en place in
many a great land. And then He looks at us, and I wonder what He thinks.
Ragland, Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, after years of
brain-burying waste, wrote that He was teaching him that "_of all plans
for securing success the most certain is Christ's own, becoming a corn
of wheat, falling into the ground and dying_." If coming abroad means
that for anyone, is it too much to ask? It was what our dear Lord did.

This brings us to another plea. I find it in the verse that carves out
with two strokes the whole result of two lives. "If any man's work
abide. . . . If any man's work shall be burned." The net result of one
man's work is gold, silver, precious stones; the net result of another
man's work is wood, hay, stubble. Which is worth the spending of a
life?

An earnest worker in her special line of work is looking back at it from
the place where things show truest, and she says, "God help us all! What
is the good done by any such work as mine? 'If any man build upon this
foundation . . . wood, hay, stubble. . . . If any man's work shall be
burned he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by
fire!' An infinitude of pains and labour, and all to disappear like the
stubble and the hay."

Success--what is it worth?

"I was flushed with praise,
But pausing just a moment to draw breath,
I could not choose but murmur to myself,
'Is this all? All that's done? and all that's gained?
If this, then, be success, 'tis dismaller
Than any failure.'"

So transparent a thing is the glamour of success to clear-seeing
poet-eyes, and should it dazzle the Christian to whom nothing is of any
worth but the thing that endures? Should arguments based upon
comparisons between the apparent success of work at home as
distinguished from work abroad influence us in any way? Is it not very
solemn, this calm, clear setting forth of a truth which touches each of
us? "_Every man's work shall be made manifest, for the Day shall declare
it, because it shall be revealed by fire, and the fire shall try every
man's work of what sort it is._" And as we realise the perishableness of
all work, however apparently successful, except the one work done in the
one way God means, oh, does it not stir us up to seek with an intensity
of purpose which will not be denied, to find out what that one work is?
The same thought comes out in the vers