts of the love may all be put away by our unfaithfulness, by our non-receptivity, by our misuse, and by our negligence.  Paul yielded himself to the grace that was brought to work upon him.  Have you yielded yourselves?

Paul said, ‘By the grace of God I am what I am.’  He could not have said that, could he, if he had known that the most part of what he was was dead against God’s will and purpose?  Has God anything to do with making you what you are, or has it been the devil that has had the greater share in it?  This man, because he knew that he had submitted himself to the often painful, searching, crucifying, self-restraining and stimulating influences of the Gospel and Spirit of Christ, could say, ’God’s grace has made me what I am, and I helped Him to make me.’  And can you say anything like that?

Take your life.  In how many of its deeds has there been present the consciousness of God and His love?  Take your character.  How much of it has been shot through and through, so to speak, by the fiery darts of that cleansing, warming, consuming grace of God?  Are you daily being baptized in that Spirit, searched by that Spirit, condemned by that grace?  Is it the grace of God, or nature and self and the world and the flesh that have made you what you are?