to Mark’s Gospel, which tells how the universe seemed parted into two halves, and up above in the serene the Lord ‘sat on the right hand of God,’ while below, in the murky and obscure, ‘they went everywhere preaching the Word.’  The separation seems complete, but the two halves are brought together by the next word—­’The Lord also,’ sitting up yonder, ’working with them’ the wandering preachers down here, ’confirming the words with signs following.’  Ascended on high, entered into His rest, having finished His work, He yet is working with us, if we are labourers together with God.  If we turn to the last book of Scripture, which draws back the curtain from the invisible world which is all filled with the glorified Christ, and shows its relations to the earthly militant church, we read no longer of a Christ enthroned in apparent ease, but of a Christ walking amidst the candlesticks, and of a Lamb standing in the midst of the Throne, and opening the seals, launching forth into the world the sequences of the world’s history, and of the Word of God charging His enemies on His white horse, and behind Him the armies of God following.  The workers who labour with God have the ascended Christ labouring with them.

But if God works with us, success is sure.  Then comes the old question that Gideon asked with bitterness of heart, when he was threshing out his handful of wheat in a corner to avoid the oppressors, ’If the Lord be with us, wherefore is all this come upon us?  Will any one say that the progress of the Gospel in the world has been at the rate which its early believers expected, or at the rate which its own powers warranted them to expect?  Certainly not.  And so it comes to this, that whilst every true labourer has God working with him, and therefore success is certain, the planter and the waterer can delay the growth of the plant by their unfaithfulness, by not expecting success, by not so working as to make it likely, or by neutralising their evangelistic efforts by their worldly lives.  When Jesus Christ was on earth, it is recorded, ’He could there do no mighty works because of their unbelief, save that He laid His hands on a few sick folk and healed them.’  A faithless Church, a worldly Church, a lazy Church, an unspiritual Church, an un-Christlike Church—­which, to a large extent, is the designation of the so-called Church of to day—­can clog His chariot-wheels, can thwart the work, can hamper the Divine Worker.  If the Christians of Manchester were revived, they could win Manchester for Jesus.  If the Christians of England lived their Christianity, they could make England what it never has been but in name—­a Christian country.  If the Church universal were revived, it could win the world.  If the single labourer, or the community of such, is labouring ‘in the Lord,’ their labour will not be in vain; and if they thus plant and water, God will give the increase.

THE TESTING FIRE