“Say not ye, There are yet four months, and _then_ cometh the harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, that they are white already unto harvest He that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal; that he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. For herein is the saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye have not laboured: others have laboured, and ye are entered into their labour.”(121) The work before the disciples is only to reap: others had ploughed and sown. Prophets and teachers, and also rulers and judges, all who had helped to bring the Israelites into the condition of being ripe for better things—these past teachers of men, as well as all the impersonal workings of the unseen hand which had smoothed the way—all these answered to the ploughers and sowers of the crop which the apostles were now to reap. This “Præparatio Evangelica,” so often before us, had been the combined result of many sorts of action, and into the fruits of this labour the disciples were now to enter. They, along with all those who had sowed and tended, should one day rejoice together, when the grain was garnered in heaven, and when those accounted worthy of the Resurrection to Eternal Life should enter on their reward. Gleams of gladness in our Lord’s career come rarely, and His joy is always for others’ sake. It is not for Himself, not even for the cause that He rejoices—that cause would surely triumph in its own time—but His joy is, that He beholds a successful and glorious career opening before His fellow-labourers, the few friends at His side. On the return of the seventy recorded by St Luke, this same joy for His disciples’ sake is especially spoken of. “In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father; for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight. All things have been delivered unto me of my Father: and no one knoweth who the Son is, save the Father; and who the Father is, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal _him_.”(122)