r work. But whether it be so or not, our task is to
'do the little we can do, and leave the rest with God,' sure that He
will work all the fragments into a perfect whole, and content to do the
smallest bit of service for Him. Few of us are strong enough to do
separate building. We are like coral insects, whose reef is one, though
its makers are millions.

Zerubbabel finished his task, but its end was but a new beginning of an
order of things of which he did not see the end. There are no beginnings
or endings, properly speaking, in human affairs, but all is one unbroken
flow. One man only has made a real new beginning, and that is Jesus
Christ; and He only will really carry His work to its very last issues.
He is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending. He is the
Foundation of the true Temple, and He is also the Headstone of the
corner, the foundation on which all rests, the apex to which all runs
up. 'When He begins, He will also make an end.'

The completion of the work is to be the token that the 'angel who spake
with me' was God's messenger. We can know that before the fulfilment,
but we cannot but know it after. Better to be sure that the message is
from God while yet the certainty is the result of faith, than to be sure
of it afterwards, when the issue has shattered and shamed our doubts.

If we realise that God's Spirit is the guarantee for the success of work
done for God, we shall escape the vulgar error of measuring the
importance of things by their size, as, no doubt, many of these builders
were doing. No one will help on the day of great things who despises
that of small ones. They say that the seeds of the 'big trees' in
California are the smallest of all the conifers. I do not vouch for the
truth of the statement, but God's work always begins with little seeds,
as the history of the Church and of every good cause shows. 'What do
these feeble Jews?' sneered the spectators of their poor little walls,
painfully piled up, over which a fox could jump. They did very little,
but they were building the city of God, which has outlasted all the
mockers.

Men might look with contempt on the humble beginning, but other eyes
than theirs looked at it with other emotions. The eyes which in the last
vision were spoken of as directed on the foundation stone, gaze on the
work with joy. These are the seven eyes of 'the Lord,' which are 'the
seven Spirits of God, sent forth into all the earth' (Rev. v. 6). The
Spirit