cast. The book must be incomplete, because the work of which it is
the record does not end until 'He shall have delivered up the Kingdom
to the Father, and God shall be all in all.'

So the work of each man is but a fragment of that great work. Every
man inherits unfinished tasks from his predecessors, and leaves
unfinished tasks to his successors. It is, as it used to be in the
Middle Ages, when the hands that dug the foundations, or laid the
first courses, of some great cathedral, were dead long generations
before the gilded cross was set on the apex of the needlespire, and
the glowing glass filled in to the painted windows. Enough for us, if
we lay a stone, though it be but one stone in one of the courses of
the great building.

Luke has left plenty of blank paper at the end of his second
'treatise,' on which he meant that succeeding generations should
write their partial contributions to the completed work. Dear
friends, let us see that we write our little line, as monks in their
monasteries used to keep the chronicle of the house, on which scribe
after scribe toiled at its illuminated letters with loving patience
for a little while, and then handed the pen from his dying hand to
another. What does it matter though we drop, having done but a
fragment? He gathers up the fragments into His completed work, and
the imperfect services which He enabled any of us to do will all be
represented in the perfect circle of His finished work. The Lord help
us to be faithful to the power that works in us, and to leave Him to
incorporate our fragments in His mighty whole!