The laborers employed by God are all _occupied upon needful work_. Notice: "I have planted, Apollos watered." Who beat the big drum, or blew his own trumpet? Nobody. On God's farm none are kept for ornamental purposes. I have read some sermons which could only have been meant for show, for there was not a grain of gospel in them. They were ploughs with the share left out, drills with no wheat in the box, clod-crushers made of butter. I do not believe that our God will ever pay wages to men who only walk about his grounds to show themselves. Orators who display their eloquence in the pulpit are more like gypsies who stray on the farm to pick up chickens, than honest laborers who work to bring forth a crop for their master. Many of the members of our churches live as if their only business on the farm was to pluck blackberries or gather wild flowers. They are great at finding fault with other people's ploughing and mowing; but not a hand's turn will they do themselves. Come on, my good fellows. Why stand ye all the day idle? The harvest is plenteous, and the laborers are few. You who think yourselves more cultivated than ordinary people, if you are indeed Christians, must not strut about and despise those who are hard at work. If you do, I shall say, "That person has mistaken his master; he may probably be in the employ of some gentleman farmer, who cares more for show than profit; but our great Lord is practical, and on his estate his laborers attend to needful labor." When you and I preach or teach it will be well if we say to ourselves, "What will be the use of what I am going to do? I am about to teach a difficult subject; will it do any good? I have chosen an abstruse point of theology; will it serve any purpose?" Brethren, a laborer may work very hard at a whim of his own, and yet it may be all waste labor. Some discourses do little more than show the difference between tweedle-_dum_ and tweedle-_dee_, and what is the use of that? Suppose we sow the fields with sawdust, or sprinkle them with rose-water, what of that? Will God bless our moral essays, and fine compositions, and pretty passages? Brethren, we must aim at usefulness: we must as laborers together with God be occupied with something that is worth doing. "I," says one, "have planted": it is well, for planting must be done. "I," answers another, "have watered": that also is good and necessary. See to it that ye can each bring in a solid report; but let no man be content with the mere child's-play of oratory, or the getting up of entertainments and such like.