While, however, I thankfully acknowledge the growth of this spirit of service, I do not think _all_ sufficiently realize their responsibility. In religion we are fearfully apt to catch at a proxy when we can, and I can imagine some, to whom the very existence of a Diocesan Association of Lay-helpers may act as a sort of indirect excuse for doing nothing themselves. “There are _the_ Lay-helpers of the diocese; they number 1000 and upwards. They undertake Lay-work, and I am quite content to let them represent the Lay element in Church works. If you want half-a-crown or five shillings, come to me; but don’t ask me to leave my arm-chair after my Sunday’s dinner to go and teach in a close school-room. Let these Lay-helpers, overlooked as they are sure to be most efficiently by the clergy” (for objectors of this kind are clad in an armour of impenetrable politeness and gracefully-fitting amiability)—“let them distribute our alms, but don’t ask me to go up one of those dark creaking staircases—don’t ask me to do violence to my nasal organs by sending me into a room which reeks with the combined perfume of soap-suds and beef-steak. My duty as a Churchman can never require this. I am an advocate for helping the poor, but this is going a little too far.” Now there is a Book which it is the fashion to “handle freely” now-a-days, which seems to me to run entirely counter to the view which I have ventured to describe. I read there that “the Son of man . . . gave to every man his work” (St. Mark xiii. 34); and again an Apostle tells us, “Let every man prove his own work” (Gal. vi. 4); and in the last chapter of this same Book I find the saying, “Behold I come quickly; and My reward is with Me to give every man according as his work shall be” (Rev. xxii. 12). I merely give these as samples of the kind of teaching we get in Holy Scripture. Whether it is the Divine Master, or the busy practical Apostle of the Gentiles, or the rapt St. John who speaks—all tell us the same thing. With one consent they point “every man” to “his work.” Oh! you who are doing nothing for Christ, ponder over those awful words of the last chapter of the last book of God—the latest message which has come from heaven to earth—“Behold I come quickly, and My reward is with Me to give every man according as his work shall be!” What then, if you have no work to show? what about the reward _then_, if there be not the work _now_?