you accept it. Here is a lesson for all Christian workers. Ministers of
the Gospel especially should banish all thoughts of their own
cleverness, intellectual ability, culture, sufficiency for their work,
and learn that only when they are emptied can they be filled, and only
when they know themselves to be nothing are they ready for God to work
through them. And here is a lesson for all who stand apart from the
grace and power of Jesus Christ as if they needed it not. Whether you
know it or not, you are a broken reed; and the only way of your ever
being bound up and made strong is that you shall recognise your
sinfulness, your necessity, your abject poverty, your utter emptiness,
and come to Him who is righteousness, riches, fulness, and say,
'Because I am weak, be Thou my strength.' The secret of all noble,
heroic, useful, happy life lies in the paradox, 'When I am weak, then am
I strong,' and the secret of all failures, miseries, hopeless losses,
lies in its converse, 'When I am strong, then am I weak.'

NOT YOURS BUT YOU

'I seek not yours, but you.'--2 COR. xii. 14.

Men are usually quick to suspect others of the vices to which they
themselves are prone. It is very hard for one who never does anything
but with an eye to what he can make out of it, to believe that there are
other people actuated by higher motives. So Paul had, over and over
again, to meet the hateful charge of making money out of his
apostleship. It was one of the favourite stones that his opponents in
the Corinthian Church, of whom there were very many, very bitter ones,
flung at him. In this letter he more than once refers to the charge. He
does so with great dignity, and with a very characteristic and delicate
mixture of indignation and tenderness, almost playfulness. Thus, in the
context, he tells these Corinthian grumblers that he must beg their
pardon for not having taken anything of them, and so honoured them. Then
he informs them that he is coming again to see them for the third time,
and that that visit will be marked by the same independence of their
help as the others had been. And then he just lets a glimpse of his
pained heart peep out in the words of my text. 'I seek not yours, but
you.' _There_ speaks a disinterested love which feels obliged, and yet
reluctant, to stoop to say that it _is_ love, and that it _is_
disinterested. Where did Paul learn this passionate desire to possess
these people, and this entire supp