=For when one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are
ye not men? What then is Apollos? and what is Paul? Ministers through
whom ye believed; and each as the Lord gave to him. I planted,
Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he
that planteth anything, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth
the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: but
each shall receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we
are God's fellow-workers: ye are God's husbandry, God's building.--I
Cor. 3:4-9.=
One of the profoundest motives that can grip man's heart is the
conviction that he is a fellow-worker with the Divine. To feel that
there is a great Cause, on behalf of which God himself is concerned,
and in the furtherance of which we can be God's instruments and
confederates, is the most exhilarating outlook on life conceivable.
Even people who deny God try to get this motive for themselves. One
such man hopes for the success of his favorite causes in "the tendency
of the universe"; another talks about "the nature of things taking
sides." _But nothing save personality has moral tendencies, and only
persons take sides in moral issues._ If the guidance of the world is
personal, then, and then only, can we rejoice with confidence in a
great Ally, who has moral purposes and who has committed to us part of
his work. This was the Master's motive when he said, "My Father
worketh even until now, and I work" (John 5:17). But one clearly sees
that such an inspiring consciousness of cooperation with the Eternal
depended on the certainty with which the Master called the Eternal by
a personal name--Father. When men like Livingstone have gone out in
sacrificial adventure for the saving of men they have not banked on
the "tendency of the universe," nor trusted in any abstract "nature of
things taking sides"; they have been servants of a personal God, under
orders from him, and they have counted on personal guidance in the
service of a cause whose issue was safe in God's hands.
_O God, we pray Thee for those who come after us, for our children,
and the children of our friends, and for all the young lives that are
marching up from the gates of birth, pure and eager, with the morning
sunshine on their faces. We remember with a pang that these will live
in the world we are making for them. We are wasting the resources of
the earth in our headlong greed, and they will suffer want. We are
building sunless houses and joyless cities for our profit, and they
must dwell therein. We are making the burden heavy and the pace of
work pitiless, and they will fall wan and sobbing by the wayside. We
are poisoning the air of our land by our lies and our uncleanness,
and they will breathe it._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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