s possible even for our poor
attainments and our stained lives. If it were Paul's supreme prayer,
should it not be our supreme aim, that we may be worthy of Him that hath
called us, and 'walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called'?

II. Note, here, the divine help to meet the test.

If it were a matter of our own effort alone, who of us could pretend to
reach to the height of conformity with the great design of the loving
Father in summoning us, or with the mighty powers that are set in motion
by the summons for the purifying of men's lives? But here is the great
characteristic and blessing of God's Gospel, that it not only summons us
to holiness and to heaven, but reaches out a hand to help us thither.
Therein it contrasts with all other voices--and many of them are noble
and pathetic in their insistence and vehemence--which call men to lofty
lives. Whether it be the voice of conscience, or of human ethics, or of
the great ones, the elect of the race, who, in every age, have been as
voices crying in the wilderness, 'Prepare ye the way of the Lord'--all
these call us, but reach no hand out to draw us. They are all as voices
from the heights and are of God, but they are voices only; they summon
us to noble deeds, and leave us floundering in the mire.

But we have not a God who tells us to be good, and then watches to see
if we will obey, but we have a God who, with all His summonses, brings
to us the help to keep His commandments. Our God has more than a voice
to enjoin, He has a hand to lift, 'Give what Thou commandest, and
command what Thou wilt,' said Augustine. There is the blessing and glory
of the Gospel, that its summons has in it an impelling power which makes
men able to be what it enjoins them to become. My text, therefore,
follows the prayer 'that God would count you worthy,' which contemplates
God simply as judging men's correspondence with the ideal revealed in
their calling, and is the cry of faith to the giving God, who works in
us, if we will let Him, that which He enjoins on us. There are two
directions of that divine working specified in the text. Paul asks that
God would fulfil 'every desire of goodness and every work of faith,' as
the Revised Version renders the words. Two things, then, we may hope
that God will do for us--He will fulfil every yearning after
righteousness and purity in our hearts, and will perfect the active
energy which faith puts forth in our lives.

Paul says, in effect