John 9:4 I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night comes, when no man can work. There are men, there are women — men and women of high capacities, of great mental endowment — who, in every division of human thought and human labour, have furrowed their track deep in the fields of history. There are men, as you all know, of scientific attainments, who have been powerful in illuminating the meaning of the laws of God with regard to the physical creation before the minds of their fellow men; men who have drawn out the secrets from this world, who have exposed to us the meaning of much that once we believed to be almost magical, and now is known to be only natural. There are men of historical power, who have been able to co-ordinate the various human motives and thoughts which have gone to form the springs of history, until they have succeeded, in part at least, in reading some of those general laws of our Great Creator, even in fields belonging not strictly to His divine revelation. There are, again, men of artistic faculties, who have been able — in throwing out thoughts upon canvas, which have startled us, sometimes with the beauty of execution, and always with the wonderful mystery of various colourings, combining into one picture before the eye — have been able, I say, thereby to exhibit to us things that all mankind, more or less, have dreamed of, but that all mankind found themselves incapable to express. There have been men — as you and I, who live in this great city, know — who, by the mere activity of their life, have left a very deep impress upon their generation. But, after all, when we turn to the Christian life, we have to acknowledge, even without the divine revelation, that all that kind of work, all that outcome of what is mere human activity, is not at all work in the sense in which Christ means it, as becoming and glorifying an immortal. Not at all! (Knox Little.) Parallel Verses KJV: I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work. |
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