III.  Still further, here is encouragement for despondent and timid Christians.

Jesus Christ is not going to leave you half way across the bog.  That is not His manner of guiding us.  He began; He will finish.  Remember the words of Paul which catch up this same thought:  ’Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perfect the same until the day of Jesus Christ.’  Brethren! if the seed of the kingdom is in our hearts, though it be but as a grain of mustard seed, be sure of this, that He will watch over it and bless the springing thereof.  So, although when we think of ourselves, our own slowness of progress, our own feeble resolutions, our own wayward hearts, our own vacillating wills, our many temptations, our many corruptions, our many follies, we may well say to ourselves, ’Will there ever be any greater completeness in this terribly imperfect Christian character of mine than there is to-day?’ Let us be of good cheer, and not think only of ourselves, but much rather of Him who works on and in and for us.  If we lift up our hearts to Him, and keep ourselves near Him, and let Him work, He will work.  If we do not—­like the demons in the old monastic stories, who every night pulled down the bit of walling that the monks had in the daytime built for their new monastery—­by our own hands pull down what He, by His hand, has built up, the structure will rise, and we shall be ‘builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit.’  Be of good cheer, only keep near the Master, and let Him do what He desires to do for us all.  God is ’faithful who hath called us to the fellowship of His Son,’ and He also will do it.

IV.  Lastly, here is a striking contrast to the fate which attends all human workers.

There are very few of us who even partially seem to be happy enough to begin and finish any task, beyond the small ones of our daily life.  Authors die, with books half finished, with sentences half finished sometimes, where the pen has been laid down.  No man starts an entirely fresh line of action; he inherits much from his past.  No man completes a great work that he undertakes; he leaves it half-finished, and coming generations, if it is one of the great historical works of the world, work out its consequences for good or for evil.  The originator has to be contented with setting the thing going and handing on unfinished tasks to his successors.  That is the condition under which we live.  We have to be contented to do our little bit of work, that will fit in along with that of a great many others, like a chain of men who stand between a river and a burning house, and pass the buckets from end to end.  How many hands does it take to make a pin?  How many did it take to make the cloth of our dress?  The shepherd out in Australia, the packer in Melbourne, the sailors on the ship that brought the wool home, the railwayman that took it to Bradford, the spinner, the weaver, the dyer, the finisher, the tailor—­they all had a hand in it, and the share of none of them was fit to stand upright by itself, as it were, without something on either side of it to hold it up.