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XIII

A GREAT CLOUD OF WITNESSES

XIII

A GREAT CLOUD OF WITNESSES

HEBREWS xii. 1-2

THE life of the godly upon the earth is often described in Scripture by words that represent it as a thing of difficulty. It is difficult even to make a beginning of it, for the Lord Himself says, "Strive to enter in at the strait gate"; and, as it is a thing attained to but by few, He adds: "Few there be that find it." And when begun the difficulty seems hardly to decrease. For the only idea we can gather from the terms applied to it is, that it is a struggle both severe and protracted. Paul says of himself when now ready to be offered, the time of his departure being at hand, and all his past career lying beneath his eye: "I have fought a good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith." And thus he exhorts his son Timothy : "Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold of eternal life." And similarly in the present passage: "Let us run with patience the race set before us."

All these words, race, fight, strife, suggest the same general idea, the same idea as is suggested by the term

used of the Lord Himself in the height of His conflict, the night in which He was betrayed, when it is said of Him that, being in an agony, He prayed more earnestly.

It costs a struggle to begin a godly life upon the earth. And it costs a struggle to maintain it. And the struggle is not soon over, but protracted,-even till the time of one's departure is at hand. Sometimes, as at the close of a race, or the sharp decisive moment in a battle, the conflict is severest at the end. Sometimes it is otherwise, as with Paul. Even when a living man, he could say, "I have finished the course." The race once set before him now lay all behind him. He knew he was victorious. He had fought the good fight. What might yet befall him in life, he knew not. But whatever it was, it could make no alteration. He had finished the work given him to do. He could not now be called on to do much, and much could not now be done to him. And he was secure against change. "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give unto me at that day."

These verses set forth the life of a Christian man upon the earth, under the figure of a race, more fully, perhaps, than any other passage; and the figure may suggest to our minds its nature more clearly. The verses enumerate all its circumstances and conditions-the preparation for the race, "laying aside every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset us"; the race itself and the manner of it—" let us run with patience the race set before us"; the great model and victorious leader whom we are to

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