A mistaken estimate.
"Then I said, I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain." Oft-repeated words. Human ignorance, surveying the fields, says, "No harvests; or at best no harvests accordant with the toil and tears of the sowing." What folly! As if we could see beneath the soil the slumbering seed waiting to spring forth; or the seeds that have been carried as by the birds of the heavens to far-away acres.
I. THE SORROWFUL WORKERS. The words have pain in them. "I have laboured in vain." No man likes to feel that. These are not the tears of indolence, but the sorrows of the toiler. We can sympathize with them; for we have all at seasons felt thus. But the words are:
1. Mistaken in their main idea. Who knows what success is, or where success is? "In vain?" Sometimes the largest harvests grow above the sower's grave.
2. Mistaken in their central object. "I said." Yes; but who are you? God is the Judge. Let no man make the attempt to enter the Divine observatory.
II. THE SAVING CLAUSE. "Yet!" Here comes wisdom after mistake. "Surely my judgment is with the Lord."
1. This quickens inspiration to duty.
2. This sanctifies the sorrow of disappointment.
3. This keeps alive the hope of reward.
What a beautiful sentence!—"My work is with my God" It is in good hands.—W.M.S.