our Lord's last week for every man and woman of us, as we think of life's work and what we are trying to get done in the world. So many times a thing seems all vain. The teacher tried to breed in the boy whom he taught a hate of lies and a love of the truth, and he wrought with tears and blood at his task, and the boy went out from him and it seemed to him to have been futile, this that he had done for him. We put ourselves out in this or that effort of service in the hope of achieving this or that great end. Every little while it seems to us to have been all fruitless. But wait. It is only Saturday. Easter morning is going to break and the seed that was sown in the ground in darkness and obscurity will come forth then. The life that was let go for a little while, all that we did not see and therefore thought had run sheer to waste, we shall discover then will come pulsating back. "No effort is wasted," said Pasteur.
It is a great joy of life to believe this, that what Isaiah said is true through all the ages, by the very principle of the life of God, that no word of His will come back to Him vain or be void, that it will accomplish the thing He pleases and prosper in the errand whereon He sent it. I received a letter the other day from a friend, the Rev. Adolphus Pieters, who is a missionary in Japan. He had for very many years been engaged in an interesting work. He published
