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the tenement and prison of the body, that it might escape to its proper home, to detach and disentangle it from the confinement, the sorrows, and the temptations of time, that it might weigh anchor from these tempestuous shores, and launch into the peaceful ocean of eternity.

2. But it is not merely the calmness with which the Apostle speaks of death, that was to excite Timothy to the more strenuous discharge of his duties; the grateful exultation which he expresses in looking back on the whole period of his labours, is to have a similar effect.—I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith. This is triumphant language; but let it not be supposed that it is in the slightest degree the language of vain-glory: no, the occasion demanded it: it is the charity of an Apostle who encourages his disciple; it is the tenderness of a father who consoles his son; it is the gratitude of a Christian who renders glory to God. The Apostle was now in the hands of a cruel and capricious tyrant. He had seen himself deserted by his friends in his greatest extremity 3; a violent death was before him. In this situation, he solemnly reviews his past conduct. And what is the result? Does he betray the secret consciousness of guilt? Does he intimate the slightest suspicion of the weak

3 2 Tim. iv. 16, 17.

ness of his cause? On the contrary, does he not, in the words before us, upon the most calm and deliberate survey, triumph in the part he has acted, and earnestly recommend it to his beloved pupil to follow his example in espousing the same glorious design, even at the hazard of similar sufferings? In this view these expressions are as sublime as they are appropriate and consolatory.

The allusion in the two first members of the sentence is to the well-known Grecian games; and in the third, to the fidelity of one who guards a deposit; he had fought the good fight, as a combatant; he had finished his course, as a racer; he had kept the faith, as one intrusted with a valuable charge.

St. Paul had, from the time when Christ had called him to the Apostleship, fought the good and honourable fight 5. As a Christian he had valiantly contended against sin and Satan. He had waged war against his old habits, and his inward disorders of mind and temper; he had been engaged in subduing the whole body of sin; he had wrestled against the snares and assaults of Satan, and the frowns and seductions of the world. As an Apostle, also, he had at Christ's command entered on the combat against the kingdom of darkness, and had struggled, by

* See Doddridge Intr. to 2 Tim.

5 Τὸν ἀγῶνα τον καλὸν.

every lawful effort, to subvert the power of Satan in the hearts and lives of men, and to establish the kingdom of Christ in its stead. For this purpose he had girded on the armour of righteousness; he had braved all the power of the enemy; he had endured the fierce malice of the Jew, the scornful calumnies of the Gentile, and the cruel persecutions of both. And now, at the close of the combat, he looks back, not with shame or regret, as one, who had entered on an unworthy contest or had proved irresolute in a good one, but with gratitude and exultation. The fight might indeed seem to those who judged of it by outward events, disastrous. It might be considered as presenting nothing but scenes of calamity and affliction. The statesman of this world might turn from it with contempt, and the warrior with pity. But to the eye of faith no combat would appear so noble and generous. It was good in the end at which it aspired, as well as in the means which it employed ;-so good, that nothing else could appear glorious when compared with it. It was not, like other contests, a struggle for fame or power, but for the honour of a divine Saviour and the welfare of mankind; it aimed not at the overthrow of an earthly competitor, but at the subversion of misery and sin; it was intended not to inflict disgrace or death on a fellow-creature, but to convey life and pardon and

holiness and ineffable consolation to a ruined world; its purpose was not to accomplish a temporary and contracted victory, a victory of which the effects would be inconsiderable and the memory brief; but to achieve the noblest of all conquests, to establish the widest and most permanent and most exalted of all dominions, to erect the universal kingdom of Christ -to gain the salvation of mankind.

This idea is pursued with only a slight alteration, when the Apostle further says, in reference to the racer in the same Grecian games, I have finished my course. The leading idea of the former expression is perhaps rather that of defensive than of active exertion; rather that of patient fortitude in the endurance of evils, than of an eager alacrity in the pursuit of good. The image which he now uses, exhibits an unmixed picture of voluntary, generous, and persevering activity. He had not only fought as a combatant, but had entered on his course as one who runs in a race, had continued in that course even to the end, and was just about to seize the prize. He was in fact already at the goal. And he had run, not as uncertainly; he had fought, not as one that beateth the air; but he had kept under his body and brought it into subjection, lest that by any means, after he had preached to others, he himself should be a cast

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away. This has been his habitual conduct as a man and as an Apostle; he counted not himself to have apprehended; but this one thing he did, forgetting the things which were behind and reaching forth unto those things which were before, he pressed toward the mark for the prize of his high calling of God in Christ

Jesus".

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But, further, to express the fidelity with which the Apostle had preserved the doctrine intrusted to him, and which the former allusions did not so directly convey, he changes the metaphor, and adds, I have kept the faith, as one who guards a valuable deposit. He had been put in trust with the Gospel; he had been charged to testify the Gospel of the grace of God; that good thing had been committed to him 3 :-many, many temptations had arisen to seduce him from his fidelity, on the part both of the Gentile and the Jewish converts; the fables of human philosophy and the ceremonies of the Mosaic ritual had in different ways, and from various quarters, been employed to corrupt the simplicity of Christbut the Apostle had throughout his whole ministry kept the faith; he had given place by subjection, no not for an hour, when the truth of the Gospel was concerned: he had with

61 Cor. ix. 26, 27.

1 Thess. ii. 4.

7 Phil. iii. 13, 14. Acts, xx. 24. 2 Tim. i. 14.

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