So it is in all our work in the world, and eminently in our Christian work.  We have to be contented with being parts of a mighty whole, to do our small piece of service, and not to mind though it cannot be singled out in the completed whole.  What does that matter, as long as it is there?  The waters of the brook are lost in the river, and it, in turn, in the sea.  But each drop is there, though indistinguishable.

Multiplication of joy comes from division of labour, ’One soweth and another reapeth,’ and the result is that there are two to be glad over the harvest instead of one—­’that he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together.’  So it is a good thing that the hands that laid the foundations so seldom are the hands that finish the work; for thereby there are more admitted into the social gladness of the completed results.  The navvy that lifted the first spadeful of earth in excavating for the railway line, and the driver of the locomotive over the completed track, are partners in the success and in the joy.  The forgotten bishop who, I know not how many centuries ago, laid the foundations of Cologne Cathedral, and the workmen who, a few years since, took down the old crane that had stood for long years on the spire, and completed it to the slender apex, were partners in one work that reached through the ages.

So let us do our little bit of work, and remember that whilst we do it, He for whom we are doing it is doing it in us, and let us rejoice to know that at the last we shall share in the ‘joy of our Lord,’ when He sees of the travail of His soul and is satisfied.  Though He builds all Himself, yet He will let us have the joy of feeling that we are labourers together with Him.  ‘Ye are God’s building’; but the Builder permits us to share in His task and in His triumph.

THE PRIEST OF THE WORLD AND KING OF MEN

     ’He shall build the Temple of the Lord ... and He shall be a Priest
     upon His throne.’—­ZECHARIAH vi. 13.

A handful of feeble exiles had come back from their Captivity.  ’The holy and beautiful house’ where their fathers praised Him was burned with fire.  There was no king among them, but they still possessed a representative of the priesthood, the other great office of divine appointment.  Their first care was to rear some poor copy of the Temple; and the usual difficulties that attend reconstruction of any sort, and dog every movement that rests upon religious enthusiasm, beset them —­strong enemies, and half-hearted friends, and personal jealousies weakening still more their weak forces.  In this time of anarchy, of toil at a great task with inadequate resources, of despondency that was rapidly fulfilling its own forebodings, the Prophet, who was the spring of the whole movement, receives a word in season from the Lord.  He is bidden to take from some of the returned exiles the tribute-money which they had brought,