2 Timothy 2 - The Biblical Illustrator

Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

The connection

Οὐν points back to the defection of others, contrasting it with what St. Paul is satisfied will prove The faithfulness of Timothy. (H. R. Reynolds, D. D.)

Imitate the loyal

It is as though he said, Imitate the one loyal follower (Onesiphorus), and make up to me for the faithless conduct of so many false friends. (H. D. M. Spence, M. A.)

Strength through partnership with Christ

Steven Gerard once told a poor cartman to purchase a cargo of sugar, promising to back him. From that moment the cartman’s wisdom and credit were equal to Gerard’s, for Gerard was his. If the cartman had forgotten his wise, rich friend, and acted on his own judgment and credit, he would have been weak again, and as foolish as weak. The cartman alone was nothing without wisdom or credit, but the cartman and Gerard were strong. Our strength is in partnership with Christ. Christians strong in Christ Jesus:--

I. Consider the duty incumbent on all who have a mind for heaven, namely, to be strong. What is it to be strong in the sense of the text? It presupposeth one thing, namely, they must be spiritually alive. To be strong imports three things.

1. To be ready for action, according to the difficulties you may meet with in your way.

2. That you be resolved. Thus David exhorts Solomon, “Take heed now,” said he, “for the Lord hath chosen thee, to build an house for the sanctuary: be strong and do it.” That is, be fully resolved and peremptory, so as not to be diverted by any emerging difficulties.

3. That you be of good courage.

What need is there to be strong?

1. You have much work before you. The work of your own salvation is upon your hand (Philippians 2:12). You have also to serve your generation, by the will of God.

2. You will meet with much opposition in your work. I now proceed--

II. To consider the direction, namely, that those who would be strong, must be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. What is the grace that is in Christ Jesus?

1. Relative grace, that is the free favour of God to poor sinners, by which they are embraced in the arms of His love unto salvation.

2. Real grace, that is the fulness of the Spirit, and His graces, lodged in Jesus Christ, as the fountain and head of influences, from which they are to be derived, into all His members. “For it hath pleased the Father, that in Him should all fulness dwell. And out of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.”

What is it to be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus?

1. It is to be animated to duty by the faith of that grace that is in Christ Jesus for us, both relative and real.

2. It is to be strengthened to duty by supplies of grace derived from Christ Jesus by faith.

Why must those that would be strong be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus?

1. Because all those that would be strong must be strong as members of Christ, as branches of the vine.

2. Because the grace that is in Christ Jesus is only sufficient to bear us through. (H. Boston, D. D.)

Strength of grace

I. Multiplicity of arguments should provoke to obedience. “Thou, therefore.”

II. Men regard those most who are the likest minded to themselves. “My son.”

III. Strength of grace is necessary for a christian.

1. Comeliness pleads for it. For is not Christ the root, we the branches? He the foundation, we the building? Our head, and we His members? And betwixt these ought there not to be an analogy, a just proportion, otherwise, would it not be unseemly? Should one finger stand still, would we not repute it a blemish? and shall we not do the same in this mystical body?

2. Necessity requires it. We must fast, watch, and pray, fight with principalities, powers, and spiritual enemies, which are in high places. And will not crosses come, thick and threefold--temptations, desertions, sickness, and death, too? What can or will do these, suffer these things, anything but strength of grace, spiritual power? What manner of men ought ministers to be, thundering in preaching, fervent in prayer, shining in life, burning in spirit? And what is necessary for a preacher is required of every Christian, strength of grace. Strength is tried--

(1) In prosperity: art thou humble in thine own eyes? Is thy heart, with the remembrance of the Lord’s mercies, made hot? and is it thy greatest care, how to promote his glory? When the rain falls, the waters swell: the sun shines, the sweetest flowers smell the spring approacheth, all creatures revive. So when grace grows, our joy is full; our mouths are trumpets sounding aloud, and every member of the body is an active instrument, a never-wearied agent to fight the battles, and finish the great works of our Lord and Master. A willow bows with a small blast: an oak endures, stands upright in a storm.

(2) In adversity: art thou patient? etc. The horse neighs at the trumpet; the leviathan laughs at the spear: so a strong man in grace, slights crosses, etc.

Helps to grow strong in grace.

1. Hast thou, in thy apprehension some seed of sanctification? then seriously think of it, highly esteem of it, and bless thou the Lord for it.

2. Resolve with thyself the highest period of grace, whereof a created nature is capable. Scholars aim at the highest degree; citizens, at the most honourable office; and all tradesmen, at the increase of goods: so should weak Christians to be rich in the grace of God: strong in the Lord.

3. Add to these two, practice: exercise thy talent; put it forth, for Thy own, and thy Master’s advantage. Is it not written that many acts produce an habit, and to him that hath shall be given?

4. Neglect no means whereby grace is begun, or increased.

IV. All grace is from Christ Jesus. Whether we consider the beginning, kinds, or degrees; all grace is in Him, and by Him. Is it not written, that Christ ascended on high; gave gifts unto men? Of His fulness, are we not said to receive grace for grace? that is of all the kinds which are in the Head, the same be derived to His members. (J. Barlow, D. D.)

Moral energy

I. Moral energy a Divine gift. This verse deals with the great motive power of the Christian religion, what imparts inward strength to frail humanity. Much besides is, so to speak, machinery, and this--the grace of Christ, is the steam, the driving force, without which the most perfect machinery is useless. Paul enjoins Timothy to obtain this force, this inward energy of the soul; and by calling it “grace” the apostle teaches that it is not like the unconscious forces of nature--the power of wind, or water, or fire, or gravity-which human skill can have at command and direct; but a power of a different, a spiritual order, and bestowed on other conditions. For it flows from the grace or kindness of God, and it is, therefore, called “grace,” just as an act prompted by kindness is called a kindness, and the same with a favour.

II. Christ the source of moral energy. The Christian faith is that the Lord Jesus Christ is the fountain of all power, and the tire of all love, dwelling in the heart, as well as in heaven: “Who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.” That is the faith of Christ; and it cannot be said of it that it is a weak, unsubstantial, and merely sentimental religion. It is based on the most sublime facts, for which it offers appropriate evidence; and the power of those facts to arrest, attract, rivet, and renew the hearts of weak and sinful men, and awaken in them an enthusiasm of trust, and gratitude, and devotion--the history of our religion for eighteen hundred years must declare, for no mere language can.

III. The command to be strong in Christ. It is very characteristic of Scripture, and of its close conformity to human nature, even in its problems, that this great central thought, of the Divine source of moral energy, should be put into the form of a command to be obeyed--an injunction, for the observance of which man is responsible. It is not said to us, “Lie helpless till the Divine energy of Christ flows into your soul”; but, “Be inwardly strengthened in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” “I charge you to become empowered with that energy.” Such is our strange life, our mysterious nature. Dependent on God yet responsible to Him! “It is God that worketh in you.” “Work out your own salvation.” “I, yet not I,” says Paul. “By grace ye are saved” and healed; and this grace has its centre and fount in Christ. But it is your duty to have much of it. (T. M. Herbert, M. A.)

Our true strength

Luther relates concerning one Staupicius, a German divine, that he acknowledged that before he came to understand the free and powerful grace of Christ, he resolved and vowed a hundred times against a particular sin; yet could never get power over it, nor his heart purified from it, till he came to see that he trusted too much to his own resolutions, and too little to Jesus Christ; but when his faith had engaged against his sin, he obtained the victory. (J. L. Nye.)

Christ qualifies His servants

We are His “servants.” A master does more than engage a servant: he also gives him the means whereby he may work. The tradesman does not put his servants into a shop wherein there are no goods to sell; the farmer does not send his servants into the field without plough, harrow, or spade; the surgeon does not withhold drugs; nor the lawyer parchment and pens from his servant. It is even so with our great Master. He calls us to work, and, if we ask Him, He will qualify us for it. (T. R. Stevenson.)

Self-sufficiency

A certain alchemist who waited upon Leo X. declared that he had discovered how to transmute the baser metals into gold. He expected to receive a sum of money for his discovery, but Leo was no such simpleton; he merely gave him a huge purse in which to keep the gold which he would make. There was wisdom as well as sarcasm in the present. That is precisely what God does with proud men, he lets them have the opportunity to do what they boasted of being able to do. I never heard that so much as a solitary gold piece was dropped into Leo’s purse, and I am sure you will never be spiritually rich by what you can do in your own strength. Be stripped, brother, and then God may be pleased to clothe you with honour, but not till then. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Strong in Christ Jesus

When Wingfield expressed his pity for Kirby, who was condemned to die for the truth, the undaunted martyr replied, “Fire, water, and sword are in His hands, who will not suffer them to separate me from Him.” Here was power from on high perfected in human weakness. Nor was it less manifested in another who exclaimed, “If every hair on my head were a man, they should suffer death in the faith in which I now stand.” It was in the exhaustion of age, and after long imprisonment, hardship, and ill treatment, that Latimer, when brought out to be burnt at Oxford, lifted his wrinkled hands towards heaven, and cried, “O God, I thank Thee that Thou hast reserved me to die this death.” (C. Graham.)

Christ’s sufficiency never failing

In travelling through the West of England, you come ever and anon upon large tracts of country, bleak, barren, and desolate; no tree, no flower, no blade of grass, no habitation of man. In these wild and dreary wastes you find proofs in abundance that the spots were not always desert. The deep, black, yawning shaft of many a mine; the broken or decaying timbers which still stand around, or over the mouth of those mines; the remains of cottages; all, all tell you that the place was not always a wilderness. But the mines have been rifled of their treasures, the last vein has been opened, the last bucket of precious ore has been drawn up to the surface of the ground; there is nothing more to be gotten from the once rich earth; and so the miners have all departed to seek a supply elsewhere. Now, as you stand there, in that solitude and desolation, hearing no more the miner’s song, and missing the busy hum of labour, which perhaps years before had greeted you as you walked over those Cornish lands, you can scarcely help contrasting those empty mines with that ever rich and overflowing treasury of blessing which a gracious God has opened to all His people in Jesus Christ. (A. C. Price, B. A.)

Strong through faith

On an occasion of great drought, which the rain-makers attributed to the missionaries, a Bechuana chief with twelve spears came to command Robert Moffat to leave the territory on pain of death; but he said, “You may shed my blood, you may burn my dwelling; but my decision is made: I do not leave your country.” And the cause of all this was his faith. He was a man of wonderful faith; he believed the Gospel was the power of God unto salvation, through faith in Christ Jesus. He felt that his Master was ever as near to him, and as full of love, as the wife of his bosom; he felt that Christ must reign until He should put all things beneath His feet; and just because he was so strong in faith, he was so strong altogether. (J. C. Harrison.)

The conflict and the strength

(2 Timothy 2:1-7):--In these seven verses I see--

I. The apostle enumerating the sort of labours and sufferings which his young disciple Timothy would have to endure.

II. The grace which is suggested to Timothy as sufficient to support him. (D. Wilson, M. A.)

The holy calling of the minister of the Lord

I. The extent of this calling (2 Timothy 2:1-7). Presented under figures

1. Of the soldier.

2. Of the athlete.

3. Of the husbandman.

II. Motives for the exercise of this calling (2 Timothy 2:8-13).

1. A look backwards (2 Timothy 2:8).

2. A look around about one (2 Timothy 2:9-10).

3. A look orwards (2 Timothy 2:11-13). (Van Oosterzee.)

The things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses commit to faithful men, able to teach others also.

How the Church is to be continued

I. CARE IS TO BE HAD THAT THE CHURCH MAY BE CONTINUED. Art thou a ruler in Christendom, like Jehosaphat? Send Levites into the dark corners of the land. Rich? Found colleges, relieve the sons of the prophets, and repair the decayed walls of Jerusalem. Hast thou children? Nurse them up in the fear of God, teach them the principles in the holy letters, and, with Hannah, dedicate thy firstborn to the Lord. If thou be poor, yet pray for Jerusalem.

II. By the Word preached the Church is continued.

III. The more witnesses, the greater encouragement to well-doing.

IV. All ministers are to teach the same things. AS there is but one true God, one Saviour, Redeemer, Faith, Love, etc., so but one law, gospel, doctrine, baptism, which is to be preached for their glory and our salvation. Thrash thy corn out of God’s barn, beat it forth of the apostolical rick of the holy letters; bring thy grain into the market of the Church, which prophetical spirits have in former ages set to sale; and it shall feed thee and thine to life eternal, for be thou assured that the soundest testimony is this, that the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

V. Ministers must be faithful. And this faithfulness is in--

1. Doctrine.

2. Life.

Thou hast known, saith Paul to Timotheus, my doctrine, manner of living. To be faithful in doctrine, the matter what, and the manner how, to be delivered are both to be regarded. For matter, it must be what we have received from the Lord. For the manner, a double condition is to be observed. First, that the word of truth be divided aright; each person have his portion, according to his spiritual estate and disposition. And secondly, the doctrine must be intelligible, else how should the people be edified? Now, as faithfulness in doctrine, so in life is required of a minister. What they preach they are to practice, for the vulgar sort be more led by examples than rules, patterns than precepts. Should ministers be faithful? Then let such as have in their power ordination, and induction, lay hands rashly on no man; make choice of faithful, able persons.

VI. Ability to teach is necessary for a minister.

1. Some knowledge of the tongues and arts is necessary. For as the form lieth closely couched in the matter, the kernel in the shell, so doth the truth in the several languages.

2. To be an able man requires a sound memory. For the truth being invented, orderly disposed, is then firmly to be retained.

3. A door of utterance is also necessary. When we have invented, judged, and methodically disposed of Divine truths, then we must clothe them with the garment of apt words.

4. And to omit many; an able minister must have his whole carriage in the delivery of his doctrine, suitable and correspondent to it. His countenance, elevation, pronunciation, gesture, and action, are to vary and be altered as the matter in handling requireth. And let all men make mention of them in their prayers.

VII. The same truth shall be continued unto the end of the world. For Christ received it from the Father, the Holy Ghost from Christ, the apostles from Him, faithful men from them; and so by a successive communication it shall continue for ever. As one sun shall enlighten the world, so one gospel the minds of men, until Jesus returns to judge all the posterity of Adam. (J. Barlow, D. D.)

Able teachers

The apprentice, who has just entered the blacksmith’s shop, may wear a leathern apron, and blacken his hands and face, but though he may try to make other boys think he is a blacksmith, everybody knows that it requires years of hard labour to make him an able workman; and even after an apprenticeship, some men are but very poor hands at their trade. So, the having one’s name entered as a certified instructor does not certify that a man is an able teacher. Is not goodness higher than arithmetic, and is not virtue nobler than grammar? Is it not a glorious position to be a teacher of little children? A certain philosopher was often talking about the garden in which he studied and recreated, and one day a friend calling to see it, was surprised to find it consisted of only a few square yards. The friend said, “Why this is a very small place; it is only a few strides across!” The philosopher replied, “Small! Ah, you only look at the ground; but if you look up, you will see that it reaches to the sky!” So it is with a little child. It may be small; you have power to break its back across your knee, as well as break its heart; but in this little child there is a pathway to the heart of God, and angels walk therein. Lord Beaconsfield said of Greece, “Let it be patient; it has a great future”; so I say that you must be patient with every child, for it has a great future. Let us be gentle in the teaching of little children. Do you know how barbarous men teach bears to dance? Let me tell you. They play a flute, and put the bear on a hot iron. Do not let us teach children as if they were hears. Children have to be “trained.” You know how a crooked plant is trained. It is held in its place by a soft band that will not hurt it, until it grows in the right direction. So children should be trained in mind and body, gently yet firmly, to be good and strong. No two children are alike either in body or mind, and individual peculiarities must be studied and accommodated. We should, one and all, become teachers of children by our example, which is far more powerful than precept; and we should take care that our faults do not turn them against the religion we profess. (W. Birch.)

A faithful custodian

The grand battlefield of Drumclog is where the hardy, faithful Covenanters routed the cruel Claverhouse. I have stood upon that battlefield and looked upon a schoolhouse erected there by a Scotchman, though there was not a house to be seen near it, because he wanted the faith and the zeal of his forefathers to dwell in those that might come afterwards. I went, after looking at that field, into the house of a poor weaver. I heard he had a relic of the great fight in his possession, and I thought I should like to purchase it. He unfurled a flag that had been held by his forefathers on the great day of the fight, and on that flag were these words, “God and our sworn covenant.” I asked him if he would sell the flag. “I will never sell the flag,” said he, “except with my own life. I hold it as an heirloom, and, however poor I may be, I will hand it down to my children; and I hope they will hand it down to their children.” The incident reminds us that Christians carry a banner, and are pledged by their covenant relationship to Christ to seek the salvation of sinners, and thus be true to the memory of those who preceded them in the holy warfare. (A. McAulay.)

The undying energy of truth

Sir Bernard Burke thus touchingly writes in his “Vicissitudes of Families”: “In 1850 a pedigree-research caused me to pay a visit to the village of Fyndern, about five miles south-west of Derby. I sought for the ancient hall. Not a stone remained to tell where it had stood! I entered the church. Not a single record of a Finderne was there! I accosted a villager, hoping to glean some stray traditions of the Findernes. ‘Findernes!’ said he, ‘we have no Findernes here, but we have something that once belonged to them: we have Findernes’ flowers.’ ‘Shew them me,’ I replied, and the old man led me into a field which still retained faint traces of terraces and foundations. ‘There,’ said he, pointing to a bank of garden flowers grown wild, ‘there are the Findernes’ flowers, brought by Sir Geoffrey from the Holy Land, and, do what we will, they will never die!’” So be it with each of us. Should our names perish, may the truths we taught, the virtues we cultivated, the good works we initiated, live on and blossom with undying energy. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Setting others to work

Nasmyth says that when he introduced his great steam-hammer, it not only itself produced marvellous results, but “its active rhythmic sound, by some sympathetic agency, quickened the strokes of every hammer, chisel, and file in his workmen’s hands, and nearly doubled the output of work.” And is not ibis true of some noble workers whom we could name? More than half Mr. Moody’s power consists in his capacity of setting other people to work by his own earnestness. (W. Fullerton.)

The genius of the true teacher

Speaking of art training, Mr. Ruskin says: “Until a man has passed through a course of academy studentship, and can draw in an improved manner with French chalk, and knows foreshortening and perspective, and something of anatomy, we do not think he can possibly be an artist. What is worse, we are very apt to think that we can make him an artist by teaching him anatomy, and how to draw with French chalk; whereas the real gift in him is utterly independent of all such accomplishments.” So the highest powers of the teacher or preacher, the power of interpreting the Scriptures with spiritual insight, of moving the hearers to camest worship and decision, may exist with or without the culture of the schools. Learned Pharisees are impotent failures compared with a rough fisherman Peter anointed with the Holy Ghost. Inspiration is more than education. (H. O. Mackey.)

The worth of colleges

The great importance of the work none m our educational institutions for young ministers was never more strikingly emphasised than by the missionary Judson, who said, as he was approaching Madison University, “If I had a thousand dollars, do you know what I would do with it?” The person asked supposed he would invest it in Foreign Missions. “I would put it into such institutions as that,” he said, pointing to the college buildings. “Planting colleges, and filling them with studious young men, is planting seed corn for the world.”

An ignorant preacher

Of the late Bishop Ames the following anecdote is told. While presiding over a certain conference in the West, a member began a tirade against the universities and education, thanking God that he had never been corrupted by contact with a college. After proceeding thus far for a few minutes, the bishop interrupted with the question, “Do I understand that the brother thanks God for his ignorance?” “Well, yes,” was the answer; “you can put it that way if you want.” “Well, all I have to say,” said the bishop, in his sweetest musical tone--“all I have to say is, that the brother has a good deal to thank God for.”

College life

He whose spiritual life evaporates under processes of ministerial culture could hardly resist the temptations of any other form of life. (H. Allon, D. D.)

Endure hardness as a good soldier.

The Christian soldier

Every Christian, and especially every Christian minister, may be regarded as a soldier, as an athlete (2 Timothy 2:5). as a husbandman (2 Timothy 2:6); but of the three similitudes the one which fits him best is that of a soldier. Even if this were not so, St. Paul’s fondness for the metaphor would be very intelligible.

1. Military service was very familiar to him, especially in his imprisonments. He must frequently have seen soldiers under drill, on parade, on gourd, on the march; most have watched them cleaning, mending, and sharpening their weapons; putting their armour on, putting it off. Often, during hours of enforced inactivity, he must have compared these details with the details of the Christian life, and noticed how admirably they corresponded with one another.

2. Military service was also quite sufficiently familiar to those whom he addressed. Roman troops were everywhere to be seen throughout the length and breadth of the empire, and nearly every member of society knew something of the kind of life which a soldier of the empire had to lead.

3. The Roman army was the one great organisation of which it was still possible, in that age of boundless social corruption, to think and speak with right-minded admiration and respect. No doubt it was often the instrument of wholesale cruelties as it pushed forward its conquests, or strengthened its hold, over resisting or rebelling nations. But it promoted discipline and esprit de corps. Even during active warfare it checked individual license, and when the conquest was over it was the representative and mainstay of order and justice against high-handed anarchy and wrong. Its officers several times appear in the narrative portions of the New Testament, and they make a favourable impression upon us. If they are fair specimens of the military men in the Roman Empire at that period, then the Roman army must have been indeed a fine service. But the reasons for the apostle’s preference for this similitude go deeper than all this.

4. Military service involves self-sacrifice, endurance, discipline, vigilance, obedience, ready cooperation with others, sympathy, enthusiasm, loyalty.

5. Military service implies vigilant, unwearying and organised opposition to a vigilant, unwearying, and organised foe. It is either perpetual warfare or perpetual preparation for it. And just such is the Christian life; it is either a conflict or s preparation for one. (A. Plummer, D. D.)

The minister a good soldier

Ministers above all should be leaders and exemplars in this contest. For the apostle’s fear of disapproval at last relates to him as a herald or preacher to others, calling them to the spiritual warfare. They should be like the statues of ancient heroes in the Palcestra, which the Roman youth were sent to admire and emulate, while they recounted the history of their achievements. (J. Leifchild, D. D.)

The good soldier of Jesus Christ

Fight, not as Joash, who smote the ground with the arrows thrice and stayed before he was bidden, for which he was denied a full victory. Fight, not as Israel in Canaan, who, instead of seeking the decreed extermination of all the ancient inhabitants, suspended their conquests, and allowed many of them to remain in their immediate neighbourhood and intercourse; for which they received not the promise of full rest and enjoyment. But fight as Joseph, who said, “How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God!” Fight as Paul did, when he laboured to bring under his body and keep it in subjection. Fight as Christ told His disciples to fight, by cutting off the right hand and plucking out the right eye that causes them to offend. Fight as did your great Lord and Master Himself with the arch-traitor, when he sought to inject into His mind thoughts of discontent, of ambition, and of a debasing servility of soul: repelling him with a holy indignation, and saying, “Get thee hence, Satan, for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.” (J. Leifchild, D. D.)

Aggressive goodness

The Saviour expects true saintliness will always be an aggressive thing. Where it is such, its activities rouse enmity. We have different views from the Saviour on this subject of aggressive goodness. We think saintliness is at liberty to be an unobtrusive, self-saving thing: carefully restricting its service to the quiet influence of its example, content to develop its own life sweetly. But the Saviour calls for something more vigorous than passive piety. Prince of Peace as He was, He proclaims: “I came not to send peace on earth, but a sword”--to set a man at variance with those around him. He defines His object to be to “send fire on the earth,” and tarries only until it is kindled. He assumes that evil must be assailed, that falsehood will be contradicted, and sin denounced. He intends a true peace to be reached by the disturbance of the false. He expects sanctity ever to have something of the soldierly quality, and that the life will be a fight of faith. He did not contemplate sanctity adopting a live-and-let-live policy in the presence of falsehood and evil Silence is the earth in which the talent of truth is buried. He expects us to be His witnesses; bids us say, “Repent!” not merely to men in general, but to sinners in particular; expects us to reprove all evil, as well as to point to Him who is the source and pattern of all good. Wherever love is thus aggressive, truth thus bold, mercy thus active--hatred of the intensest kind must rise. For who can bear to have his ways denounced as evil; his views as false; his destiny--perdition; his duty--repentance? Moreover, the Christian has to be the reformer in a world of vested interests. And there is no evil under heaven, from idolatry to drunkenness, from gambling to gaiety, from heresy to vice, but some have an interest in maintaining it. You will not achieve any usefulness of any sort without the cry, “This our craft is in danger!” rising to the lips of those profiting by others ignorance, or servitude, or evil. In these circumstances, however meek and peace-making the saint of God may be, if he is faithful to his Saviour, and to the interests of men, he will suffer from the bitter speech or the deed of hatred of those who resent his whole spirit and activity. (R. Glover.)

Earnestness demanded

During the Crimean War a young chaplain, newly arrived in camp, inquired of a Christian sergeant the best method for carrying on his work, among the men. The sergeant led him to the top of a hill and pointed out the field of action. “Now, sir,” said he, “look around you. See those batteries on the right, and the men at their guns. Hear the roar of the cannon. Look where you will, all are in earnest here. Every man feels that this is a life and death struggle. If we do not conquer the Russians the Russians will conquer us. We are all in earnest here, sir; we are not playing at soldiers. If you would do good, you must be in earnest; an earnest man always wins his way.” Such was the advice of Queen Victoria’s servant to the servant of King Jesus. (A. A. Harmer.)

A recruiting sergeant

In writing the life of Uncle John Vassar, Dr. Gordon has so dealt with the materials at command that the successive Chapter s are made to pourtray the “good soldier of Jesus Christ,” and to enforce the injunction--“Fight the good fight of faith.” Uncle John not only deserves to be called a “good soldier.” He was something more, for, while lighting the Lord’s battles himself, he was an active recruiting sergeant, and never seems to have missed a chance of pressing home the question, “Who is on the Lord’s side?” Accosting a gentleman on one occasion with the familiar question, “My dear friend, do you love Jesus?” he was met with the rejoinder, “I do not know that that concerns you, sir.” Uncle John was too shrewd a tactician to be disconcerted, and at once followed up the assault with the remark, “Oh, yes it does. In these days of rebellion does it not concern every citizen as to which side every other citizen may take? How much more when a world is in rebellion against God, should we be concerned to know who is on the Lord’s side!” In this way he fenced the resentment which the obtrusion seemed likely to provoke, and justified his advance as the anxious inquiry of an interested friend. Resisted or repulsed in his spiritual warfare, Uncle John never appears to have been vanquished. The word defeat was not found in his vocabulary.

Every Christian a soldier

Not only ministers, but laymen, should be Christ’s ambassadors. Must a soldier be an officer in order to fight well? By no means. Minus gold lace and cocked hat, he may do good service. Hard blows may be given, or a sure aim may be taken, by him who is quite destitute of ribbon and medal. Thus is it spiritually. Eminent talent and honourable position are non-essentials in benevolent effort. The humblest warrior in the Saviour’s army can be valiant and victorious. And he ought to be. Excuse here is quite vain. None that are saved have a right to be idle; all are to evangelise. The work is not to be delegated to one order or class. Each is expected to take his share. What should we think of him who refused to rescue a drowning man because he was not connected with the Royal Humane Society? “Let him that heareth,” as well as him that preacheth, “say Come.” (T. R. Stevenson.)

Enemies not to be depised

It is said that the Duke of Wellington on one occasion, when asked why it was that he was so generally on the side of victory, replied that he never despised an enemy.

Every convert a recruit

As the young Hannibal was brought by his father to the altar of his country, and there sworn to life-long hatred of Rome, so should we be, from the hour of our spiritual birth, the sworn enemies of sin, the enlisted warriors of the Cross; to fight on for Jesus till life’s latest hour, when all shall be “more than conquerors through Him that hath loved us.” The Spartan mother, as soon as her child was born, looked upon the babe as having in it the possibilities of share; and the whole training of the Lacedemonians aimed solely at producing good soldiers, who would honour the race from which they sprung. So should we look upon every young convert as a recruit; not merely as one who has been himself saved, but as having within his new-born mature the possibilities of a good soldier of Jesus Christ. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

“In my shirt sleeves”

I am much of the opinion of the soldier who, being brought before the Duke of Wellington and a committee of the House of Lords, on being asked if he had to fight the battle of Waterloo over again how he would like to be dressed, said, “Please, your Lordship, I should like to be in my shirt sleeves.” And, depend upon it, the freest dress is the right costume of war. There is nothing like the shirt sleeves for hard gospel work. Away with that high stock and the stiff coat, in which you find it difficult to fight when you come to close contact with the enemy. You must dispense with pipeclay and bright buttons when it comes to blood, fire, and vapour of smoke. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Christ provides for His soldiers

Our filthy garments are to be taken off; we are to go to the Royal Fountain and wash; we are to go to the Royal Wardrobe to be clothed; we are to go to the Royal Armoury for our equipment; we are to go to the Royal Banqueting House to be fed; we are to go to the Royal Treasury to be paid. Christ’s soldiers have no reason to care about the future. (C. Garret.)

A soldier always

You cannot be a saint on Sundays and a sinner in the week; you cannot be a saint at church and a sinner in the shop; you can not be a saint in Liverpool and a sinner in London. You cannot serve God and Mammon. You are a soldier everywhere or nowhere, anti woe to you if you dishonour your King. (C. Garret.)

The inspiration of a true leader

The personal magnetism of General McLellan over his soldiers in the Civil War was a constant experience. Once when the tide of success seemed to go against the Union forces, and dismay was gradually deepening into despair, his arrival in the camp at night worked a revolution among the troops. The news “General McLellan is here” was caught up and echoed from man to man. Whoever was awake roused his neighbour, eyes were rubbed, and the poor tired fellows sent up such a hurrah as the army of the Potomac never heard before. Shout upon shout went out into the stillness of the night, was taken up along the road, repeated by regiment, brigade, division, and corps, until the roar died in the distance. The effect of this man’s coming upon the army--in sunshine or in rain, darkness or day, victory or defeat--was ever electrical, defying all attempts to account for it. (H. O. Mackey.)

Enduring hardness

It behoves thee not to complain if thou endure hardness; but to complain if thou dost not endure hardness. (Chrysostom.)

The Christian must be prepared for trial and conflict

Some of God’s people seem to forget this. They think they are soldiers on pay days and at reviews: but as soon as the fiery darts begin to fall around them, and the road gets rough and rugged, they fancy they are deserters. A strange mistake this. You are never so much a soldier as when you are marching or fighting. I fear the fault of this mistake lies very much with some of us who may be called recruiting sergeants. In persuading men to enlist we speak much more of the ribbons, the bounty money, and the rewards, than we do of the battle-field and the march. Hence, perhaps, the error. But if we are to blame in this respect our great King is not. The whole of His teaching is in the other direction. He puts all the difficulties fairly before us, and we are exhorted to count the cost, so that we may not be covered with shame at last. (C. Garrett.)

Christian courage

Thomas Garrett, of America, when he was tried and heavily fined for concealing fugitive slaves, and his judge said he hoped it would be a warning to him to have nothing to do with runaway slaves for the future, replied: “Friend, if thou knowest of any poor slave who is coming this way, and needs a friend, thou canst tell him I shall be ready to help him.” (C. Garrett.)

Enduring hardness

The old wrestlers did not decline ten months of laborious and abstemious training to make their bodies supple and their will indomitable; so much so, that “a wrestler’s health” became a proverb. If Plato challenged his disciples--“Shall our children not have energy enough to deny themselves for a much more glorious victory?” (“De Leg.,” 7:340), a greater man than Plato urged, “Now they do it for a corruptible crown, but we for an incorruptible”; and our ardour, self-denial, and moral training, or, as St. Paul calls it, our spiritual gymnastics, should exceed theirs, in some such ratio as our prize exceeds theirs; and thus, “if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” (J. B. Owen, M. A.)

No feather-bed soldiers

A young Christian officer said, “Our heavenly Captain wants no feather-bed soldiers. He wants those who are not afraid of camp bed and marching orders, who don’t mind “roughing it a little by the way, because they know that perfect rest awaits them when their home-call sounds, and their race here is ended.”

A sham battle

At the festival of Treviso, to which the neighbouring towns were invited, the chief feature was the storming of a fortress, defended by the most beautiful ladies and their servants, by noblemen who made war with fruits, flowers, sweetmeats, and perfumes. (H. O. Mackey.)

A good soldier

I remember a story of a French grenadier, who, in a war with the Austrians, was in charge of a small fort commanding a narrow gorge, up which only two of the enemy could climb at a time. When the defenders of the fort heard that the enemy were near, being few in number, they deserted, and left the brave grenadier alone. But he felt he could not give up the place without a struggle, so he barred the doors, raised the drawbridge, and loaded all the muskets left behind by his comrades. Early in the morning, with great labour, the enemy brought up a gun from the valley, and laid it on the fort. But the grenadier made such good use of his loaded muskets that the men in charge of the gun could not hold their position, and were compelled to retire; and he kept them thus at bay all day long. At evening the herald came again to demand the surrender of the fort, or the garrison should be starved out. The grenadier asked for a night for consideration, and in the morning expressed the willingness of the garrison to surrender if they might “go out with all the honours of war.” This, after some demur, was agreed to, and presently the Austrian army below saw a single soldier descending the height with a whole sheaf of muskets on his shoulder, with which he marched through their lines and then threw them down. “Where is the garrison?” asked the Austrian commander, astonished. “I am the garrison,” replied the brave man, and they were so delighted with his plucky resistance that the whole army saluted him, and he was afterwards entitled the “First Grenadier of France.” (Major Smith.)

Luxury unfits for soldiership

The Commons of England being very importunate with Edward

IV. to make war with France, he consented to satisfy their importunity, though willing rather to enjoy the fruits of his wars and toils, and spend the rest of his days in peace. When he took the field he ordered to accompany him a dozen of fat, capon-eating burgesses, who had been most zealous for that expedition. These he employed in all military services, to lie in the open fields, stand whole nights upon the guard, and caused their quarters to be beaten up with frequent alarms, which was so intolerable to those fat gentry accustomed to lie on soft down, and that could hardly sit on a session’s bench without nodding, that a treaty being desired by King Louis, none were so forward to press the acceptance of his offers, or to excuse so little done by the king with so great preparations. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

A war for fireside

“Home guards to the front!” was the cry of ‘65. Look at them, slight lads stooping under their heavy muskets, decrepit men tottering on with cane in one hand and gun in the other; convalescent, furloughed soldiers rising like a wounded war-horse. And has war come to this? Yes, and worse. It has seen the nursing mother, and feeble, aged women, and delicate girls, defending the parapet. The hearth must be protected, and the husband, the little lad, and the white-haired father are gone, dead, dead in their blood! Women are to the front only because there are no men, none at all. But wait; there is a war for home and fireside, a war for rights more dear, and from foes more cruel, in which women face its fury, not because the men have fallen first, but because men shirk. Yes, men shirk the discipline, the hardships, the responsibility of this war. Not all men, thank God! yet many do. Happy in their homes, receiving the blessings of Christianity, they are willing to see the wives and mothers fight the battle. The hosts of hell, with black flag unfurled, surround us, menacing the peace of home, threatening slavery and death. With dreadful malice and cruelty they contend for every inch of ground. It is a battle remorseless, ceaseless, momentous. It appeals to all that is manly in men to take their places in it, to submit to its discipline, to endure its hardships, to shoulder its responsibility. (R. S. Barrett.)

A good soldier of Jesus Christ

I. A soldier must be enlisted.

II. The soldier after having been enlisted has to be drilled--that is to say, he has to learn his business. A good soldier is not to be made in a day; there must be time and pains spent upon him; he must be trained and taught, and that very carefully, before he is fit to fight against the enemies of his country. And it is just the same with Christian soldiers. They have to learn to act together, so as to support and help one another in the conflict with evil. And then they have to learn the use of their weapons--of one more especially, which is called the “sword of the Spirit.”

III. We have enemies to fight with--real enemies, not imaginary ones: “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” In order to enable you to understand what is meant by fighting against the “flesh” and “the devil,” I will tell you a story, or rather, two stories, both of them true. Some years ago there lived a good and holy man, who was a most useful minister of the gospel. This good man’s Christian name was William. Now when he was a little boy, about four or five years old, he one day was left in the dining-room alone, and on the table was a plate of sweet cakes, of which he was particularly fond, but which he had been forbidden to touch. Somebody coming quietly into the room found the boy looking at the cakes, his little hands tightly clasped together behind his back, and saying to himself over and over again, as if he were saying a lesson, “Willie mustn’t take them, ‘cause they are not Willie’s own.” Now this was a victory over the “flesh.” The flesh said, “These cakes are very nice, Willie; just smell them. No one will see you, Willie, if you do take one. Mamma will not miss the cakes, Willie, there are so many of them.” But little Willie would not do wrong, although he was sorely tempted to it. He fought with the “flesh,” and came off conqueror. But there was one sad occasion on which Willie, now grown up to be a tall, handsome lad of seventeen, was beaten by the enemy. There was a servant in the family who was a wicked man; and wicked men, whether they know it or not, are agents for the devil, and do his work. This servant, annoyed at his young master’s goodness, said once, in a sneering sort of way, and in William’s hearing, “Oh! as for Master William, he’s not man enough to swear.” The taunt--it was just like a fiery arrow shot from Satan’s bow--stung the young lad beyond endurance; and for the only time in his life, I believe, he took God’s holy name in vain, and swore a terrible oath. Whenever William spoke of the matter--years, long years, after--it was with expressions of the bitterest regret, though he felt in his heart that God had forgiven him. Well, that was a fight with the devil in which the devil was the victor. The Christian soldier was beaten, for the moment. Satan, through the mouth of one of his servants, triumphed over him.

IV. The apostle tells us that we are to be good soldiers of Jesus Christ. A “good” soldier obeys orders strictly; does not get tired of his duty, but sticks to it; and never dreams of turning his back and running away when the enemy is coming.

V. And now let me tell you by what means we are to become good soldiers. A good general makes good soldiers. He infuses his own spirit into them, and leads them to victory. And we have a good general, the Lord Jesus Christ. Put yourselves, then, into His hands, and He will make you what you ought to be. I wish you especially to notice that you cannot be a true Christian warrior without possessing that loyal devotion to Christ which springs from love. (G. Calthrop, M. A.)

A good soldier

Much as war is at variance with the spirit of Christianity, there are few things to which the Scriptures more frequently allude when treating of the spiritual life. There is reason for this; for, notwithstanding all that is objectionable in the soldier’s occupation, there are many things in the personal qualities of the man which pertain to the very noblest type of character. That which makes him a good soldier would also, if combined with other elements, make him a higher style of man.

I. The first thing required of a good soldier is hearty service. “One volunteer is worth many pressed men.” The adage was singularly verified during the war between Austria and Prussia. The Austrian soldiers fought well, but not with the enthusiasm of men who cordially approve of the object for which they fight. Drawn from various nationalities--believing, some of them, that the war was hostile to the dearest interests of their country--they were not so much free agents as machines forced into the strife; and this fact, perhaps, more than bad generalship or insufficient equipment, accounted for their signal defeat. Whereas the Prussians, although not enlisted voluntarily in the first instance, nevertheless entered voluntarily into the conflict. With an appreciation of the purposes of the war which few gave them credit, believing that it was to promote the much-coveted unity of the Fatherland, they fought with an enthusiasm which is the surest pledge of victory; and to this, quite as much as to the superiority of their arms and their leaders, did they owe their splendid triumphs. And so to be good soldiers of Jesus Christ, we must freely and enthusiastically engage in His service.

II. The second thing required of a good soldier is implicit obedience to his commander’s orders. Much has been said of the drill and discipline of the Prussian soldiers as accounting for that marvellous succession of victories which, culminating in Sadowa, changed the map of Europe. The far-seeing men who contemplated and conducted the war, with a keen appreciation of the means by which their end was to be gained, had been drilling most severely for years, until the soldier had become a kind of living machine. And that is really what is required in order to good soldiership.

III. A third quality essential to the good soldier is faith in his leader. In the war to which we have referred, the Austrian soldiers, after two or three defeats attributable to mismanagement, lost all faith in the capacity of their general, and not only ceased to fight with spirit, but were forthwith changed into a panic-stricken rabble. Even the brave Italians, with all their enthusiasm, recovered slowly from their defeat at Custozza, because of the manifest bungling which brought about the disaster. Whereas the Prussians, having in their leaders men whose clearness of vision and capacity for command were equal to their own fighting efficiency and power of endurance, do not seem ever to have faltered in their victorious career. Such confidence is manifestly indispensable. The private soldier knows little or nothing of the plan of the battle in which he is an actor, knows not why he is led into this position or that, or how he is to be led out of it, knows not why he is required to do this or that; but his general knows, and unless he has full confidence in the men who are directing the movements of the troops he will fight with very little courage, and prove himself but a poor soldier. And in our warfare we are equally required to have faith in our King.

IV. A fourth quality is careful training. In the war referred to, the best trained and most intelligent men proved the best fighters. Intelligence consists with, and is conducive to, the highest state of discipline; and of the human machine, which the soldier must needs become, the thinking is by far the most efficient specimen. So in our warfare the best soldier, other things being equal, is the man whose mind is most thoroughly trained. The servants of Christ should seek to understand the requirements of their time, and prepare to meet them. The conditions of warfare and the works required of the Christian soldier now are not what they were once; and unless men have understanding of the times, they may, though with the best intentions, render very bungling service. The worthier the master, the more efficient should his servants be.

V. Heroic effort and patient endurance are necessary. We cannot understand in what sense they are soldiers of Christ who enter His service simply with a view to their own comfort. Their notion is that they are to have a nice pleasant time, plenty of sweet experiences, and no trials, with temporal comforts to match the unruffled smoothness of their spiritual course. So much has been said of making the best of both worlds, that the highest con ception which many form of Christianity is that it is a system which rewards men in the next world for seeking to be comfortable in this. Young men should under stand that a soldier’s life is one of warfare and endurance. In order to your being good soldiers of Jesus Christ, there must be--

VI. Concerted action. Union is strength, insomuch that one small band of men, acting together for one purpose and under one head, will scatter thousands who have neither leader nor organisation. (W. Landels, D. D.)

A good soldier of Jesus Christ

Many men, many minds. In reference to what a Christian is there have been very many and diverse opinions. Paul’s description of a Christian in the text is that of a soldier, and that means something very far different either from a religious fop, whose best delight is music and millinery, or a theological critic who makes a man an offender for a word, or a spiritual glutton who cares for nothing but a lifelong enjoyment of the fat things full of marrow, or an ecclesiastical slumberer who longs only for peace for himself. The Christian is a self-sacrificing man as the soldier must be. A soldier is a serving man. A soldier is full often a suffering man. Once again, the true soldier is an ambitious being. Paul does not exhort Timothy to be a common, or ordinary soldier, but to be a “good soldier of Jesus Christ”; for all soldiers, and all true soldiers, may not be good soldiers. David had many soldiers, and good soldiers too, but you remember it was said of many, “These attained not unto the first three.” Now Paul, if I read him rightly, would have Timothy try to be of the first three, to be a good soldier.

I. We shall endeavour to describe a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

1. We must begin with this fundamental--he must be loyal to his King.

2. He is obedient to his Captain’s commands.

3. To conquer wilt be his ruling passion.

Wellington sent word to his troops one night, “Ciudad Rodrigo must be taken to-night.” And what do you think was the commentary of the British soldiers appointed for the attack? “Then,” said they all, “we will do it.” So when our great Captain sends round, as he doth to us, the word of command, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature,” if we were all good soldiers of the cross, we should say at once, “We will do it.” The passion for victory with the soldier often makes him forget everything else. Before the battle of Waterloo, Picton had had two of his ribs smashed in at Quatre Bras, but he concealed this serious injury, and, though suffering intensest agony, he rode at the head of his troop, and led one of the greatest charges which decided the fortunes of the day. He never left his post, but rode on till a ball crushed in his skull and penetrated to the brains. Then in the hot fight the hero fell. In that same battle one of our lieutenants, in the early part of the day, had his left fore-arm broken by a shot; he could not, therefore, hold the reins in his hand, but he seized them with his mouth, and fought on till another shot broke the upper part of the arm to splinters, and it had to be amputated; but within two days there he was, with his arm still bleeding, and the wound all raw, riding at the head of his division. Brave things have been done amongst the soldiers of our country--Oh, that such brave things were common among the armed men of the Church militant!

4. A good soldier is very brave at a charge.

5. A good soldier is like a rock under attack.

6. He derives his strength from on high.

This has been true even of some common soldiers, for religious men when they have sought strength from God have been all the braver in the day of conflict. I like the story of Frederick the Great; when he overheard his favourite general engaged in prayer, and was about to utter a sneering remark, the fine old man, who never feared a foe, and did not even fear his majesty’s jest, said, “Your Majesty, I have just been asking aid from your Majesty’s great ally.” He had been waiting upon God. In the battle of Salamanca, when Wellington bade one of his officers advance with his troops, and occupy a gap, which the Duke perceived in the lines of the French, the general rode up to him, and said, “My lord, I will do the work, but first give me a grasp of that conquering right hand of yours.” He received a hearty grip, and away he rode to the deadly encounter. Often has my soul said to her Captain, “My Lord, I will do that work if Thou wilt give me a grip of Thy conquering right hand.” Oh, what power it puts into a man when he gets a grip of Christ, and Christ gets a grip of him!

II. Thus I have described a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Give me a few minutes while I exhort you to be such.

1. I exhort you who are soldiers of Christ to be good soldiers, because many of you have been so. Dishonour not your past, fall not from your high standing. “Forward” be your motto.

2. Be good soldiers, for much depends upon it.

3. Good soldiers we ought to be, for it is a grand old cause that is at stake.

4. I implore you to be good soldiers of Jesus, when you consider the fame that has preceded you. A soldier when he receives his colours finds certain words embroidered on them, to remind him of the former victories of the regiment in which he serves. Look at the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, and see the long list of the triumphs of the faithful. Remember how prophets and apostles served God; recollect how martyrs joyfully laid down their lives; look at the long line of the reformers and the confessors; remember your martyred sires and covenanting fathers, and by the grace of God I beseech you walk not unworthy of your noble lineage.

5. Be good soldiers because of the victory which awaits you.

6. Besides, and lastly, if I want another argument to make you good soldiers, remember your Captain, the Captain whose wounded hands and pierced feet are tokens of his love to you. Redeemed from going down to the pit, what can you do sufficiently to show your gratitude? Assured of eternal glory by-and-by, how can you sufficiently prove that you feel your indebtedness. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Fellow soldiers

Let no one say that he has no taste for warfare. Each one of us is pledged to fight. Each one of us bears the sign of the Cross, which binds him to be Christ’s soldier till his life’s end. Once, in the old wars, an English drummer-boy was taken prisoner by the French. They amused themselves by making the lad play on his instrument, and presently one asked him to sound the retreat. The drummer answered proudly that he had never learnt how to do that! So in our warfare there is no retreating. It was the boast of Napoleon’s soldiers--the guard dies, but never yields! We Christians are bidden to be faithful unto death, and Jesus promises us a crown of life. When Maximian became Emperor of the West he did his utmost to destroy Christianity. There was in the Roman army a famous legion of ten thousand men, called the Thebian Legion. It was formed entirely of Christians. Once, just before going into battle with the enemy, the Emperor commanded the Thebian Legion to sacrifice to idols. Their leader, in the name of his ten thousand soldiers, refused. The Emperor then ordered them to be decimated--that is, every tenth man to be killed. Still they were firm, and again, the second time, the cruel order was given for every tenth man to be slain. Fully armed, with their glittering eagles flashing on their helmets, the Christian soldiers stood in the perfect discipline of Rome, ready to die, but not to yield. Again they were ordered to sacrifice, and the brave answer was returned, “No; we were Christ’s soldiers before we were Maximian’s.” Then the furious Emperor gave the order to kill them all! Calmly the remaining soldiers laid down their arms, and knelt whilst the other troops put them to the sword. So died the Thcbian Legion, faithful unto death! Each one of us is in one sense a martyr, a witness for the Lord Jesus Christ. Those of us who bear hard words, and cruel judgments, and harsh treatment, patiently, rendering not evil for evil, are martyrs for Jesus. Again, as fellow soldiers, let us remember the Name under which we serve. To a Roman soldier of old the name of Caesar was a watchword, which made him ready to do or die. In the wars of the middle ages, when our countrymen went into battle the cry was, “St. George for Merry England,” and every soldier was ready to answer with his sword. They tell us that the name of the great Duke of Wellington was alone enough to restore courage and spirit to the flagging troops. Once when a regiment was wavering in the fight, the message was passed along the ranks, “The Duke is coming,” and in an instant the men stood firm, whilst one old soldier exclaimed, “The Duke--God bless him! I had rather see him than a whole battalion.” The name of our Leader is one indeed to inspire perfect faith, courage, and hope. In all ages certain regiments have had their distinguishing names. Among the Romans of old time there was one famous band of warriors known as the Thundering Legion. In later times there have been regiments known as the “Invincibles,” the “Die-hards.” One famous corps has for its motto a Latin sentence meaning “By Land and Sea,” and another has one word for its badge, meaning “Everywhere.” These mottoes remind the soldier that the regiment to which he belongs has fought and conquered, served and suffered, all over the world. The proud badge of the county of Kent is “Invicta”--unconquered; that of Exeter is “The Ever-faithful City.” All these titles belong of right to our army, the Church of Jesus Christ. It is said that in New Zealand, some years ago, many of our troops were mortally wounded by concealed natives, who hid them selves in holes in the earth, and thence darted their deadly spears upward against the unsuspecting soldier. So our spiritual enemy, Satan, hides himself in a thousand different places, and wounds us with some sudden temptation when we are least aware. (H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, M. A.)

The children’s crusade

I suppose many of you have read of those strange wars called the Crusades? They were undertaken to deliver the Holy Sepulchre of Jesus at Jerusalem out of the hands of the heathen. Thousands of brave men, besides their friends and followers, went to the Holy Land, at different times, to fight in the Crusades. The warriors wore a blood red cross on their clothing, from which they got their name of Crusaders, and their motto was, “The Will of God.” It was a very good motto, but not a very true one for them, for I am afraid they did many cruel and wicked things which certainly were not the will of God; and thousands of people perished miserably abroad, who might have been doing useful work at home. Well, amongst these Crusades there was one called the Children’s Crusade. A boy in France went about singing in his own language--

“Jesus, Lord, repair our loss,

Restore to us Thy Holy Cross.”

Crowds of children followed him, singing the same words. No bolts, no bars, no fear of fathers, or love of mothers, could held them back, they determined to go to the Holy Land, to work wonders there! This mad crusade had a very sad ending; of course young children could do nothing, being without leaders, or experience, or discipline, and they all perished miserably either by land or sea. Now I want you to think about another Children’s Crusade, in which you are all engaged. What do you think is required of a good soldier?

I. First of all he must be brave. We all like to hear about acts of bravery, like that of the little midshipman who spiked the Russian guns in the Crimean war; or of the boy Ensign, Anstruther, who at the battle of the Alma planted the colors of the 23rd Regiment on the wall of the great Redoubt, and then fell, shot dead, with the colours drooping over him like a pall. But the courage which is thought most of in heaven is the courage to do right. I have read a story of a wounded soldier lying on a battlefield, whose mouth had been struck by a shot. When the doctor placed a cup of water to his mouth, the man was eagerly going to drink, when he stopped and said, “My mouth is all bloody, it will make the cup bad for the others.” That soldier, in giving up self for the sake of others, was more of a hero then than when charging against the foe. Try to remember that story, children, and if you are tempted to do anything selfish or wrong, stop and think, “It will make it bad for the others.”

II. You must expect to find enemies and difficulties if you do what is right. Every one was against Daniel because he prayed to God. Every one was against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, because they would not bow down to an idol. But God was on their side. There was once a famous man of God named Athanasius. He was bold enough to maintain the true faith of Christ against Emperors, and Bishops, and he was driven into banishment over and over again. Some of his friends advised him to give in, for, said they, the world is against you; “Then,” answered Athanasius, “I am against the world.” Now you must, as Christ’s soldiers, “learn to suffer and be strong.” To win a victory we must fight, to get to the end of a journey we must bear fatigue. Let me tell you a fable about that. Three animals, an ermine, a beaver, and a wild boar, made up their minds to seek a better country, and a new home. After a long and weary journey, they came in sight of a beautiful land of trees and gardens, and rivers of water. The travellers were delighted at the sight, but they noticed that before they could enter this beautiful land, they must pass through a great mass of water, filled with mud and slime, and all kinds of snakes and other reptiles. The ermine was the first to try the passage. Now the ermine has a very delicate fur coat, and when he found how foul and muddy the water was, he drew back, and said, that the country was very beautiful, but that he would rather lose it than soil his beautiful coat. Then the beaver proposed that as he was a good architect, as you know beavers are, he should build a bridge across the lake, and so in about two months they might get across safely. But the wild boar looked scornfully at his companions, and plunging into the water, he made his way, in spite of mud and snakes, to the other side, saying to his fellow-travellers, “Paradise is not for cowards, but for the brave.” Dear children, between you and the Paradise of God there lies a long journey, the enemy’s country, where the devil and his angels will fight against you, where there are deep pools of trouble to be gone through, rough, stony roads of temptation to be traversed, high rocks of difficulty to be climbed: but don’t be afraid, only be brave, and go forward, and follow Jesus year leader, and you will be able to say, as St. Paul said, “Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

III. Well, we have seen that soldiers must be brave, what else must they be? obedient. God told Saul to do a certain thing, and he did not, and God would no longer have him as a soldier. Do you remember what was said to him? “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice.” (H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, M. A.)

The good soldiers

The question before us is,--How may we become good soldiers of Jesus Christ?

I. We must wear the uniform of Christ. This uniform is not made up of different-coloured cloth, such as we see other soldiers wear. No; but it is made up of the tempers, or dispositions, which form their character. To wear the uniform of Jesus, then, is to have the same mind, or spirit, or temper that He had.

II. The second thing for us to do, if we would be good soldiers of Jesus Christ, is to--obey the orders of Jesus. Some time ago, a largo ship was going from England to the East Indies. She was carrying a regiment of soldiers. When they were about half-way through their voyage, the vessel sprang a leak, and began to fill with water. The lifeboats were launched and made ready, but there were not enough of them to save all on board the ship. Only the officers of the ship, the cabin passengers, and some of the crew, could be taken in the boats. The soldiers had to be left on board, to go down with the ship. The officers determined to die with their men. The colonel was afraid the men would get unruly if they had nothing to do. That he might prevent this he ordered them to prepare for parade. Soon they all appeared in full dress. He set the regimental band on the quarter-deck, with orders to keep on playing lively airs. Then he formed his men in close ranks on the deck. With his sword drawn in his hand, he took his place at their head. Every officer and man is at his post. The vessel is gradually sinking; but they stand steady at their post, each man keeping step. And then, just as the vessel is settling for its last plunge, and death is rushing in upon them, the colonel cries,--“Present arms!” and that whole regiment of brave men go down into their watery grave, presenting arms as death approached them. Those were good soldiers. They had learned to obey orders. But this is a hard lesson to learn. Several boys were playing marbles. In the midst of their sport it began to rain. One of the boys, named Freddie, stopped and said, “Boys, I must go home. Mother told me not to stay out in the rain.” “Your mother--fudge!” said two or three of the boys. “The rain won’t hurt you any more than it will us.” Freddie turned on them with a look of pity, and yet with the courage of a hero, while he calmly said, “I’ll not disobey my mother for any of you.” That was the spirit of a good soldier. After a great battle once, the general was talking to his officers about the events of the day. He asked them who had done the best that day. Some spoke of one man who had fought very bravely, and some of another. “No,” said the general, “you are all mistaken. The best man in the field to-day was a soldier who was just lifting up his arms to strike an enemy, but when he heard the trumpet sound a retreat, he checked himself, and dropped his arm without striking the blow. That perfect and ready obedience to the will of his general is the noblest thing that has been done to-day.”

III. We must follow the example of Jesus. When Alexander the Great was leading his army over some mountains once, they found their way all stopped up with ice and snow. His soldiers were tired out with hard marching, and so disheartened with the difficulties before them, that they halted. It seemed as if they would rather lie down and die than try to go on any farther. When Alexander saw this, he did not begin to scold the men, and storm at them. Instead of this, he got down from his horse, laid aside his cloak, took up a pickaxe, and, without saying a word to any one, went quietly to work, digging away at the ice. As soon as the officers saw this, they did the same. The men looked on in surprise for a few moments, and then, forgetting how tired they were, they went to work with a will, and pretty soon they got through all their difficulties. Those were good soldiers, because they followed the example of their leader. (Richard Newton, D. D.)

A good soldier

I. What is implied in being a soldier?

1. A soldier is a person wire has enlisted in an army. Had looked at the reasons for and against entering the army, and at last he enlisted.

2. He is the property of the king. Gives up his free agency. Gives up his very name. Known and called by the number he bears.

3. He is provided for by the king. Must take off his own clothes, whether of best broadcloth or corduroy. Must be clothed, and fed, and armed by the king.

4. He must always wear his regimentals. A soldier can always be recognised as such.

5. He is prepared for trial and conflict. Soldiers are the result of war, and if there were no war, there would be no soldiers. He enlisted to fight. For this purpose he is armed, and trained, and drilled.

II. What is implied in being a soldier of Christ? It is implied that Christ is a King, that He has enemies, that He has an army, and that the person spoken of belongs to this army. I have to glance at the ground we have already passed--You have enlisted, etc.

III. What is implied in being a good soldier of Christ? There are soldiers and soldiers. There are some who are idle and dissipated: a disgrace to the profession to which they belong. Others only swell the numbers and fill up the ranks, they look very well at reviews, but don’t count for much in the battle-field. Others are so true and faithful that they cover the army to which they belong with glory.

1. A good soldier is thoroughly loyal. Not a mercenary, fighting for pay. Proud of his uniform, his name, his king.

2. Patriotic. Loves his country. Every soldier is his comrade. The defeat of the army is his sorrow; its success his joy.

3. Obedient. He may be at home in the midst of his family--a telegram comes; by the next train he leaves to join the army, perhaps to cross the seas and perish in a distant land.

4. Earnest.

5. Brave.

6. Patient. Not enlisted for a day, but for life. Often put where there is nothing to excite or gratify ambition. There will be the long wearisome march, or the still more wearisome halt. While his comrades are assaulting cities and winning victories, he has to stand and watch, or lie and suffer.

7. Self-denying.

8. Modest. His motto, Deeds not words. It is said that the word “glory” is not found in the despatches of the Duke of Wellington. He merely states what the army had done. So with the Christian. What are you? A rebel? Your defeat is certain. A deserter? Return. A penitent, longing to be enlisted in Christ’s army? Come. A soldier? Be “a good soldier.” (C. Garrett.)

A good soldier of Jesus Christ

The contrast between the saints of the Old Testament and of the New Testament is very great, especially in the relation which they bore to war. No great saint or apostle of the New Testament was a soldier. But in the Old Testament we read of the faith of Abraham, of the wisdom of Moses, of the courage of Joshua, of the nobility of David, of the piety of Josiah, of the zeal of Nehemiah; and all these had at some parts of their lives to go forth to the battle-field. But it was not so with Peter, James, John, Paul, and the rest of the early disciples. The distinction is to be accounted for partly by the circumstances in which they severally lived. In Old Testament and primitive times men had to obtain a footing for their very life, and to contend for national existence. But in the time of Christ the Roman Government secured the safety of person and property, and within certain limits left the Jew to indulge in his national customs. So, in the history of our own country, we see how greatly circumstances have changed. In the time of Queen Elizabeth Englishmen of every creed were compelled to have the soldierly spirit unless they wished to succumb to the Spaniard. And in the time of the Stuarts men were obliged to keep their armour bright unless they were prepared to put their liberties at the mercy of a tyrant. Thus we have in both periods of English history, and also during the struggles of Jewish history, saints who were also and literally soldiers. Bat there is a deeper reason for the change which has come about. And that reason is to be seen in the gentle and forgiving spirit which is inculcated by the Christian religion. The religion of Christ banishes war by taking away its occasions and its causes. It bids its adherents still enter on a battle. It utilises those pugnacious principles which exist in us all, by confronting us with the great moral struggle between good and evil, where every man must choose his side. There are certain plain and palpable qualifications of a good soldier of Christ which we will point out.

I. A good soldier understands his captain.

II. Understands his weapons.

III. Understands his place in the battle.

IV. Loves the cause in which he fights. (S. Pearson, M. A.)

Christianity and soldiers

The metaphor which the apostle here chooses to describe the work of a primitive Christian bishop cannot bat strike us as remarkable. Himself a servant of the Prince of Peace, and writing to another servant of the Prince of Peace, he might, we may think, have gone somewhere else for his metaphor than to the profession of arms. How are we to explain the honour which the apostle puts upon the military profession when he points to a soldier as embodying, at any rate, some of the qualities which he desires to see in a ruler of the Church of God? We cannot say, by way of reply, that the metaphor is so accidental or so singular that stress ought not in fairness to be laid on it, for there is a great deal more religions language with a military colour or flavour about it, not merely in the Old Testament, but in the New. The relation between the military profession and religion thus traceable in Scripture reappears in the history of the Church. If, in her higher moments, the Church has done her best to check or condemn bloodshed, as when St. Ambrose excommunicated the Roman Emperor Theodosius, at the very height of his power, for the slaughter of Thessalonica, she has distinguished between the immediate instruments in such slaughter and the monarchs or the captains who were really responsible for it. If, in the first centuries of the faith, Christians were often unwilling to serve in the Roman ranks, and in some eases preferred martyrdom to doing so, the reason was that such service was then so closely bound up with pagan usages that to be an obedient soldier was to be a renegade from the Christian faith. When this difficulty no longer presented itself, Christians, like other citizens, were ready to wear weapons and to serve in the wars, and so long as warfare is defensive--devoted, not to the aggrandisement of empire, but to maintaining the peace and the police of the world--the Christian Church, while deploring its horrors, cannot but recognise in it at times a terrible necessity. When the great Bishop Leo of Rome or the great soldier Charles Martel set their faces against the destructive inroads of barbarism, they had behind them all that was best and purest in Christendom; and the rise of the military orders, the Knights of the Temple and the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, marks a yet closer intimacy, the form of which was determined, no doubt, by the ideas of the twelfth century rather than of our own, between a soldier’s career and the profession of religion. We cannot pass that noble home of the law, as it is now, the Temple, without remembering that it was once tenanted by an Order of soldiers, bound by religious obligations, devoted to the rescue and the care of those sacred spots which must always be dearest to the heart of Christendom. Here, then, let us ask ourselves the question, What are the qualities which are common to a good soldier and to a good Christian? The answer will explain and will justify the language of the apostle.

I. The first is, that each, the Christian and the soldier, does his work well in the exact degree of his devotion to his commander. The greatest generals have been distinguished by the power of inspiring an unbounded confidence in and attachment to their persons. This is true in different senses of Alexander, of Hannibal, of Caesar, of Napoleon. And what is the deepest secret of the Christian life if it be not an unbounded confidence in the Captain of our salvation, Jesus Christ our Lord, devotion to His person, undoubting belief in His Word, readiness to do and to endure whatever He may order?

II. And the second virtue in a soldier is courage. In the conventional language of the world, a soldier is always gallant, just as a lawyer is learned, just as a clergyman is reverend. Whatever be a man’s real character, the title belongs to him by right of his profession. There are virtues in which a soldier may be wanting without damage to his professional character, but courage is not one of these.

III. And a third excellence in a soldier is the sense of discipline. Without discipline an army becomes an unmanageable horde, one part of which is as likely as not to turn its destructive energies against another, and nothing strikes the eye of a civilian as he watches a regiment making its way through one of our great thoroughfares in London more than the contrast which is presented by the unvarying, I had almost said the majestic, regularity of its onward movement and the bewildering varieties of pace, gesture, direction, costume of the motley crowd of curious civilians who flit spasmodically around it. Discipline in an army is not merely the perfection of form, it is an essential condition of power. Numbers and resources cannot atone for its absence, but it may easily with small resources make numbers and greater resources powerless.

IV. And one more characteristic of the military spirit is a sense of comradeship. All over the world a soldier recognises a brother in another soldier. Not only members of the same regiment, of the same corps, of the same army and country, but even combatants in opposing armies are conscious of a bond which unites them, in spite of their antagonism; and the officers and men of hostile armies have been known to engage in warm expressions of mutual fellowship as soon as they were free to do so by the proclamation of peace. This generous and chivalrous feeling which survives the clash of arms confers on a soldier’s bearing an elevation which we cannot mistake. When, in the later years of his life, Marshal Soult, who had been in command in the Peninsula, visited this country, he came to St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the monument which most interested him, and which then had been recently erected in the South Transept, was that of Sir John Moore, the hero of Corunna. “Soult,” says one who witnessed it, “stood for some time before the monument; he could not speak; he could hardly control himself; he dissolved in a flood of tears.” Certainly it was meant to be so m the Church. “By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one towards another.” But there is an important difference between the services. The one terminates, if not before, yet certainly and altogether at the moment of quitting this earthly scene. The last possible point of contact that even a Wellington can have with the profession of his choice is seen in the device on his coffin, in the epitaph on his grave. The other service--that of Jesus Christ--although under changed conditions lasts on into that world to which death is but an introduction, and which He, our Captain, has opened to us by His death on the cross, by His resurrection from the dead. (Canon Liddon.)

Endurance

Here the apostle is not thinking of the soldier on the field of battle engaged in conflict with the enemy. His exhortation to Timothy is not to fight well, but to endure, or, as the same word is rendered elsewhere (2 Timothy 1:8), to suffer affliction well. He thinks of the soldier being drilled and disciplined for the fight. As a prisoner at Rome he would be, very probably, a daily eye-witness of the severe training through which the emperor’s troops had to pass. These were good soldiers of Caesar. They were true patriots, laying upon the altar of their country their very lives. Now Timothy was, like the apostle himself, a soldier; but the soldier of avery different King from Caesar, and had a very different warfare to wage than such wars as the Roman soldiery were so frequently engaged in. He was the soldier of Jesus Christ.

I. Let me remind you that there is hardness to be endured by all of us. Christianity means to-day as it always did, continual cross-bearing. The word “duty” has still a rough edge. For example, here is a Christian merchant who has so many shares in a concern which he has for some time back had good reason for thinking is in a rather shaky condition, and an opportunity occurs for his selling out, and that at a good price. Just at present a few hundred pounds in hard cash would be of immense service to him in his business. But no, he won’t sell. He means to be the true Christian gentleman, and he feels that that he cannot be and sell as good that what he has his doubts about. Yet it is hard, especially if one can see at his back a wife and so many daughters inclining rather to be extravagant, and who cannot appreciate “father’s scruples.” This is his cross, and as a good soldier of Jesus Christ he bears it. Come what may, he will be honest--will not finger a shilling that does not come to him lawfully. I think, then, that in the region of commercial morality those of us who belong thereto will find occasion for the exercise of the precept, “Thou, therefore, endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.”

II. Let me see if I can give the true word of direction; if I can at least indicate to you the spirit in which we are to endure. I think Paul does this himself for us. We are to endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. That is, we also, like Timothy--and like those good soldiers at Rome which Paul saw--are to take to our task kindly. We are not to despise the cross that is laid upon us. We are not to run out of the way of duty. We are not to rebel when our Master chastens.

III. Let me see if I can say anything that may help to stimulate us to dare and do the right, So that we may not repeat the mistakes of the past which have brought to us so much misery and unrest. Observe, then, what Paul says--“As a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” That is, as a soldier under Jesus Christ. Think of that name--Jesus Christ. Can we for a moment suppose that He would give an unkind command or put upon us an unnecessary burden? Jesus! Why the name suggests all that is kindest, and noblest, and gentlest, and truest. But there is one other thought here I should like to take up and lay upon your hearts, “As a good soldier of Jesus Christ”--that is, of Jesus Christ as our Leader. He is not the Master to say “Go.” His way is always to say “Come.” The heaviest cross ever borne was that which He bore. (Adam Scott.)

Moral soldiership

I. Let us understand the meaning of the injunction, “endure hardness.” The reference is to the life of privation and suffering which a soldier, far more in those times than now, had to undergo, and which in all times he is expected to bear without murmuring, to endure willingly, as a part of that profession which he has voluntarily embraced. Endurance is not merely bearing suffering, but bearing it manfully. To bear hardship with the spirit of a hero is to “endure hardness as a good soldier.” Samuel Rutherford, when in prison, used to date his letters from “Christ’s Palace, Aberdeen,” and when Madam Guyon was confined in the castle of Vincennes, she said, “It seems as if I were a little bird whom the Lord has placed in u cage, and that I have nothing now to do but sing.” Paul, too, did not tell his son in the faith to do more than he had done himself.

II. The Christian’s profession, as a soldier, implies a voluntary change of position in life.

III. It is now nearly universally allowed that an intelligent acquaintance with the plans of the general, and with the purposes for which the battle is fought, or the campaign undertaken, by begetting confidence in his leader, enables the soldier to render more efficient service. So in proportion as a Christian grows in the knowledge of God and of His plans for the redemption of our world as revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, in that proportion he throws his whole soul into the fight. Four special conditions in which a soldier is called upon to “endure hardness.”

1. In standing his ground. Wellington brought peace to Europe by his stand at Waterloo. To retire would have been disgrace, to advance would have been destruction. Holding his position brought victory. The battle of Inkermann was won by an eight hours’ resistance of six thousand men to sixty thousand. So a Christian soldier often finds himself so hotly assaulted by the world, the flesh, and the devil, that he is unable to advance a foot. But a firm, resisting stand is conquest.

2. A soldier must endure hardness in marching. The chief care of one who has a long march before him is to be well shod. If this be not attended to, even things so insignificant as thorns and briars will occasion suffering, and may unfit the soldier for the fight. So the lesser vexations and petty cares and trials of patience in everyday life, if not guarded against, will weary and wound the “feet of the soul,” as Bishop Home calls the affections, and, footsore and wearied, he will be ill-prepared for those special encounters with the enemy to which he is always liable.

3. The soldier must endure hardness in action.

4. Although many an earthly soldier endures who is never crowned, no soldier of Christ is overlooked in the day of victory. The only condition is endurance. (W. Harris.)

Soldiers of Christ

It sometimes happens that a verse in our English Bible contains a Scriptural rule of the utmost value, though it represents neither the best reading nor the accurate translation. Such is the case with this text. The true translation in reading it is: “Share, my son, in my suffering as a fair soldier of Jesus Christ”; and yet the words “endure hardness” convey a most valuable general lesson, and involve the exhortation of the entire context. Perhaps some careless epicurean man of the world, perhaps some envious fashionable woman of the world, perhaps some easy, self-indulgent, godless youth asks me, “Why should I endure hardness? Life has troubles enough in store; why should I add to them? There is no religion in making myself uncomfortable; how can God be pleased by self-denials which will only be a burden to me?”

1. My first answer to your question is, Do it for your own sakes because we men cannot live like beasts to be cloyed with honey; because sickness and satiety are the just nemesis of self-indulgence; because, by the very constitution of the nature God has given you, it is a bad thing as well as ruinous to all earthly happiness that the body should be pampered, since where the body is pampered the spirit is almost necessarily starved. We have bodies; but we are spirits. He who would truly live must walk in the Spirit, and he who would walk in the Spirit must keep the body under stern control.

2. But we go further and say, endure hardness also because it is the manifest will of God. See what pains God takes to teach us that it is His will. The everlasting hills are full of their mineral riches, but to get them men must drive the tunnel and sink the shaft. The soil teems with golden harvests, but to win them man must scatter his seeds into the furrow, and breathe hard breath over the plough. Nature has priceless secrets in her possession; but she holds them out to us clenched in a granite hand, which sheer labour must unclasp. Everywhere in nature God teaches us the same great lesson. Anything worth having is not to be had for nothing.

3. Endure hardness also because it is the training-school of worth. When God wants a nation to do Him high service, to fight His battles, to wrestle in His arenas, then lie gives that nation labours and sorrows too. He takes them out of the sluggish levels of Egypt, and makes them climb His granite mountains and listen to the wild music of His desert winds. A nation of greedy slaves might have been contented to live and die in gluttonous animalism; but when God wants heroes, then out of His house of bondage He calls His sons. Read God’s lessons written on the broad page of history. The type of Egypt’s centuries of sluggish placidity is but the cruel, motionless, staring Sphinx; but the type of immortal Greece and the brave flash of her glory is the Apollo launching at the Python with his arrows. What would Sparta have been had she never had Thermopylae? What would Athens have been but for Salamis and Marathon?

4. Endure hardness, scorn sloth, embrace labour, despise sham, practise self-denial in the path of duty, because Christ did it. It is the will of Christ; because there is no virtue and there is no holiness possible without it. The word “virtue” occurs but once in the whole of the New Testament; because the pagan world has made of it too dwarfed an ideal, and Christianity had better words than that; but even the pagan world saw that broad is the path of evil--broad, and straight, and smooth to ruin by the steps of sin. The type of nobleness, even to the pagan world, was not Sardanapalus, but Hercules; not Apicius, the glutton, but Leonidas, the king. They knew it was difficult to be a good man--difficult, and not so easy as it seems; they knew that any fool could be a money-getter, or a drunkard, or a debauchee; that out of the very meanest, vilest clay that ever was you can make an effeminate corrupter, or selfish schemer, or a slanderer, or a thief; but that it takes God’s own gold to make a man, and that it wants the furnace and the toil to make of that gold and fine gold; and it is strange how unanimous all nations have been on this point. David Hume has a passage in his writings about virtue, and her affability, and her engaging manners, nay, even, at proper intervals, her frivolity and gaiety, and her parting not willingly with any pleasure, and requiring a just calculation, and her ranking us as enemies to joy and pleasure, as hypocrites, or deceivers, or the less favoured of her votaries; whereupon one of our men of science, far from being a dogmatist, says that in this paean of virtue there is more of a dance measure than will sound appropriate in the ears of most of the pilgrims who toil painfully, not without many a stumble, along the rough and steep road that leads to the higher life. But if virtue be difficult of acquirement, far more is holiness. (F. W. Farrar, D. D.)

Enduring hardness as a soldier

The apostle Paul, a true and valiant hero, gives counsel in the text to each minister of God who stands up in any age to do battle for the Lord. He must not only understand the art of war as a theory, but put his know ledge into practice, going before the mighty host of God’s elect in order that they may triumph gloriously--“Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” The apostles all set this example to the world. The advice of St. Paul in the text had reference in its original application to the clergy, but it is no less a rule which is binding on all Christians. The fact that we are Christian soldiers suggests three corresponding duties.

I. The will of the soldier should be wholly absorbed in that of his commander. “My life consists in being, rather than in doing,” said a good Christian woman, when cut off from active work by long-continued sickness. “I cannot fight much, but if I can hold the standard for other eyes, I may inspire tired soldiers with fresh courage, and so, if nothing but a colour bearer, help in the good cause!” Yes, brave and devoted woman, many a jaded and disheartened one will take heart and hope, as you thus bear aloft with unflinching hand the standard of faith and patience!

II. A soldier, to deserve the name, must possess true courage.

III. A soldier must be ready to endure hardness. (J. N. Norton.)

The good soldier of Jesus Christ

Suppose a young man went of his own will for a soldier, was regularly sworn in to serve the Queen, took his bounty, wore the Queen’s uniform, ate her bread, learnt his drill and all that a soldier need learn, as long as peace lasted. But suppose that as soon as war came and his regiment was ordered on active service, he deserted at once and went off and hid himself. What should you call such a man? You would call him a base and ungrateful coward, and you would have no pity on him if he was taken and justly punished. But suppose that he did a worse thing still. Suppose that the enemy, the Russians say, invaded England, and the army was called out to fight them; and suppose this man of whom I speak, be he soldier or sailor, instead of fighting the enemy, deserted over to them, and fought on their side against his own country, and his own comrades, and his own father and brothers, what would you call that man? No name would be bad enough for him. If he was taken he would be hanged without mercy, as not only a deserter but a traitor. And who would pity him or say that he had not got his just deserts? Are not all young people, when they are old enough to choose between right and wrong, if they choose what is wrong and live bad lives instead of good ones, very like this same deserter and traitor? For are you not all Christ’s soldiers, every one of you? Did not Christ enlist every one of you into His army, that, as the baptism service says, you might fight manfully under His banner against sin, the world, and the devil--in one word, against all that is wrong and bad? And now when you are old enough to know that you are Christ’s soldiers, what will you deserve to be called if, instead of fighting on Christ’s side against what is bad, you forget you are in His service. But some may say, “My case is not like that soldier’s. I did not enter Christ’s service of my own free will. My parents put me into it when I was an infant without asking my leave. I was not christened of my own will.” Is it so? Do you know what your words mean? If they mean anything, they mean that you had rather not have been christened, because you are now expected to behave as a christened man should. Now is there any one of you who dare say, “I wish I had not been christened”? Not one! Then if you dare not say that; if you are content to have been christened, why are you not content to do what christened people should? But why were you christened? not merely because your parents chose, but because it was their duty. Every child ought to be christened, because every child belongs to Christ. You have now no right to choose between Christ and the devil, because Christ has chosen you already--no right to choose between good and bad, because God, the good God Himself, has chosen you already, and has been taking care of you, and heaping you with blessings ever since you were born. And why did Christ choose you? As I have told you, that you may fight with Him against all that is bad. But if we go on doing bad and wrong things, are we fighting on Christ’s side? No, we are fighting on the devil’s side, and helping the devil against God. Do you fancy that I am saying too much? I suspect some do. I suspect some say in their hearts, “He is too hard on us. We are not like that traitorous soldier. If we do wrong, it is ourselves at most that we harm. We do not wish to hurt any one; we do not want to help the devil.” (Chas. Kingsley.)

Fortitude

Weakness and effeminacy have ever accompanied the latter stages of all human civilisation. Either society actually rottens and falls to pieces by the dissolving influence of its own vices, or, weakened by indulgence, it falls a ready prey in its turn to the sword of some ruder but manlier enemy. In the ancient nations of the world such has been the invariable process. The question has often been asked, Does the law still hold good, and must the nations of modern Europe decay and die, as the great nations of antiquity have done? If we had nothing but human nature to look to the reply would be an unhesitating, Yes. But we have another element in our case, what our Lord calls the leaven, to spread its own healthy influence through the otherwise fermenting mass of humanity; and upon its regenerating force all our hopes of a happier future must rest. If Christianity keeps us from effeminacy, it will keep us from ruin. I cannot for a moment doubt its power, because it is the power of God. But it therefore follows that, if it is to save us, it must be a real Christianity--a Christianity such as God originated and such as God will work by. Now it is, I think, the most serious thing in the present condition of the world that, not only has a luxurious civilisation weakened the domestic virtues, especially among some women, whose extravagances have become almost a satire upon womanhood--I say among women, because the love of athletic sports to a considerable degree checks the tendency among men; hut that our Christianity itself has caught the infection and is demoralised by self-indulgence. The effeminacy has reached even our religion. Words and sentiments take the place of deeds. The charm of the eye and the ear are substituted for great inward principles; the grandest truths are welcomed, admitted, admired, but not acted upon in daily life. The Church is enormously below her own standard. A refined self-indulgence spreads everywhere, and if it continues to spread till it touches the very heart of the Church and nation, then indeed there can be no hope for us. I cannot doubt that it is the providential object of the struggles of faith belonging to our day to revive the manliness, the independence, the reality, and power of our religion, just as nations amid sufferings and disaster recover the manly virtues which have rusted in prosperity and ease. There are many obvious reasons for cultivating a more robust and manly earnestness in our religion.

I. It is due to the character of the great Master whom we serve. We look up to the Captain of our salvation, and every imaginable motive which can nerve the human heart combines to inspire us with dauntless courage and unflinching fortitude.

II. A robust earnestness is due to the necessities of the work. God takes every possible precaution in His Word that we should count the cost, before we enlist under our Captain’s banner. We have, indeed, Divine strength to help us; but it is given to help, not to supersede. Our battle requires all our strength, and nothing less will suffice. The very saints hardly press into the kingdom: they take it by violence, and enter like soldiers after a hard-fought fight--wounded, bleeding, and weary, but conquering. And this endurance of hardness is the more necessary because, not only are habits of personal self-denial and self-restraint, watchful devotion and earnest effort, the conditions of victory, but they are actual parts of the victory themselves.

III. Manly vigour is due to the abundance of the reward. Salvation itself is not of reward; it is all of grace. But once let the soul find Christ, let it be accepted within the family circle, let it fairly take service beneath the banner of Christ as the faithful soldier and servant of a crucified Master, and then God deals with it by rewards. (E. Garbett, M. A.)

The Christian a soldier

I. The soldier giving up the direction of his own actions and exertions, gives himself up to the service of another. The Roman soldier, to whose case St. Paul must be supposed particularly to refer, was nothing but a soldier. So it is with the Christian: he may not serve the world and his God together. He must either be all Christ’s or none of His.

II. The service into which the soldier enters is for the most part a service accompanied by peril and privation.

III. The third point of similarity observed in the conditions of the soldier and the Christian is, that each is bound to be faithful in the discharge of the duties of his profession by the obligation of a solemn oath. At the time St. Paul wrote, the Roman soldier, when first enrolled, took an oath to obey the commands of his emperor, and never to forsake his standard: and this oath was yearly renewed. A Christianised imagination found a parallel to this in the solemn engagement entered into at baptism, and renewed in the holy communion of the supper of the Lord, “obediently to keep God’s holy will and commandments, and to walk in the same all the days of our life.” For this very reason those two awful rites of our religion received from the primitive Church the name which they yet bear, the name of sacraments. Sacrament was the usual term for the soldier’s military oath, and it was transferred by the ancients to baptism and the eucharist, because in them the believer, as it were, binds himself by solemn compact faithfully to serve in the spiritual armies under the orders of the King of heaven. (W. H. Marriott.)

No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life.

Roman soldiers

were not allowed to marry or to engage in any husbandry or trade; and they were forbidden to act as tutors to any person, or curators to any man’s estate, or proctor in the cause of other men. The general principle was, that they were excluded from those relations, agencies, and engagements, which it was thought would divert their minds from that which was to be the sole object of pursuit. (A. Barnes.)

The soldier of Jesus Christ, enduring, and unentangled

(2 Timothy 2:3-4):--Soldiers read and scan attentively the military orders which are put forth from time to time by their commanding officers. Let us see what, in the articles of Christian warfare, are placed here for our instruction to-day.

I. The Christian soldier is to endure suffering for Christ. This is the true rendering of the expression, “Endure hardness.” It means, suffer or endure for Christ’s sake. The faithful soldier never deserts his duty. The hardships on the battle-field are fearful, but never, in his thought, unendurable. Officers in the Crimean war (as they themselves have told me) had for weeks nothing else than the hard rock for their pillow, and the sky (often obscured by deluging rain clouds) for their ceiling. Yet they “endured” it, and the soldiers “endured” it with them, and thus they “suffered” or endured hardness together, as “good soldiers” under a gracious queen!

1. The good soldier of Jesus Christ will often “endure” suffering by reproaches for Christ’s name.

2. And you must not wonder, if you have to endure persecution also, by taunts openly spoken in your hearing.

II. That Christian soldiers are not to “entangle themselves with the affairs of this life.”

1. The Christian is a warrior--is a “man that warreth.” There is the daily watch to he kept over yourself, and to bar out Satan, and to keep out the world. Ay, and all is not done even then, for there are those occasional surprises, when the enemy would pounce upon us from an ambush; for the Christian knows that sometimes he is vigorously assaulted at the time, and from the point where he thought injury impossible, and when he deemed himself quite secure. Then, too, there is the well planned attack, when Satan brings all his legionaries to the fight, and the hosts of temptations are directed against you with unceasing violence.

2. Well, then, be mindful you do not entangle yourself. You need not be entangled--if you become so, you entangle yourself.

(1) You may entangle yourself by a worldly spirit.

(2) Or, you may become entangled by evil company.

(3) Or, you may become en tangled by any business or any pleasure. How, then, are these dangers to be avoided?

I answer--

1. By watchfulness against first dangers. You know in an army, “pickets” are sent to the very outskirts of the camp, who give signal of the earliest beginning of any attack. Be you always on your guard; let conscience have fidelity and watchfulness, ever on the alert to give notice of the least cause of danger.

2. Then, next, daily prayer is as needful to a Christian soldier as daily food is to the winner of the earthly fight.

3. And, lastly, you will do well to make a profession. A man is just as brave in fustian as in full regimentals, but it is a fact long ago established, that the ornament and distinctive dress are extremely useful. (Geo. Venables.)

The military discipline

1. I begin with the particular matter suggested by the apostle; viz., the putting off or excision of the world, as an interruptive and disqualifying power. The only way to make great soldiership, as the military commander well understands, is to take his men completely out of the home world and have them circumscribed and shut in by drill, as being mortgaged in body and life for their country.. Trained to flinch at nothing, and suffer anything, he makes them first impassive, and so, brave. And under this same law it is that all Christian disciples are required to strip for the war, throwing off all their detentions, all the seductions of business, property, pleasure, and affection. All such matters must now drop into secondary places, for the understanding is, that no one gets the great heart, or becomes in any sense a hero, till his very life is drunk up in his commander, and his supreme care to please him that hath chosen him to be a soldier.

2. Consider next how the military discipline raises spirit and high impulse by a training under authority, exact and absolute. Does it reduce the soldiers and all the subordinate commanders of an army to mere cyphers, when they are required to march, and wheel, and lift every foot, and set every muscle by the word of authority; when even the music is commandment, and to feed, and sleep, and not sleep are by requirement? Why, the service rightly maintained invigorates every manly quality rather; for they are in a great cause, moving with great emphasis, having thus great thoughts ranging in them and, it may be, great inspirations. God’s all dominant, supreme authority is our noblest educator.

3. How often is it imagined by outside beholders, or felt by slack-minded, self-indulgent disciples, that the military stringency of the Christian life is a condition of bondage. Liberty is not the being let alone, or allowed to have everything oar own way. If it were, the wild beasts would be more advanced in it than all states and peoples. No, there is no proper liberty but under rule, and in the sense of rule. It holds high sisterhood with law, nay, it is twin-born with law itself.

4. Ungenial and repulsive as the law of the camp may be, there is no such thing in it as enduring hardness for hardness’ sake, no peremptory commandment for commandment’s sake. Such kind of discipline would not be training, but extirpation rather. And yet how many of us Christian disciples fall into notions of Christian self-denial that include exactly this mistake. As if it were a proper Christian thing to be always scoring, and stripping, and mortifying ourselves. The truth is, that our human nature is made to go a great deal more heroically than some of us think; and our soldiers in the field are just now making this discovery. Why, if the fires of patriotic impulse can help our sons and fathers in the field to rejoice in so great sacrifice for their country, what pain can there be to us in our painstakings, what loss in our losses, when the love of God and of His Son is truly kindled in us?

5. The military discipline has as little direct concern to beget happiness, as it has to compel self-abnegation. It is never altogether safe for such as we to be simply happy, and that may be the reason why the best and solidest of us never are.

6. There is yet one other point of this military analogy, where in fact it is scarcely any proper analogy at all, but a kind of universal law, running through all kinds of mortal endeavour, secular, moral, mental, and spiritual; viz., that whatever we get, we must somehow fight for it. What begins in the conflicts of tribes and empires runs down through all kinds of experience. Fighting a good fight is the only way to finish the course, and the crown of glory comes in nowhere, save at the end. (H. Bushnell, D. D.)

The Christian warfare

What are the things with which we are in danger of entangling ourselves?

1. Doubtless we are in the greatest danger from our sins and especially from our besetting sin, i.e., that peculiar sin to which each one is liable either from some natural bias, or from acquired habit arising out of the evil within. We are in danger of entangling ourselves with our sins--

(1) From their deceitfulness.

(2) From the power and force of habit.

(3) Because we cannot be the slaves of sin and be the servants of God.

2. But the Christian’s dangers arise not only from his sins, but also from the ordinary affairs of daily life. These are more especially meant in the text. And what snare can be greater? Actual sin we may generally know to be sin. But in the affairs of this life, our daily occupations and our lawful enjoyments, it is often hard to find where the entanglement begins. If as moralists say and as experience proves, the difference between things lawful and unlawful is frequently one of degree, it must require both an enlightened conscience and much self-examination to ascertain the middle path of safety. Then keep as your safeguard the motive the text supplies: “to please Him who hath chosen you to be a soldier.” It is possible, we may think we do God service by acts which a more enlightened judgment would convince us do not; we cannot mistake a sincere desire to please Him. The old Crusader who, his heart aroused by the preaching of a Bernard or a Peter, laid his hand on his breast and swore to scare away the infidel from the holy sepulchre by his good broadsword, needed more light to learn that “our weapons are not carnal”; and yet who can doubt his desire to please his Saviour? Let us, then, see to it that we have this motive--Am I desirous to please Him who hath chosen me to be a soldier? (G. Huntingdon, M. A.)

The affairs of this life may entangle us

1. From weakness of judgment.

2. From inordinate affection.

3. From the rebellion of the will. Let us use all helps to avoid the danger; and

(1) We must get a sound judgment, to understand what is the chiefest good, and how we are to dispose of all inferior things, for the procuring of it.

(2) Labour to see the vanity of all earthly and sublimary things, what, and wherein their natural worth consisteth.

(3) Make the Lord thy portion, and be thou assured that He only can content thy heart.

(4) Refrain things indifferent (if in thy choice), and watch over thy outward senses.

(5) Strive for a taste of spiritual things. They who tasted of the grapes which came from Canaan, desired to see the land: coveted more. So will it be in better things.

(6) Beat Satan with his own weapons, outshoot him in his own bow. Doth he show thee the glory of this world? Tell him, it is thy Father’s; and in serving of Him He will give thee a better. Tempts he thee to wear two swords? Say that thou art weak, and one sufficeth. Art thou enticed by Rebecca’s beauty? Consider the king’s daughter, who is all glorious within. Saith he, thou art a sinner? Reply, else what needed I a Saviour? (J. Barlow, D. D.)

Not entangled with the world

St. Paul does not suggest that Christians should keep aloof from the affairs of this life, which would be a flat contradiction of what he teaches elsewhere (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12). He has a duty to perform “in the affairs of this life,” but in doing it he is not to be entangled in them. They are means, not ends; and must be made to help him on, not suffered to keep him back. If they become entanglements instead of opportunities, he will soon lose that state of constant preparation and alertness which is the indispensable condition of success. (A. Plummer, D. D.)

Carnal ease not becoming a soldier

Milton excuses Oliver Cromwell’s want of bookish application in his youth thus: “It did not become that hand to wax soft in literary ease which was to be inured to the use of arms and hardened with asperity; that right arm to be softly wrapped up amongst the birds of Athens, by which thunderbolts were soon afterwards to be hurled among the eagles which emulate the sun.” Carnal ease and worldly wisdom are not becoming in the soldier of Jesus Christ. He has to wrestle against principalities and powers, and has need of sterner qualities than those which sparkle in the eyes of fashion or adorn the neck of elegance. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Wholly a soldier

Let not the minister of the gospel have one foot in the temple and the other in the curia. (Melancthon.)

Military service

Those who regard relationship are not fit for military service. (Tamil Proverb.)

Devotion to duty

The Countess of Aberdeen, speaking at Millseat, said, “If you have noticed Mr. Gladstone as I have done, he considers it a sacred duty never to think any part of his time his own while he is in office. He considers he has no right to have anything to do with his own private affairs. He has told me himself that he never reads a book which he does not think will help in some way to prepare his mind for the work which he has to do for the country. He never takes any relaxation, any recreation, but what he thinks is just necessary to prepare him in doing the work of his country. It is a life of hard and coutinuous work, and yet we all look upon that as the most honourable place in the country, that of being absolutely the servants of the country.” (British Weekly.)

That he may please Him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.

That I may please Him

As we read his epistles, we feel that we know St. Paul better even than those who saw his face or heard his voice; and more and more the consciousness of his greatness becomes impressed upon us. There are two things in this greatness of his which strike us most forcibly. The first is his success in living the Christian life. What was the secret of this strength and success, making St. Paul’s life so different from the lives of other men? Another thing which strikes us, as we read his writings, is his deep spirituality. What was the secret of this spirituality? Perhaps the text wilt furnish us with an answer. There you have the ringing key-note of St. Paul’s whole life, the one thought that was ever uppermost in his mind, “‘That I may please Him.” There are three aims, or motives, under which men act, and these three give birth to three different kinds of lives. Each of these principles of action is exclusive.

I. Living to please self. This is the keynote of most lives--the central force into which they resolve themselves when they are analysed and dissected. The principle first manifests itself when the unconscious life of childhood passes into the conscious life of manhood or womanhood.

II. The second type of life is that in which the first aim is to please others. The highest good, some say, is to sacrifice all for selfish pleasure. The highest good, say others, is to sacrifice all to gain the approbation and admiration of the world. Some men will give honour and reputation for gold. Others will give gold for honour and reputation. Here you have the distinction between these two motives.

III. From the slavery of these two motives--living to please self, and living to please others--let us now turn to the glorious liberty of the third--St. Paul’s motive--living to please Christ. The Christian religion is different from all other religions in this one respect: it is founded, not upon a system, but upon a person. Remember that this is not a dead person who lived eighteen hundred years ago, and then went back to heaven. It is not the memory of a life. It is a present life. II; is a living person--“Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.” Here is the fountain of spirituality--the constant contact of heart and soul with the living Christ. We Christians are men of but one principle. We, with that feeling of loyalty in our hearts to Christ, have hut one simple rule of action: Will it please Him? (H. Y. Satterlee, D. D.)

One mind rules the army

Nowhere else is it so true that the will of one becomes lost in that of another as in the case of the soldier. In an army it is contemplated that there shall be but one mind, one heart, one purpose--that of the commander; and that the whole army shall be as obedient to that as the members of the human body are to the one will that controls all. The application of this is obvious. (A. Barnes.)

Heart devotion to Christ

Ofttimes a commander is so beloved and idolised by his soldiers, that they know no higher wish than to please him for his own sake. A French soldier lay sorely wounded on the field of battle. When the surgeons were probing the wound in the breast to find the bullet, the soldier said: “A little deeper, gentlemen, and you will find the emperor.” So heart-deep was his devotion to his captain. But there never, never was a captain who so held the heart and charmed the love of His soldiers as Immanuel does. For Him they fight, for Him they live, for Him they suffer, and for Him they die! if only they may “please Him who hath called them to be a soldier.” This Commander loves to mention his beloved “braves” in His despatches, and these are kept as a book of remembrance. (J. J. Wray.)

Duty more than safety

In evil times it fares best with them that care most careful about duty, and least about safety. (J. Hammond.)

Erratic soldiers

Erratic Christians, who dash about like Bashi-Bazouks, working according; to no law save the bidding of their own caprice, are sorry specimens of soldiers. (W. Landels, D. D.)

Obey orders and leave results

When Stonewall Jackson, who was personally a very tender man, was asked whether he had no compunctions in shelling a certain town, which had been threatened unless it surrendered, he replied, “None whatever. What business had I with results? My duty was to obey orders.” (H. O. Mackey.)

Not crowned, except he strive lawfully.

Lawful striving

The athlete who competes in the games does not receive a crown, unless he has contended law fully, i.e., according to rule (νομίμως νόμος). Even if he seem to be victorious, he nevertheless is not crowned, because he has violated the well-known conditions. And what is the rule, what are the conditions of the Christian’s contest? “If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.” If we wish to share Christ’s victory, we must be ready to share His suffering. No cross, no crown. To try to withdraw oneself from all hardship and annoyance, to attempt to avoid all that is painful or disagreeable, is a violation of the rules of the arena. This, it would appear, Timothy was in some respects tempted to do; and timidity and despondency must not be allowed to get the upper hand. Not that what is painful, or distasteful, or unpopular, is necessarily right; but it is certainly not necessarily wrong; and to try to avoid everything that one dislikes is to ensure being fatally wrong. (A. Plummer, D. D.)

Lawful diet

The phrase “lawfully” which is found in precisely the same connection in Galen (Comm. in Hippocrates 1.15) was technical, half-medical, and half belonging to the training schools of athletes, and implied the observance of all rules of life prior to the contest as well as during it. Failure to keep to the appointed diet and discipline, no less than taking an unfair advantage at the time, excluded the competitor from his reward. (E. H. Plumptre, D. D.)

Regulations for athletic contests

The following were among the regulations of the athletic contests. Every candidate was required to be of pure Hellenic descent. He was disqualified by certain moral and political offences. He was obliged to take an oath that he had been ten months in training, and that he would violate none of the regulations. Bribery was punished by a fine. The candidate was obliged to practise again in the gymnasium immediately before the games, under the direction of judges or umpires, who were themselves required to be instructed for ten months in the details of the games. (Conybeare and Howson.)

Lawful striving

I. A Christian is a striver.

1. In the breast and forefront of this strife thou must contend with ignorance, which adversary, though his eyes be put out, and he be as blind as a mill-horse, yet his strength is like behemoths, his weapons Goliahs, his blows the batterings of a tearing cannon; for if this giant be not quelled, killed, he will lead you into mazes of error.

2. This monster being put to flight, you are to encounter with aged superstition.

3. Close after idolatry follows covetousness.

4. At the heels of every striver you shall have sloth and idleness.

II. Eternal life is called a crown. For the worth and excellency of it.

III. The lawful striver shall be crowned. (J. Barlow, D. D.)

The lawful strife

Man likes to choose his own way; but the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ has marked out a way for him: hence one reason at least of his unwillingness to go along it. The text tells us that we must put off this perverseness of the old man, and put on all the obedience of the new man, following the direction which the Lord hath given. Man’s will is to have no change of his ways, no sorrow for the past, no amendment (but he will not call it amendment) for the future. All this is too humbling to his pride, too much of a curb upon his self-will. But our Lord’s precept is repentance: you must come to Me, and receive that which I give along the road of repentance. The making repentance a step, and not a course, merely a gate of introduction, and not a road also of daily conduct, is one of the short cuts by which men think to arrive at the prize, without going through all the prescribed rules of the struggle. And not only must we bring our minds to submit to the rules which our Lord hath laid down, but also our hearts to understand them: indeed, we must first understand them before we can truly accept them. We cannot in any case effectually bind ourselves to a duty of which we know not the extent; we cannot be sure of accomplishing a thing of which we have not counted the cost. Now our blessed Lord bath set before us our course, both by example and precept. And what remains is to make up our minds to rise and follow. In His trials we have the model of our lawful strife. In His ascension unto glory we see the assurance of our crown. His flesh was crucified: so must we crucify the flesh. He rose again; even so we must rise again unto newness of life. He is seated in heaven: so we must set our affections on things above. The rules are plain; they cannot he confounded with the rules of strife for any worldly mastery. We see, then, what we have to contend against. It is a compliance with the course of a sinful world; a reluctance to change our course into one which is not in conformity with it, but even in a contrary direction. It is putting God’s end, indeed, before us, even the prospect of eternal life, but not using His means, but putting our own in their place, because we find them much more agreeable: it is, in short, the indulgence of our nature. (R. W. Evans, B. D.)

Lawful strife

We gather from this figure that in spiritual things there is a striving lawfully and a striving unlawfully, and that the prize is not necessarily given to him who wins the race, if he has not complied with certain rules laid down. I think, then, we may say that there are three distinct ways of striving.

1. There is an unlawful striving after unlawful objects.

2. An unlawful striving after lawful objects.

3. A lawful striving after lawful objects.

I. As what is right is often more clearly shown by holding up what is wrong, I shall attempt to describe what it is to strive unlawfully after unlawful objects.

1. To strive, then, after pre-eminence, to be a Diotrephes in a church (John 3:9).

2. All strife about vain and idle questions (2 Timothy 2:14).

3. To seek after a form of godliness, whilst secretly denying the power thereof, or to have a name to live when dead in sin.

4. To strive after fleshly holiness and creature perfection.

5. To seek to find an easier and smoother path than the strait gate and the narrow way.

II. But now I come to another kind of striving, which is unlawful striving after lawful objects. Now God has laid down in His word of truth three solemn rules, laws you may call them if you like, which constitute lawful striving.

1. The Holy Ghost must begin, carry on, and finish the inward work of grace.

2. The soul must be brought under His Divine teaching to be thoroughly stripped and emptied of all creature wisdom, strength, help, hope, and righteousness.

3. The glory of a Triune God must be the end and motive of all. Any departure from these three rules of striving makes a man strive unlawfully.

III. But we come now to the only striving which the Lord crowns--a lawful striving after lawful objects.

1. Now we will begin with the first rule, which is this, that the Holy Spirit must work in us all the power, wisdom, grace, faith, strength, and life, that we strive with.

2. The second rule of lawful striving is, that the runners in this race should have no strength. “He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might He increaseth strength.”

3. And this enables you to comply with the third rule of lawful strife--to give God all the glory. Surely you can take no glory to self, when self has been proved, and found wanting. Now these lawful strivers after lawful objects are crowned, and they only. This crown is twofold--a crown here and a crown hereafter, a crown of grace set on the heart below, and a crown of glory set on the head above. (J. C. Philpot.)

Lawful striving

(2 Timothy 2:5 with 1 Corinthians 9:25):--Let us glance first at--

I. The fact that the Christian life is a warfare, a running and a wrestling, a course of self-restraint, and of earnest labour and striving after a great end. Let us consider--

II. The manner of the strife. There are two words which describe this, both of which are significant. “Lawfully” is the one, and “certainly”--or to put the double negative as the apostle has it, “not uncertainly”--is the other; and the “not as one that beateth the air” is only an expletive, or repetition of that.

1. This “lawfully” requires that all our effort and striving should be in accordance with Divine rule. And this implies at least two things--

(1) That it should be preceded by our trust in Christ. Nothing we can do is acceptable or valuable until by faith in Christ we have been reconciled to God.

(2) In the efforts we put forth we are not to follow our own impulses or inclination, but to be directed by the will of Christ.

2. “Certainly.” The certainty is secured by the lawfulness. Those who are guided by Christ’s will are not in any doubt either as to what they ought to do, or as to the result of doing it. Let us notice--

III. The object of our effort and striving. The apostle defines this object in the words, “I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection,” and in this he but describes the warfare of the spirit against the flesh, or of the new man against the old, which is characteristic of the Christian life. And this leads me to notice in the fourth and last place--

IV. The motive of the apostle’s striving.

1. That he might not be a castaway. “A castaway.” Try to realise what that word means, if you would understand the full significance of the text, and the mighty force of the motive by which the apostle was actuated. “A castaway.” There was a picture so designated painted some years ago, and engravings of it were frequently met with. One of these you may have seen, and the remembrance of it will help you to a conception of what the apostle dreaded. In that picture a gaunt figure with unshaven head and unkempt hair, badly clad and hunger-stricken, is seen seated on a raft in the midst of a raging rainy sea, sheltering his face with his arm from the blinding drift, straining his hollow eyes to descry a sail in the far distance. He is the very picture of umnitigated, hopeless, unpitied misery. He is not only alone in the universe, but tile whole universe, so far as it is visible, seems to be against him. The sky frowns on him; the rain descends on his unsheltered head, tile wind smites him; the sea dashes over, and threatens to engulf him; hungry monsters of the deep are waiting to make him their prey. There is no ear to hear his cry, no eye to witness his miserable and forlorn plight, no hand to help him, no haven near, no friendly star gleaming through the darkness to show him where he is. He is left alone of men, cast out by the world, persecuted by the elements. The only thing that befriends him is the raft to which he clings. Now to be a castaway in the spiritual sense is worse even than that--unspeakably worse. The word is fraught with all kinds of imaginable and unimaginable horrors. To be rejected by the universe of being, to be despised and spurned, to be expelled from any circle into which it is desirable to enter, to be disowned by all the good, tormented by ell the bad, to see every door of hope closed, to find everything in the universe hostile, every force operating unfavourably, every object wearing a frown, no eye to pity, no hand to help, no car to hear, no voice to utter one consoling word, no means of mitigating, no friendly raft even to bear up amidst the engulfing misery! What conception can be more horrible than that?

2. Paul was not only actuated by the desire to escape being a castaway, but also by the desire to gain a crown. “They do it,” he says, of the competitors in the games, “to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible.” (W. Landels, D. D.)

Law

As the chemist, the navigator, the naturalist attain their ends by means of law, which is beyond their power to alter, which they cannot change, but with which they can work in harmony, and by so doing produce definite results, so may we. (Shorthouse, ”John Inglesant.”)

Obedience

If a boy at school is bidden to cipher, and chooses to write a copy instead, the goodness of the writing will not save him from censure. We must obey, whether we see the reason or not; for God knows best. (New Cyclopaedia of Illustrations.)

Conquest the condition of entrance into heaven

Many years ago the Turks and the Christians had a great battle, and the Christians were defeated, and with Stephen, their commander, they fled toward a fortress where the mother of the commander was staying. When the mother saw her son and his army flying in disgraceful retreat, she ordered the gates of the fortress to be closed against them, and the gates were dosed, and then the mother stood on the battlement and cried to her son, “You cannot enter here except as a conqueror.” Then the commander rallied his scattered troops, and resumed battle and won the day--twenty thousand scattering like flying chaff two hundred thousand. Ah! my friends, defeated in this battle with sin and death and hell, there is no joy, no reward, no triumph for you. Only shame and everlasting contempt. But for those who gained the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ the gates of the New Jerusalem are open, and you will have abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord. (T. De Witt Talmage.)

Obedience and freedom

The truest freedom is secured by the most implicit obedience. Those who profess themselves free in the sense of being superior to law do but make themselves the slaves of sin. It is in the observance of rule that we find the fullest scope for the development of our individuality and the improvement and elevation of all our natural powers. They soar highest, and act with the greatest vigour, and move with the greatest freedom, who keep themselves most completely subject to the restraints of law. Loyalty elevates. We are ensnared and deteriorated when we follow our own caprice; for the liberty which is lawless is essentially degrading. The worlds describe their brilliant course over the dark brow of night because of the force which binds them to their great centre; let that force be destroyed, and they are free to rush whithersoever the centrifugal force propels. Their movement may be swifter than the lightning, and their track more dazzling than its path, but it will soon end in darkness and destruction. And so it is with the mind and the law of duty which hinds it to God. The freedom which comes from the violation of that law is a freedom which, instead of securing its welfare and elevation, only lands it in deeper degradation and death. (W. Landels, D. D.)

The husbandman that laboureth must be first partaker of the fruits.

The laboring husbandman

The order of the Greek shows that the emphatic word is “labours.” It is the labouring husbandman who must be the first to partake of the fruits. It is the man who works hard and with a will, and not the one who works listlessly or looks despondently on, who, according to all moral fitness and the nature of things, ought to have the first share in the fruits. This interpretation does justice to the Greek as it stands, without resorting to any manipulation of the apostle’s language. Moreover, it brings the saying into perfect harmony with the context. It is quite evident that the three metaphors are parallel to one another, and are intended to teach the same lesson. In each of them we have two things placed side by side--a prize, and the method to be observed in obtaining it. Do you, ass Christian soldier on service, wish for the approbation of Him who has enrolled you. Then you must avoid the entanglements which would interfere with your service. Do you, as a Christian athlete, wish for the crown of victory? Then you must not evade the rules of the contest. Do you, as a Christian husbandman, wish to be among the first to enjoy the harvest? Then you must be foremost in toil. (A. Plummer, D. D.)

The minister a husbandman

1. He must prepare good seed--i.e., sound doctrine. For in this sense we may truly say: what a man soweth, he shall reap; such as thy seed is, such will be thy harvest.

2. Understand the nature of the soil, the spiritual estate of thy people, and let the seed be in degree and measure suitable. Seed that is hot and dry must be sown in a cold and moist ground; if cold and moist, in a land that is hot and dry, else no multiplication. He that preaches mercy to the wicked is like him who soweth wheat on dry sandy mountains; judgment to the righteous, rye in wet and watery valleys--neither of both will, can prosper.

3. Get skill in the manner of sowing.

4. When the seed is sown, weeds will grow up with it. These must be plucked up, kept under, else the corn will not prosper.

5. In any case, go not thou beyond thy bounds, but sow in that soil where God commands thee. That great seedsman, Paul, had ill success among the Jews, being chiefly sent to teach the Gentiles.

6. Cast not off thy calling; wax not weary in this husbandry; and to encourage thee, consider the excellency of thy function. The husbandman waiteth long; be thou also patient, for a time of gathering will come--shall come. (J. Barlow, D. D.)

What the Christian teacher can learn from the husbandman

1 No fruit without labour.

2. No labour without reward. (Van Oosterzee.)

The minister a husbandman

1. He must cultivate the people, and sow the good seed.

2. He must not be discouraged if he does not reap fruit at once.

3. As the fruits of the ground sustain the husbandman, so should the people sustain the minister. (W. Burkitt, M. A.)

Reward of work

A few years since, Motley shot up to the first position as an historian. Many wondered; but it was no wonder. He had wrought patiently for years in the libraries of the Old and New Worlds, unseen of men. The success of the great artist Dore was years of study in the hospitals, and practice in the studio behind it. This path to success is open to all. (New Cyclopaedia of Illustrations.)

No work, no reward

Gilbert Wakefield tells us that he wrote his own memoirs, a large octavo, in six or eight days. It cost him nothing, and, what is very natural, is worth nothing, You might yawn scores of such books into existence; but who would be the wiser or better? We all like gold, but dread the digging. The cat loves the fish, but will not wade to catch them. (J. Todd, D. D.)

The pleasure of sloth inconsistent with the reward of toil

They are utterly out that think to have the pleasure of sloth and the guerdon of goodness. (J. Trapp.)

Work and joy

Work is heaven’s condition of prosperity and enjoyment in everything. A workless world would be a joyless world. (Homilist.)

Partaking of the fruit

A young man came to a man of ninety years of age, and said to him, “How have you made out to live so long and be so well?” The old man took the youngster to an orchard, and; pointing to some large trees full of apples, said, “I planted these trees when I was a boy, and do you wonder that now I am permitted to gather the fruit of them?” We gather in old age what we plant in our youth. Sow to the wind, end we reap the whirlwind. Plant in early life the right kind of a Christian character, and you will eat luscious fruit in old age, and gather these harvest apples in eternity.

The present rewards of service

Of the husbandman it is said that he first shall eat of the fruit of his labour. Here we have an intimation of the rewards of Christian life that come before the final distribution. The soldier must wait until the war is over; the contestant shall not be crowned until the games are over; but the husbandman has continuous incomings of the fruits of his labours all the time. He first partakes of the fruit of his labour. The loaf on his table, the milk in his dairy, the fruit of his storehouse--these are kept plenished and plentiful all the time. Then comes harvest and autumn, with their laden garners and their orchard spoil. So it is with the rewards of the Christian. Let him be as a soldier brave, as contestant striving, as a husbandman diligent and thrifty, and he shall have the reward of his labours even now--in grace and favour, in strength and peace, in hope and heavenly mindedness, and in the joy of doing good. Plenty to go on with, and a harvest to follow--the fruits immortal, that await the plucking from the bending branches of the trees of life! (J. J. Wray.)

Consider what I say, and the Lord give thee understanding.

Reflection aids discernment

The better rendering gives, “For the Lord will give thee.” This gives also a better meaning: “Make the effort to reflect; for if thou do, the Lord will give thee the discernment which thou needest.” (E. H. Plumptre, D. D.)

Enlightenment aids personal application of truth

De Wette and others object to this verse, that it is impossible to suppose that St. Paul would imagine Timotheus so dull of apprehension as not to comprehend such obvious metaphors. But they have missed the sense of the verse, which is not meant to enlighten the understanding of Timotheus as to the meaning of the metaphors, but as to the personal application of them. (Conybeare and Howson.)

Consideration

I. Consideration is a duty to be practised.

1. For hath not God given man a discoursive faculty? What creature but he hath understanding, the angels only excepted? Were it not vanity to have an eye, and close it? an ear, and stop it? a hand, and not move it? And is it not wickedness to bare a faculty of discourse and not employ it? And wherein better than in consideration?

2. The life of man differs little from a beast without consideration? This soundly lessons those that approve of it but never practise it. Will you hear how they excuse, clear themselves?

(1) It is a difficult duty. Grant it be so, what then? Is it to be rejected? But what hard things dost thou use for the love of this world? Take thou the like pains in this profitable action.

(2) But I want time. Wonderful! Did God ever command a duty and allow no time to effect it? What! None to consider? to confer with thy Father? Lay thy hand upon thy mouth--say no more; for, for what end is the Sabbath?

(3) I have no convenient place. Imitate David, commune with thyself in bed. But my children cry. Then with Isaac, to the field; Hannah, to the Temple; or get thee to some garden, solitary mount, as did thy Master.

(4) I cannot bring my mind to it. Is it so with thee as thou sayest? Be the more humbled for it, and make that matter of consideration. Set thou thyself about this necessary duty; it shall recompense all thy painstaking. And--

(a) Wouldst thou love God? Then consider how He hath chosen thee, redeemed thee, given thee a being in these glorious days of the gospel, conferred on thee many earthly favours. Consider the many sins He hath pardoned, prevented; the evils spiritual, corporal, He hath removed; the petitions He hath granted; and of what great things thou art assured.

(b) Is thy faith feeble? Consider the depth of God’s mercy, the firmness of His promise, the might of His power, the unchangeableness of His nature. Shall not these relieve thee?

(c) Art thou impatient? Do afflictions overlade thee? Consider the greatness of thy sins, whereby thou hast deserved far worse evils. Think, and think often, that they come from the hand of thy heavenly Father; how He hath an eye to thy weakness, that they shall not exceed thy ability; and at their departure, like an overflowing river’s rich mud, leave a blessing behind them.

(d) And what external action can, without consideration, be well discharged? Did magistrates take up their minds, exercise themselves in this duty, would it not make them resolute for the execution of their function?

(e) Can ministers preach and neglect this action?

(f) Why do men hear much, understand little, and practise nothing? It is want of consideration. The most run to God’s house, as travellers to an inn, hear the Word as some well-told tale, not knowing, like that rude company, for what end they came together.

(g) In a word, consideration will give us matter of prayer, and kindle the little spark of grace within us, put us in mind of our vow in baptism, and provoke us to perform it--yea, all our promises.

II. GOD’S WORD IS TO RE CONSIDERED.

1. For the Author’s sake. Is it not the Book of God?

2. And is not the matter holy, just, good?

3. What admirable effects will it work? David hereby became wiser than his teachers--a man according to God’s own heart.

III. Exhortation is to be seconded with prayer,

IV. God giveth man understanding,

V. Men of much knowledge may better their understanding. Knowledge in a threefold respect may be increased--

1. In the faculty.

2. In the object.

3. In the medium of it.

VI. In all divine truths we are to have understanding. Had not Moses a pattern of the Tabernacle--to a broom, a snuffer, a curtain-ring? Shall we, then, be ignorant of any one principle in the whole frame of religion? (J. Barlow, D. D.)

On hearing the Word

I. Show in what manner we are to hear the word.

1. Consider well the matter or import of what is spoken.

2. Attend to the truth and propriety of what is delivered.

3. Consider the weight and importance of what is delivered.

4. Consider the personal concern you have in the truths delivered.

II. The motives which should induce us well to consider what we hear.

1. Think in whose Name the ministers of the gospel speak, and whose Person they represent.

2. Consider the great end they aim at in their ministrations.

3. By the Word that we hear we shall be judged at the last day. (B. Beddome, M. A.)

The young invited to consider

I. I begin by calling your attention to a thought which you should never have wholly absent from your minds- namely, for what purpose has life been given you? For what other purpose than to prepare for eternity, by loving and serving your Creator now, that you may serve and enjoy Him for ever?

II. From this thought, then, which I beg you seriously to lay to heart, consider what provision God has made for your attaining this glorious end of your being.

III. And this introduces another thought of vast importance. “Consider,” then, “what I say,” as to the fitting period for making this surrender of yourselves to God. When should it be done? Our answer is, it cannot be done too early.

IV. Consider the happiness of a life thus early given to god, to be spent in His service, to end in His glory. (J. Haslegrave, M. A.)

Consideration

Consideration is the bed where the incorruptible seed is sown, and on the ground thus prepared the Sun of Righteousness doth shine, and by His warmth produces in the soul all manner of pleasant fruits. (Anthony Horneck.)

Men need instruction

A man’s understanding is very much like a window. The sun-light is all of one colour; but all the light that goes through the window is not. Sometimes the audience have a scarf of yellow running over them, sometimes one of blue, and sometimes one of red, according as the window is painted. Man’s reason being like a painted window, the light that goes through it and falls upon his conscience is bizarre, grotesque, wrinkled, bent, or distorted. I have known men whose understanding had in it hideous saints, crowned monsters, apocalyptic visions, and what not--things that took the colours which were painted on the window of that reason. It is very important, therefore, that men should be instructed. (H. W. Beecher.)

God’s teaching

When the Prince of Wales landed at Portsmouth, after his tour in India, I was in the crowd with my little boys; and as the Prince and his Princess and children drove past, I lifted my younger boy on my shoulder, and this enabled him to see better and further than the tallest person around us. So those whom God teaches and helps will discern better and further than those who just look out for themselves, or merely get information from others. (H. R. Burton.)

Instruction from God

When a sceptic once went to a Christian minister to have his doubts and difficulties solved, the minister asked, “Have you gone and asked God, the fountain of light and the source of all wisdom, for the solution of your difficulties?” On the perplexed man’s replying he had not, the minister declined to try and assist him out of his perplexities till he had attended to this necessary and important duty. When we ask wisdom as well as light and instruction from God, He will give us mental and spiritual capacities, to prepare us for rightly apprehending truths; and He will also give us sufficient opportunities for gaining wisdom, and then aid and prosper us in our effort to acquire it. Wisdom is to knowledge like what the engineer is to the locomotive--a director, a controller, and a manager. Religion is the highest wisdom of all. (See Proverbs 4:7; Deuteronomy 32:29; Psalms 90:12; Proverbs 2:6; James 1:5.) (H. R. Burton.)

Thinking of Christ

Dr. Cullis tells, in one of his reports, of an aged Christian who, lying on his death-bed in the Consumptives’ Home, was asked the cause of his perfect peace, in a state of such extreme weakness that he was often entirely unconscious of all around him. He replied, “When I am able to think, I think of Jesus; and when I am unable to think of Him, I know He is thinking of me.”

Remembrance of Christ

There is no Christianity where there is no loving remembrance of Christ. If your contact with Him has not made Him your friend, whom you can by no possibility forget, you have missed the best result of your introduction to Him. It makes one think meanly of the chief butler that such a personality as Joseph’s had not more deeply impressed him--that everything he heard and saw among the courtiers did not make him say to himself: There is a friend of mine in the prison hard by, that for beauty, wisdom, and vivacity would more than match the finest of you all. And it says very little for us if we can have known anything of Christ without seeing that in Him we have what is nowhere else, and without finding that He has become the necessity of our life, to whom we turn at every point. (Marcus Dods, D. D.)

Remember that Jesus Christ, of the seed of David, was raised from the dead.

“Bear in mind,” the connection seems to be. But, with all its toils and sufferings, the gospel has also its stores of abounding consolation. The remembrance of the risen and victorious Saviour is the comfort and support of His ministers. (Speaker’s Commentary.)

Remember Jesus Christ

Every Christian who has to endure what seems to him to be hardships will sooner or later fall back upon this remembrance. He is not the first and not the chief sufferer in the world. There is One who has undergone hardships, compared with which those of other men sink into nothingness; and who has expressly told those who wish to be His disciples that they must follow Him along the path of suffering. But merely to remember Jesus Christ as a Master who has suffered and who has made suffering a condition of service will not be a permanently sustaining or comforting thought if it ends there. Therefore St. Paul says to his perplexed and desponding delegate, “Remember Jesus Christ as one risen from the dead.” Jesus Christ has not only endured every kind of suffering, including its extreme form, death, but He has conquered it all by rising again. Everywhere experience seems to teach us that evil of every kind--physical, intellectual, and moral--holds the field and appears likely to hold it. To allow one’s self to be mastered by this thought is to be on the road to doubting God’s moral government of the world. What is the antidote to it? “Remember Jesus Christ as one risen from the dead.” When has evil ever been so completely triumphant over good as when it succeeded in getting the Prophet of Nazareth nailed to the tree, like some vile and noxious animal? That was the hoar of success for the malignant Jewish hierarchy and for the spiritual powers of darkness. But it was an hour to which very strict limits were placed. Very soon He who had been dismissed to the grave by a cruel and shameful death, defeated, and disgraced, rose again from it triumphant, not over Jewish priests and Roman soldiers, but over death and the cause of death; that is, over every kind of evil--pain and ignorance and sin. But to “remember Jesus Christ as one risen from the dead” does more than this. It not only shows us that the evil against which we have such a weary struggle in this life, both in others and in ourselves, is not (in spite of depressing appearances) permanently triumphant; it also assures us that there is another and a better life in which the good cause will be supreme, and supreme without the possibility of disaster, or even of contest. What the Son of Man has done, other sons of men can do and will do. The solidarity between the human race and the Second Adam, between the Church and its Head, is such that the victory of the Leader carries with it the victory of the whole band. Once more, to “remember Jesus Christ as one risen from the dead” is to remember One who claimed to be the promised Saviour of the world and who proved His claim. And this leads St. Paul on to the second point which his downcast disciple is to remember in connection with Jesus Christ. He is to remember Him as “of the seed of David.” He is not only truly God but truly Man. The Resurrection and the Incarnation--those are the two facts on which a faltering minister of the gospel is to hold fast, in order to comfort his heart and strengthen his steps. This is the meaning of “according to my gospel.” These are the truths which St. Paul has habitually preached, and of the value of which he can speak from full experience. He knows what he is talking about, when he affirms that these things are worth remembering when one is in trouble. The Resurrection and the Incarnation are facts on which he has ceaselessly insisted, because in the wear, and tear of life he has found out their worth. (A. Plummer, D. D.)

Our Lord’s resurrection

The high value which the apostle attributes to the bodily resurrection of the Lord, here and in other passages, is, in a remarkable way, in contrast with the spiritualistic and indifferentistic evaporisation of this chief article of the gospel, on the side of the modern speculative rationalism of our days. (Van Oosterzee.)

Remembrance

I. Divine truths are to be remembered. Ii. Remembering is a reflecting of the eye of our mind on that which by the senses or the understanding hath been perceived. In remembrance are four things to be considered.

1. The apprehension of an object by the external or internal senses.

2. A reposing of it in the memory.

3. A retaining of it there.

4. A reflecting of the eye of the understanding on it. This last act is properly called remembrance.

Helps follow.

1. Get a true understanding of things..

2. Meditate much on that thou wouldst remember. Roll the thing to and fro in thy mind, look often at it, mark it well; so shall it, like a bird by struggling in the gin or lime bush, stick faster.

3. Labour for love. Will a maid forget her ornament? a bride her attire? the covetous man his coin, lad long ago in some secret corner? Wherefore, love the Word once, and then forget it if thou canst.

4. Be jealous of thy remembrance. He who carrieth a vessel in his hand may suddenly let it fall; whereas had he feared he would have held it faster. For jealousy, though a bad getter, is an excellent keeper.

5. Use repetition. Have that oft in thy tongue thou wouldst hold in thy mind. For repetition, like a mallet, will cause the piles of Divine truths to stick fast in the soil of man’s memory.

6. Study for method. Things in order laid in the head will with the more facility be held. Method (say some) is the mother of memory.

III. The choicest of divine truths are chiefly to be remembered. Have thy senses exercised, through long custom, to discern betwixt things that differ--good and evil. (J. Barlow, D. D.)

An appeal to the pattern

In the words preceding this text the apostle Paul has been speaking of the labour and conflict and endurance involved in a true profession of faith in Christ. And now that he has on hand to prove the necessity of enduring hardness in Christian life, he is ready with example as well as argument. “Remember that Jesus Christ, of the seed of David, was raised from the dead, according to my gospel.” But there is more in these words than a mere confirmation of what has gone before. They are a fresh battery brought up to the siege, adapted especially for an assault upon that strong citadel, the human will. But we have not yet got to the bottom of the apostle’s meaning. If we have yielded to the influence of his words they have carried our hearts beyond the subject they were first intended to illustrate. His theme was the endurance of hardship, and his object to brace up the soul of a fellow disciple to this trial; but, in doing so, by the example of the Master Himself, lie has done more; for he has reminded Timothy that Jesus Christ not only suffered, but died; and as elsewhere and often he has taught the necessity of our dying by union with Christ, he surely means no less than to put us face to face with the truth in the present passage. Christianity is the masterpiece of God, the wonderful fabric into which He has woven all Divine and eternal principles; and there is no principle or characteristic of Christianity more plain or more abundantly illustrated than the appointment and use of death for the production of a higher life than that which preceded it. It would be strange, indeed, if man, whose peculiar honour it is to be “called into the fellowship of God’s Son,” were an exception to this rule of death and life; or if, in his case, it were only to be known by the dissolution of his earthly body. But Scripture teaches otherwise. Christ has not merely given His life a ransom for ours. He has done this, indeed, and this is the great news of the gospel; but He has done more. He has put Himself at the head of an army which must conquer as He conquered when alone--by suffering. And thus only can we understand His words, “If any man serve Me let him follow Me!” “He that taketh not up his cross and followeth not after Me cannot be My disciple”; “He that loveth his life shall lose it, but he that loseth his life for My sake the same shall find it.” (J. F. B. Tinling, B. A.)

Remember Jesus Christ

We know how one recollection, distinct and dominant in the mind, has often been the decisive force at a critical moment; how upon the battlefield, for instance, or under the almost overpowering pressure of temptation, the thought of a man’s country, of his home, of his ancestral traditions, has reinforced, as with a fresh tide of strength, his faltering heart, and borne him on to victory, whether by success or death. We may recall the scene in one of our African campaigns, the scene preserved for us by a clever artist, where the thought of a man’s old school, and the boyish eagerness anyhow to bring it to the front, was the impulse of a splendid courage. Yes, there are images in most men’s minds which, if they rise at the right moment, will do much to make them heroes; a word, a glance, some well-known sight, some old familiar strain of music, may beckon the image out of the recesses of the memory, and if the man has in him the capacity of generous action he will use it then. It is on this characteristic of human nature that St. Paul relies as he writes to Timotheus the words of the text. He would avail himself of this; he would raise it to its highest conceivable employment; he would enlist it as a constant, ready, powerful ally on the side of duty--on the side of God. He may never see Timotheus, never write to him again; well then, he will leave dinted into his mind, by a few incisive words, one commanding and sustaining Image. For it is not, as it appears in our English version, an event of the past, however supreme in its importance, however abiding in its results, that St. Paul here fastens upon the memory of his disciple; it is not the abstract statement of a truth in history or theology, however central to the faith, however vast in its consequences; it is a living Person, whom St. Paul has seen, whose form he would have Timotheus keep ever in his mind, distinct, beloved, unrivalled, sovereign--“Bear in remembrance Jesus Christ, raised from the dead.” Let us take two thoughts this Easter morning from the counsel which St. Paul thus gives. First, that he is trying to lodge at the heart of Timotheus’s life and work that which has been the deepest and most effective force in his own. St. Paul was convinced that he had seen the risen Lord; and the energy, the effect, of that unfading Image throughout his subsequent life might go some way to prove that the conviction was true. Physical weight is sometimes measured by the power of displacement; and in the moral and spiritual sphere we tend, at least, to think that there must be something solid and real to account for a change so unexpected, so unworldly, so thorough, so sustained through every trial, so vast in its practical outcome, as was the conversion of St. Paul. Let St. Paul’s conviction be taken in its context; let justice be done to the character it wrought in him; to the coherence and splendour of the work it animated; to the penetrating, sober insight of his practical teaching; to the consistency, not of expression, but of inmost thought and life, which is disclosed to any careful study of his writings; lastly, to the grasp which his words have laid upon the strongest minds in Christendom through all succeeding centuries, the prophetic and undying power which, amidst vast changes of methods and ideas, men widely different have felt and reverenced in these Epistles--let these distinctive notes of St. Paul’s work be realised, together with its incalculable outcome in the course of history, and it will seem hard to think that the central, ruling impulse of it all was the obstinate blunder of a disordered mind. This, at least, I think, may be affirmed, that, if there were against belief in Christ’s resurrection any such difficulty as the indisputable facts of St. Paul’s life and work present to disbelief, we should find it treated as of crucial importance, and that, I think, not unjustly. “Bear in remembrance Jesus Christ raised from the dead.” It is the form which has made him what he is, for life or for death, that St. Paul would with his last words, it may be, leave clenched for ever on the mind and heart of his disciple. The vision of that form may keep him true and steadfast when all is dark, confused, and terrible around him. May not we do well to take the bidding to ourselves? There are signs of trouble and confusion in the air, and some faint hearts begin to fail; and some of us, perhaps, “see not our tokens”--so clearly as we did. But One we may see, as we lift our eyes this Easter Day; it is He who liveth and was dead; and behold He is alive for evermore; He who cannot fail His Church, or leave even the poorest and least worthy of His servants desolate and bewildered when the darkness gathers, and the cry of need goes up. (F. Paget, D. D.)

The testimony of St. Paul

St. Paul was a man who could have been trusted beyond perhaps any other man of his time to take a calm, clear, and accurate view of any alleged historical fact, and to estimate its practical hearings; and if, after the whole evidence for the Resurrection had been brought to bear upon his mind, he felt himself constrained to believe and proclaim it to the dire extremity of martyrdom--that fact becomes the strongest possible evidence for its truth. The testimony of St. Paul to the truth of the Resurrection has a double value. In the first place there is his personal witness, “Last of all He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.” It is allowed on all hands that Paul at any rate asserted simply what he believed to be the truth. It is, in the judgment of his hostile critics, a case of hallucination, not of wilful perversion of the truth. Well, men are subject to hallucinations, no doubt, especially men of genius. B at the world, the hard rough world, is a great dispeller of hallucinations. No man lives and works through a long and intensely active life as the victim of hallucination: either it vanishes and leaves him in free possession of all his faculties, or it makes him incapable of taking part to any real purpose in the business of his fellow-men. It must be remembered that this statement of Paul does not stand alone. It is in harmony with many appearances of Christ after the Resurrection, which rest on the incontestable evidence of numerous disciples; and it seemed real enough to make a vital change in the character, the beliefs, the aims, the life-work of one of the very ablest, most self.controlled, most masterly men whom we meet with in the records of universal history. But there is a second point of view from which the testimony of St. Paul to the truth of the Resurrection is so deeply important. It is the testimony of one who had mastered the whole argument in its favour, and who believed it to be irresistible. We cannot examine the witnesses, and sift their evidence; all the details are beyond our reach for ever; but we have the proofs sifted for us, weighed and stamped as valid beyond shadow of doubt or question by the regal intellect of St. Paul. His evidence has, however, a value beyond this, to which I must call your attention before I close. St. Paul not only was not a disciple, but he had been the most bitter and uncompromising enemy of the truth. Nor had he been a silent opponent. Though but a youth, by his brilliant powers he had already made for himself a name of renown among his country-men. He was the coming leader of the people, the rising man, on whom the hopes of the elders were set as the future champion of the oppressed nation in the perilous times which were manifestly coming on the world. I have said that the evidence is the evidence of disciples. I have explained how that is its strength and its glory. But one longs sometimes to know what was actually said in the Sanhedrim and in chief-priestly circles against it. We have no contemporary record of this; if any was written, no note of it has reached us, but St. Paul stands forth to supply the want. His is a voice out of the hostile camp, confessing that the opposition was in hopeless collapse. The fact that a man of such keen and eager intellect, who left no objection unanswered, no nook of argument unexplored, never condescends in any of his writings to notice the counter statements of opponents, is proof absolute that there was no validity in them. They evidently had left on his mind not a shadow of question, and brought forward nothing which it was worth his while to trouble himself to refute. Then, having borne his witness lifelong to the Resurrection, he died with the testimony on his lips. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)

The resurrection of our Lord Jesus

I. Let us consider the bearings of the fact that Jesus rose from the dead.

1. It is clear at the outset that the resurrection of our Lord was a tangible proof that there is another life. Have you not quoted a great many times certain lines about “That undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns”? It is not so. There was once a Traveller who said, “I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go away I will come again and receive you unto Myself; that where I am there ye may be also.” He said, “A little time, and ye shall see Me, and again a little time and ye shall not see Me, because I go to the Father.” His return from among the dead is a pledge to us of existence after death, and we rejoice in it. His resurrection is also a pledge that the body will surely live again and rise to a superior condition; for the body of our blessed Master was no phantom after death any more than before.

2. Christ’s rising from the dead was the seal to all His claims. It was true, then, that He was sent of God, for God raised Him from the dead in confirmation of His mission. The rising of Christ from the dead proved that this man was innocent of every sin. He could not be holden by the bands of death, for there was no sin to make those bands fast. Moreover, Christ’s rising from the dead proved His claim to Deity. We are told in another place that He was proved to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead.

3. The resurrection of our Lord, according to Scripture, was the acceptance of His sacrifice.

4. It was a guarantee of His people’s resurrection.

5. Once more, our Lord’s rising from the dead is a fair picture of the new life which all believers already enjoy. There is within us already a part of the resurrection accomplished, since it is written, “And you hath He quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins.” Now, just as Christ led, after His resurrection, a life very different from that before His death, so you and I are called upon to live a high and noble spiritual and heavenly life, seeing that we have been raised from the dead to die no more.

II. Let us consider the bearings of this fact upon the Gospel; for Paul says, “Jesus Christ was raised from the dead according to my gospel.”

1. The resurrection of Christ is vital, because first it tells us that the gospel is the gospel of a living Saviour. We have not to send poor penitents to the crucifix, the dead intone of a dead man. Notice next that we have a powerful Saviour in connection with the gospel that we preach; for He who had power to raise Himself from the dead has all power now that He is raised.

2. And now notice that we have the gospel of complete justification to preach to you.

3. Once again, the connection of the Resurrection and the gospel is this: it proves the safety of the saints, for if when Christ rose His people rose also, they rose to a life like that of their Lord, and therefore they can never die. I cannot stop to show you how this resurrection touches the gospel at every point, but Paul is always full of it. More than thirty times Paul talks about the resurrection, and occasionally at great length, giving whole Chapter s to the glorious theme.

III. The bearing of this resurrection upon ourselves. Paul expressly bids us “remember” it. Now, if you will remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David rose from the dead, what will follow?

1. You will find that most of your trials will vanish. Are you tried by your sin? Jesus Christ rose again from the dead for your justification. Does Satan accuse? Jesus rose to be your advocate and intercessor. Do infirmities hinder? The living Christ will show Himself strong on your behalf. You have a living Christ, and in Him you have all things. Do you dread death? Jesus, in rising again, has vanquished the last enemy.

2. Next remember Jesus, for then you will see how your present sufferings are as nothing compared with His sufferings, and you will learn to expect victory over your sufferings even as He obtained victory.

3. We see here, in being told to remember Jesus, that there is hope even in our hopelessness. When are things most hopeless in a man? Why, when he is dead. Do you know what it is to come down to that, so far as your inward weakness is concerned? You that are near despair, let this be the strength that nerves your arm and steels your heart, “Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead according to Paul’s gospel.”

4. Lastly, this proves the futility of all opposition to Christ. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The resurrection of Christ

I. I would first say a few words on the fact of the resurrection. It is a main point in our faith. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is a pledge of ours.

II. I would next direct your attention to the position of the believer in this life. As connected with the risen Saviour, the believer is regarded in the Word of God as “risen with Christ.” We see, then, that Paul would stir Timothy by our text to remember his privileges. He would, in effect, say to him, “Timothy, remember you have the life of Christ now; and it is His risen life which is to animate you to work and to suffer, and to ‘endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.’”

III. But there is another point to which I would direct your attention, and that is, union. It is most important to observe that this oneness of life between Jesus and the believer is just that which constitutes union. Nothing short of this is union. It is the resurrection life of Jesus that believers are united with; and this is possible only to the “new creature,” only to the “man in Christ.” We see, then, a little, I trust, of the force of the text. It is a wonderful text, and we see the power there is in it to comfort the believer and to strengthen him for service; and just as he understands in his own experience these things will he realise his privileges. In Jesus Christ he will see how the doctrine of the resurrection is calculated to make him “endure hardness.” (J. W. Reeve, M. A.)

The resurrection of Christ

I desire to speak to you on the importance of connecting the fact of the Saviour’s resurrection with two other facts, namely, first, that Christ was of the seed of David, and secondly, that the resurrection of Christ is so essential a part of the gospel of Christ that the one may be described as according with the other. There can be no dispute that it could not be needful for St. Paul to characterise Jesus as of the seed of David, in order to distinguish Him from any other being whom the name might recall to the mind of Timothy. I deny, therefore, altogether, that there is anything whatsoever of the fanciful or the far-fetched in our ascribing any particular emphasis to this casual introduction of the human lineage of Messiah. I look on the name of Jesus, and its every syllable seems to burn and blaze with divinity. I may explain and interpret it; I may expound it as promising salvation, as eloquent of deliverance to our fallen race; but in exact proportion as I magnify the wonder, I remove, as it were, the being unto whom it belongs from all kindred and companionship with the sinful tenantry of a ruined creation. The title of anointed Saviour, full though it be of magnificent mercy, consisting of attributes and principles bearing the impress of a superhuman greatness; and, however stupendous the truth, that Deity has interposed on behalf of the helpless, still the Saviour of man must be one who could hold communion and fellowship with man; He must not be separated from him by the appalling attributes which mark a Divine Creator. If there must be a celestial nature to afford the succour, there must also be a terrestrial nature to ensure the sympathy. Hence, I think it just to imagine that when the apostle sent to a beloved disciple this short compendium of Christian consolation, which he desired might be carefully borne in mind, he would not fail to interweave into such compendium a distinct reference to the complex nature of the Redeemer’s person; and, not content himself with referring him to Jesus Christ, he would add some such description as this--“of the seed of David,” in order to mark His real humanity. There is, however, a distinct allusion to other truths, as well as to the Redeemer’s humanity, in this accurate specification. It is a wonderful thing to cast one’s eye over the prophetic pages and behold how years past and years that are to come do alike burn with the deeds and triumphs of David’s Son, under the name and title of a descendant from the man after God’s own heart. It concerns not my argument to examine into the reasons which might induce the frequent introduction of the name of David whenever the triumphs of Messiah are the subject of discourse. I appeal simply to the fact, and demand of every student of Holy Writ whether there be any title under which prophecy tenders so vast revenue of honour as it does to the seed, or heir, or antitype of David. Truly, the more the mind ponders over the combination of ideas which are gathered into this apparently brief and superfluous message of Paul to Timothy, the more will it be struck with the beauty and consolation it conveys. Now, I have dealt at sufficient length on the first head of discourse; and much that I have advanced in illustration of the importance of the clause, “of the seed of David,” applies equally to the other, “according to my gospel,” which I would, in the second place, exhibit to you, as giving strength and emphasis to St. Paul’s commemoration of the death and resurrection of our Saviour. You remember the strong terms in which St. Paul, when writing to the Corinthians, states the importance of the resurrection as an article of the Christian faith. He may be said to resolve the whole of our religion, all its truth, all its value, all its beauty, into the one fact that Christ Jesus had been raised from the dead. “If Christ be not raised”--thus it is he speaks--“your faith is in vain; you are yet in your sins: then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.” By stating the fact that life and immortality have been brought to light by the gospel, to which I suppose St. Paul to allude when he speaks of Christ Jesus as “raised from the dead according to my gospel,” I suppose him designing to remind his son Timothy, not so much of the simple truth of the Saviour’s resurrection as of the colouring and character which this event gave to the whole system of Christianity. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

The place of the resurrection of Jesus in the theology of the New Testament

The resurrection was far more than any mere sign, though so unique and remarkable. Like the miracles of Christ, only in a still profounder measure, it was in itself a display of mercy--an instrument of His mighty and beneficent mediation. When the apostles taught it they not only bore witness, but they preached a “gospel”; they not only announced a wonderful fact, but they presented that fact to men as in itself at the same time a measure of Divine grace. Apart from the resurrection of Christ you could not construct the faith, impart the solace, urge the appeal, or sway the inspiration of Christianity. It is not simply that there would be no sign, but there would be no power. It is, so to speak, the blood “which is the life,” the blood that circulates through every vein to every limb and member of the Christian system. This is the fact I want to impress in my present discourse. Perhaps it will surprise you to hear my full belief that, but for the resurrection, you would have had in your hands no such exposition as you now possess of who and what Christ was and did for men. Christ Himself did not write any book about His life; not a line. How, then, came we to know what we do about Him? Right down to the end of His life, to the end of the Gospels, the disciples remained strangely ignorant of the great work their Master came to achieve. Dull, ignorant, confused, bewildered, they were the last men in the world to take up a forlorn cause, redeem it, and carry it to triumph. Contrast with this state of mind the speech and conduct of those self-same men in the stirring scenes with which the Acts acquaint us. You may search all literature, I believe, and you will not find a greater contrast. How did this happen? The only book that gives the history lets us into the secret. I claim, then, on the authority of this only history, to say that but for the resurrection of Jesus we had had no portraiture of Christ, no Gospels, no Acts, no Epistles, setting Him forth to the world for its salvation and joy. No other writers of the age have depicted Him; and these who have all refer their knowledge and appreciation to the illumination of that Spirit whom He sent on His exaltation to heaven. Again. It is the constant representation of the writers of the New Testament that Christ offered Himself in some way as a sacrifice for sin, and that that offering was presented in His death. But what had that sacrifice been without Christ’s revival from death? With the greatest force does the letter to the Romans teach us, “He was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification.” Paul does not hesitate to declare that apart from it there is no pardon: “If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.” Another point of our “precious faith” at which the resurrection of Christ meets us with infinite power and solace is seen at death, when we bury our dead out of sight, or are ourselves laid in the grave. “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him.” None of the apostles had a higher standard of the Christian life than the Apostle Paul; none more keenly realised its contrast with the former habits of sin, or more acutely felt the struggle, fierce and constant, by which it alone was to be attained and maintained; none more clearly perceived the organic relation of one part of that life to another; and Paul strove by a most beautiful and expressive image to urge the believer to all vigilance and mortification of unworthy impulse and passion in its culture. Christ’s death and resurrection furnished the image. “We are buried with Him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life,” etc. If Christ be not risen from the dead, the day of judgment, as solemnly delineated in the New Testament, is denuded of many of its most sublime and thrilling features. There is no judgment-seat of Christ; for though Christ has died, He has not risen and revived that He might be Lord both of the dead and the living. Neither, for the same reason, can we look for His appearing, or expect Him from heaven, since He is not gone thither. I should have to quote a vast number of passages from all the great sections of the New Testament Scriptures were I to set forth the claims, according to their teaching, of the Lord Jesus on our worship, His power and readiness to hear our prayers and satisfy our trust. But these are obviously of no authority and service to us if He did not rise from the grave. The writer to the Hebrews has repeatedly described Him as seated at the right hand of God, but of course he is mistaken; Christ is in the grave. He has imputed illimitable efficiency to His intercession. But he is mistaken; Christ is not capable of making any intercession at all. Believers are designated by Paul as those who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ; but they were all deluded, for Christ was not risen nor ascended. Nor would the example of Christ as an all-perfect pattern of holiness and love in a world governed by infinite holiness and power occasion us less hopeless embarrassment, if He be not risen, than the facts just dismissed. We should, in that case, have the frightful spectacle of a righteousness, truth, goodness, and mercy that never faltered or failed expending themselves to the very uttermost, and this without Divine acknowledgment and vindication. A greater shock to all virtue could not be conceived. And in this instance it would be aggravated by the very measure with which this Great Exemplar had indulged the hope of reward. The resurrection stands to us a pledge and pattern of our own; and while our dust may await its final recovery, our spirits shall be with Him. Nay, He will even be our convoy through the gates of death, and then receive us into the mansions of His Father’s house, that where He is we may be also. (G. B. Johnson.)

My gospel

The apostle is not contrasting his gospel with that of other preachers, as if he would say, “Others may teach what they please, but this is the substance of my gospel”; and Jerome is certainly mistaken if what is quoted as a remark of his is rightly assigned to him by Fabricius, to the effect that whenever St. Paul says “according to my gospel” he means the written gospel of his companion St. Luke, who had caught much of his spirit and something of his language. It would be much nearer the truth to say that St. Paul never refers to a written gospel. In every one of the passages in which the phrase occurs the context is quite against any such interpretation (Romans 2:16; Romans 16:25; cf. 1 Timothy 1:11). In this place the words which follow are conclusive: “Wherein I suffer hardship unto bonds, as a malefactor.” How could he be said to suffer hardship unto bonds in the Gospel of St. Luke? (A. Plummer, D. D.)

Each man has his own conception of the gospel

We may be sure, then, that the phrase “my gospel” is not used by St. Paul in the spirit either of the Pharisee or of the bigot. He is not one who refuses to recognise the excellence in those who may not exactly agree with him, or assumes that to him alone is committed a trustworthy form of the faith. Nevertheless, the phrase has a distinct force of its own. It suggests that St. Paul looked at the gospel from his own standpoint, and that the gospel as he represented it had aspects differing somewhat from the same gospel as represented by others. We need not be afraid to admit this. If you look at any great mountain from several points of view, its parts are at once brought into varying relations to each other. Standing here you see clearly great peaks, which from another position would be hidden. Nay, if you look at the same mountain from the same standpoint at different times, it will present different aspects--now dim and mysterious in the grey morning, and now rosy with the after-glow when the sun has set. Yet it is the same mountain, presenting itself in varying guise to different spectators. So with St. Paul. When he speaks of “my gospel,” it is not another gospel in the sense of being contradictory, or even deficient as compared with the gospel proclaimed by other apostles. It is the same gospel, seen, however, from his own standpoint--“the gospel according to Paul.” (T. B. Stephenson, D. D.)

The unity underlying the various conceptions of the gospel

The West Indies are a long chain of islands, seeming to be widely and completely separated from each other, each one a lovely jewel resting on the heaving bosom of the sea. But if you look below the surface of the ocean you discover that each of these islands is bound to all the others; that they are, in fact, the topmost points of one long mountain chain which has been submerged. So that whilst each island seems to be separate, all rest upon and are a part of the vast and substantial unity which lies far below. “My gospel”: each one of the Churches may correctly use the phrase, yet these are not many gospels, but in essence and substance one.

Wherein I suffer trouble, as an evil doer, even unto bonds; but the Word of God is not bound.

“The Word of God is not bound”

The apostle is imprisoned, but his tongue and his companion’s pen are free. He can still teach those who come to him; can still dictate letters for others to Luke and the faithful few who visit him. He has been able to influence those whom, but for his imprisonment, he would never have had an opportunity of reaching--Roman soldiers, and warders, and officials, and all who have to take cognisance of his trial before the imperial tribunal. “The Word of God is not bound.” While he is in prison Timothy and Titus and scores of other evangelists and preachers are free, Those who are left at large ought to labour all the more energetically and enthusiastically in order to supply whatever is lost by the apostle’s want of freedom, and in order to convince the world that this is no contest with a human organisation, or with human opinion, but with a Divine word and a Divine Person. “The Word of God is not bound,” because His Word is the truth, and it is the truth that makes men free. How can that of which the very essence is freedom, and of which the attribute is that it confers freedom, be itself kept in bondage? (A. Plummer, D. D.)

God’s Word free

He perhaps changes the expression from “my gospel” to the “Word of God” in order to indicate why it is that, although the preacher is in prison, yet his gospel is free, because the Word which he preaches is not his own, but God’s. (A. Plummer, D. D.)

Suffering furthers the gospel

The sufferings of the witnesses for Christ was, and is at all times, one of the most powerful agencies for the furtherance of the gospel (comp. Philippians 1:12-14; Colossians 1:24; 2 Corinthians 1:5-7). (Van Oosterzee.)

.

Suffering for the gospel

I. The gospel may occasion trouble.

1. For it bruiseth Satan’s head, discovereth his plots, overturneth his kingdoms.

2. Besides, it pulleth down the pride of man, provoketh to repentance, presseth him to deny himself, put confidence in Christ, and its worth is not known in the world.

II. The enemies of the church afflict the godly under a pretence of law.

1. For the conversation of the godly is holy, honest, harmless; that without such pretences they could have no seeming cause to afflict them.

2. The wicked, in their generation, are wise; therefore, to cover and cloak their mischiefs they must have some pretence of law.

III. Godly preachers may have great persecutions.

1. Because not many wise, mighty, or noble men are called neither to embrace the gospel nor preach it.

2. And godly preachers speak with power, curb men’s raging corruptions, wound their rebellious spirits, and never prophesy of peace unto them.

IV. The liberty of God’s word is greatly to be regarded.

1. For it is the instrumental cause of man’s conversion.

2. It increaseth grace, supports in trouble, and directeth to heaven.

3. And by the Word are not our adversaries foiled?

V. The persecution of preachers doth not always infringe the liberty of the Word.

1. Because then the Lord hath a special care to His own cause.

2. The example of some will embolden others. (J. Barlow, D. D.)

The Word of God not bound

1. The first idea suggested by the words in their original connection is, that Paul’s incarceration did not hinder his own personal exertions as a preacher of the gospel. The practical lesson taught by Paul’s example, in this view of it, is obvious. It is a reproof of our disposition to regard external disadvantages, restraints, and disabilities as either affording an immunity from blame if we neglect to use the power still left us, or discouraging the hope of any good effect from using it.

2. It was still true, however, that Paul’s bonds diminished his efficiency. While he avoided the extreme of abandoning all hope, he equally avoided that of foolishly imagining that he could personally do as much for the diffusion of the gospel in his own hired house at Rome, as in the wide sweep of his itinerant apostleship. His work, though not yet at an end, was interrupted, and how should his lack of service be supplied? The answer is a plain one: By the labours of others. This was a large ingredient in the cup of the apostle’s consolation. He rejoiced not only in the labours of others during his comparative inaction, but in that inaction as the occasion, the exciting cause, of other men’s exertions. Nay, he could even go so far as to consent to be wronged and dishonoured, if by that means his ruling passion might be gratified (see Philippians 1:12-21). What is the principle involved in this sublime profession of heroic devotion to the cause of Christ? Plainly this, that while Paul was ever ready to magnify his office as apostle to the Gentiles, and correctly appreciated both the honour and the difficulty of the work assigned to him, he never dreamed that it was meant to be entirely dependent upon his individual activity. It was not at himself, but at the word that he continually looked. Here, too, the lesson to ourselves is obvious. The apostle’s example ought to shame us out of all undue reliance upon certain human agencies and influences. Especially ought this to be the case in relation to our own share of the work to be performed for the honour of God and the salvation of the world.

3. One of the most important lessons, couched in this significant expression or deducible from it, would be lost upon us if we went no further. I refer to the doctrine that the truth of God is independent, not only of particular human agents, but of all human systems of opinion, organisations, and methods of procedure. “The Word of God is not bound” or restricted, in its salutary virtue, to the formal and appreciable power exerted upon Churches and Christian communities, or through the ordinary modes and channels of religious influence, however great this power may be, however indispensable to the completion of the work which God is working in our days. We may even admit that it is relatively almost all, but it is still not quite all; and the residuary power may be greater, vastly greater, than it seems to us before attentively considering the other less direct, less formal, less appreciable ways, in which the Word of God, the truth revealed in Scripture, is at this moment operating on the condition of society, apart from its constant and direct communication through the pulpit, the school, and the religious press. These are the agencies, indeed, by which sound doctrine is maintained in your Churches and impressed upon your youth; and this, in its perfection, is the highest end that can be wrought by the diffusion of the truth. But let us not forget that much may be effected even when this highest end is not attained. In many a heresy, for instance, how much truth maybe mingled, saving it from absolute corruption, and perhaps the souls of those who hold it, from perdition. Infidelity, in all its forms, affects to treat religion with contempt, as the offspring of ignorance; but its own discoveries are mere mutilations of the truths which it has stolen from its despised enemy. The attempt of infidelity to do away with the great doctrines of religion is the prowess of a dwarf mounting on a giant’s shoulders to put out his eyes. The same thing is true as to those slighter and more trivial, but for that very reason more effective, forms of unbelief, which are propagated, not in philosophical abstractions, but in poetry, romance, and other current literature. The novelist or journalist who, with a scorn of Christianity only to be equalled by his ignorance of what it teaches, undertakes to Show his readers “a more excellent way,” often brings them at last to some elementary truth, already wrought into the mind and stamped upon the memory of every child who reads the Bible. What a tribute is this to the pervading, penetrating force of truth, that it can find its way even into such dark places, and at least serve to make the darkness visible! Look, too, at the schemes of civil government and social order framed by irreligious men, or unbelievers in the Scriptures, and observe these two facts easily established: that every departure from the lessons of God’s Word is a demonstrable evil or defect in relation even to the lower object aimed at; and that everything conducive to a good end in the system is an adaptation of some Christian doctrine to a special purpose. It would be easy to pursue the same inquiry through every field of science and every walk of art, and to show that even there the Word of God has first been followed as a guide, and then expelled as an intruder; that its light has first been used to kindle others, and then vain attempts made to extinguish it for ever; in a word, that its enemies have first resorted to it in their time of need, and then ungratefully forgotten or unblushingly denied the obligation. If this be a correct view of the influence exerted even indirectly by the Word of God; if over and above its certain and complete results, it shines through the interstices of unknown caverns, and mitigates the darkness of unfathomed depths; if in fertilising one spot it sheds even a few scattered but refreshing drops upon a multitude of others; if in doing all for some, it incidentally does some for all, let me ask, in conclusion, What should be the practical effect of this belief?

1. We need not tremble for the truth itself.

2. There is some hope for the world itself, and even for those parts of it, and those things in it, which otherwise might seem to be confined to hopeless, irrecoverable ruin.

3. It may teach us a valuable lesson as to the true spirit of philanthropy, as being not a formal, rigid, mathematical attempt to save men’s souls by certain rules, and in the use of certain ceremonial forms; but a generous, impulsive, and expansive zeal for the glory of God in the salvation of the lost. And as the surest way of gaining this end, let us flood the world with the pure and unadulterated Word of God. (J. A. Alexander, D. D.)

Not bound yet

I. In what sense is it true, that “the Word of God is not bound”?

1. It is not bound so that it cannot be preached. Paul could preach it even when in bonds, and he did preach it, so that the gospel was made known throughout Caesar’s palace, and there were saints in the imperial household. Nineteen centuries after Paul we have still an open Bible and a free pulpit. When Hamilton was burned in Scotland, there was such an impetus given to the gospel through his burning that the adversaries of the gospel were wont to say, “Let us burn no more martyrs in public, for the smoke of Hamilton’s burning has made many eyes to smart until they were opened.” So, no doubt, it always was. Persecution is a red hand which scatters the white wheat far and wide.

2. “The Word of God is not bound” so as to be no longer a living, working power among men. Sometimes the enemies of truth have thought that they had silenced the last witness, and then there has been an unexpected outburst, and the old faith has been to the front again. The enemies of the gospel have attempted also to bind it by the burning of books. I have in my possession an early copy of Luther’s sermons, and I was told how very rare it was, because at first the circulation was forbidden, and afterwards they were bought up and burned as soon as ever they were met with. And what did they do? They only put fire into Luther when they burned his sermons; they drove him to be more outspoken than he otherwise might have been, and so they helped the cause they thought to destroy. As the sun is not blown out by the tempest, nor the moon quenched by the night-damps, so is not the gospel destroyed by the sophistries of perverse minds.

3. The Word of God is not bound so that it cannel reach the heart. God has ways of reaching the hardest hearts and melting them, and He can do it at moments when such a work is least expected. Sometimes it happens to those whom we love that they are removed from the means of grace, but even then the Word of God is not bound. Had we not, a little while ago, an instance of one whom we were praying for at a prayer-meeting, and that night, while we were praying, it was a moonlight night, and as he was walking the deck of the ship, the Lord met with him? When no tongue was able to reach him, the memory of what he had heard at home came over his soul, and he was humbled before God. I was telling, just a little while ago, at our prayer-meeting, a very singular instance of how, just lately, three or four sermons on Sunday evenings have been made most useful to a young friend. He was going away to Australia unconverted, and without God. He went on board to depart, and when the vessel steamed out of dock, it ran into another ship, and he was obliged to wait and spend almost a month here, whilst the vessel was being repaired. The Lord met with him on those Sunday nights, and he has gone now, leaving in his mother’s heart the sweet persuasion that he has found his mother’s God. But sometimes we are apt to think a case is more hopeless still, when, in addition to natural depravity, and the absence of the means of grace, there springs up a scepticism, perhaps a downright derision of the Word of God, and of things sacred. I knew a man who had lived a life of carelessness and indifference, with occasional outbursts of drunkenness and other vices. This man happened one day, on Peckham Rye, to hear a preacher say that if any man would ask anything of God, He would give it to him. The assertion was much too broad, arid might have done harm; but this man accepted it as a test, and resolved that he would ask, and thus would see if there was a God. On the Saturday morning of that week, when he was going early to his work, the thought came upon him, “Perhaps there is a God after all.” He was ready to swoon as the possibility struck him, and there and then he offered the test petition, concerning a matter which concerned himself and his fellow-workmen. His prayer was granted in a remarkable manner, and he came then to be a believer in God. He is more than that now, and has found his way to be a believer in all that God has spoken, and has found peace through believing in Jesus Christ.

4. It is not bound as to its power to comfort the soul.

5. The Word of God is not bound in the sense that it cannot be fulfilled. I now allude principally to the promises and prophecies of God’s Word.

6. The Word of God is not bound so that it cannot endure and prevail unto the end.

II. What are the reasons why the word of God is not bound?

1. It is not bound, because it is the voice of the Almighty. If the gospel be indeed the gospel of God, and these truths be a revelation of God, omnipotence is in them.

2. Moreover, the Holy Ghost puts forth His power in connection with the Word of God, and as He is Divine He is unconquerable.

3. If you wanted another reason less strong than these two, I should say, “How can it be bound while it is so needful to men?” There are certain things which if men want they will have. I have heard say that in the old Bread Riots, when men were actually starving for bread, no word had such a terribly threatening and alarming power about it as the word “Bread!” when shouted by a starving crowd. I have read a description by one who once heard this cry: he said he had been startled at night by a cry of “Fire!” but when he beard the cry of “Bread! Bread!” from those that were hungry, it seemed to cut him like a sword. Whatever bread had been in his possession he must at once have handed it out. So it is with the gospel: when men are once aware of their need of it, there is no monopolising it. None can make “a ring” or “a corner” over the precious commodity of heavenly truth.

4. The Word of God is not bound, because, when once it gets into men’s hearts, it works such an enthusiasm in them that you cannot bind it. There is Master Bunyan; they have put him in prison, and his family is nearly starving, and they bring him up, and they say, “You shall go out of prison, John, if you won’t preach. Go home, and tag your laces, that is what you have to do, and leave the gospel alone; what have you got to do with that?” But honest John answers, “I cannot help it. If you let me out of prison to-day, I will preach again to-morrow, by the help of God. I will lie here till the moss grows on my eyelids, but I will never promise to cease preaching the gospel.”

III. One or two other facts run parallel to the text. Paul is bound, but the Word of God is not bound. Read it thus: the preacher has had a bad week, he is full of aches and pains, he feels ill: but the Word of God is not ill. “What will become of the congregation when a certain minister dies?” Well, he will be dead, but the Word of God is not dead. “Oh, but the worker is so feeble!” The Word of God is net feeble. “But the worker feels so stupid.” But the Word of God is not stupid. “But the worker is so unfit.” But the Word of God is not unfit. But you bitterly and truthfully lament that Christian men are nowadays very devoid of zeal. “All hearts are cold in every place”; the old fire burns low. But the Word of God is not cold, nor lukewarm, nor in any way losing its old fire. “Yes,” says one, “but I am disgusted with the cases I have lately met with of false brethren.” Yes, but the Word of God is not false. “But they walk so inconsistently.” I know they do, but the Word of God is not inconsistent. “But they say they have disproved the faith.” Yes, they have disproved their own faith, but they have not disproved the Word of God for all that. “Oh, but,” says one, “it is an awful thing to think of the spiritual ruin of so many that are round about us, who bear the gospel, and yet after all wilfully refuse it, and die in their sins.” Truly this is a grievous fact: they appear to be bound by their sins like beasts for the slaughter, but the Word of God is not bound or injured. It was said of old that it would be a sweet savour unto God in them that are saved, and in them that perish--in the one a savour of life unto life, and in the other a savour of death unto death. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The Word of God not bound

Liberal Christianity may be defined, not as any belief, nor as any system of opinions, but as something going deeper. It is a habit of mind; a way of considering all opinions as of secondary importance; all outward statements, methods, operations, administrations, as not belonging to the essence of religion. Liberal Christianity comes from that spiritual insight which penetrates the shell and finds the kernel; sees what is the one thing needful, and discovers it to be not the form, but the substance; not the letter, but the spirit; not the body, but the soul; not the outward action, but the inward motive; net the profession, but the life. Liberal Christianity began when the first struggle began between the spirit and the letter, and that was the great battle which emancipated Christianity from Judaism. It was thought, at first, that the Word of God was bound to Judaism, and that no man could be a Christian unless he were also a Jew. Paul rooted that weed out of Christianity, and won for the whole Ethnic world--Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Persians, Hindoos, Germans--the right of becoming Christians at once, just as they were, without first having to become Jews. But intolerance is the natural growth of strong soils. Out in the West, when the primeval forest is felled, there comes up in regular order, a whole succession of weeds, which are killed out, one after another, by culture. So it has been in the progress of Christian civilisation. This progress has killed off, one afar another, a similar series of weeds which came up in the Christian Church. The Jewish intolerance was the first weed. Paul weeded the Church of that so thoroughly that it never came up again. The next weed was the Church intolerance, which said, “No man can be a Christian who is not a member of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, and partakes of its sacraments, and submits to its authority.” Martin Luther weeded Christianity of this form of intolerance, and made it possible for man to be a Christian without being a Roman Catholic. But not being as liberal a Christian as Paul, he left another weed growing in its place--the weed of dogmatic intolerance. The dogmatists said, “The Word of God is not bound to the Roman Catholic Church; but it is bound to certain essential doctrines--the Trinity, total depravity, the atonement, everlasting punishment.” This weed has also been nearly eradicated in our time. The principle of liberal Christianity has pervaded all denominations. It has taken the shells and husks and outward coverings from the Word of God, and these are now seen to be like those envelopes which God puts around the fruits of the earth, until they are ripe, but which then are taken off and thrown away. Nothing abides, nothing is permanent in Christianity, says Paul, but faith, hope, and love. The Word of God is not bound to any Church or to any creed; it goes outside of all Churches and all creeds. The same cool breeze which fans the hot cheeks of the labourers on the plains of Hindostan, sweeps on across the Indian Ocean, gathering moisture as it goes, and pours it down in rain on the parched regions of Central Africa. So God sends His prophets and teachers of truth to every race, to help them according to their separate needs; sends some knowledge of Himself, some intuitions of duty, some hopes of immortality, to all the children of men. The Word of God is not bound to the Bible. It is not the prophecies of the Bible which are essential--“for whether there be prophecies, they shall fail.” It is not its verbal inspiration which gives to it its supreme importance--“for whether there be tongues, they shall cease.” Nor is its vitality even in the doctrinal truth it teaches--“for whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.” But it is the faith, the hope, the love which are in the Bible which will abide, and will cause the Bible to remain always a permanent blessing to mankind. Nor is the Word of God bound to any belief we may have about the outward history of Jesus--His miraculous birth, His own miracles, or any particular outward facts of His life. The essential thing, even in His resurrection, is not the outward part of it, but the inward part; not the particular way in which He arose, as that He did go up to a higher life; that He is now alive, and that death has no dominion over Him. Faith in Christ is not believing this or that fact about Him, but it is faith in Himself, faith in the truth and love, which are incarnate in Him, and which were breathed forth in all He said and did and was. Deny His miracles, if you please; you cannot deny the great miracle of His influence on mankind. Such a vast effect must have its cause. If we have faith in the spirit of Jesus, in the Divine piety which made Him the well-beloved Son, dwelling always in the bosom of the Father; in the Divine charity which made Him the Friend and the Helper of the humblest of God’s children; if we have faith in these as the true life to lead here and as salvation hereafter, then we have the real Word of God in our hearts, and believe in the real Christ. Finally, the Word of God is not bound to any particular religions experience. Men come to God in all sorts of ways--the important thing is to come to Him. Some are converted suddenly; others grow up, by an insensible process, into the love of God. God has a great many means of making men good. If a man find that formal and regular prayers help him, let him pray that way. If he finds that he comes nearer to God by endeavouring to live a pure and honest life, and leaning on God’s help to do it, let him pray that way. He who loves truly prays well. Here is a poor woman who is obliged to be away from her children all day, working hard for their support. When she comes home at night she finds that her oldest boy has been sawing the wood and bringing the water, and that the oldest girl has been taking care of the little children all the time she has been gone. That pleases her more than all the affectionate words they could say to her. That is the best proof of their love. If we take care of God’s poor, and His sick and His sorrowful children, that will be counted to us, I think, for faith and prayer and conversion and piety. (J. Freeman Clarke.)

The Word of God not bound

I. By any restrictions imposed by god. God may permit certain circumstances, but He has not imposed any restrictions. The Old Testament and New Testament, the voice of the prophets, and of Him who is greater than prophets, alike concur (Psalms 67:5; Psalms 98:3; Isaiah 49:6; Mark 16:5). The character of God, the end of the gospel, the state of man, confirm this.

II. By any artificial or conventional restraints imposed by man. Look at the history and progress of Christianity (Acts 4:18; Acts 5:28; Acts 6:6; Acts 12:24; Acts 19:20); history of early Church--Reformation--of missionary labours.

III. By any degree of human guilt or depravity. Look again at first days of gospel (Luke 15:2; Luke 19:1-11; Luke 23:39-44; 1 Corinthians 6:9-12. St. Paul himself a witness (1 Timothy 1:12-17). But if the Word of God is not bound, why do not all men receive it, and live by it? Not because the gospel is bound, but because the natural heart is bound. (E. A. Eardley-Wilmot, M. A.)

The invincibility of the Divine Word

As a word expresses a thought, and so places one in a definite relation to another, so the Word of God is that by means of which He places Himself in a definite or thinkable relation to us. It is an expression of the purpose of God; that purpose in accordance with which He seeks to place Himself in a relation of abiding concord with the children of men, on the basis of which all men may be brought into the perfect knowledge and love of God. By the declaration that the Word of God is not bound, I understand the apostle to assert that this word, as a revelation of the purpose of God to bless and save men, must infallibly succeed in making that purpose known, and must also, from the very nature of the case, effect in some sense and way the realisation of the purpose itself. In so far as the Word of God is concerned, there is nothing to prevent the salvation and everlasting blessedness of every human being.

1. The Word of God is not bound by either of the two conditions of all created existence: the conditions of time and space. The Word of God is not bound as regards time, because it is the revelation of a purpose that runs through all time, originating in eternity and reaching unto eternity. It is true that the revelation is made in time. It moves in the line, works on the plane, and manifests itself through the sphere of the natural World; still its distinctive feature is this, that it is a revelation of that which exists in the supernatural: and, therefore, while existing in time, it also transcends time, and cannot, in the whole extent of its existence, be limited by time. And yet there are people who practically believe that the Word of God is bound as regards time. What is the error of all traditionalism, if it be not this, that nothing is good for us in the matter of religion, but that which has been handed down to us as a finished result from the past; and that, therefore, a new truth is necessarily not a truth at all, having no right to call itself a truth, except on the explicit understanding of its being the merest echo of an idea uttered long ago. Space, again, is that in which we have the notion of the comprehension of existence. It is that in which all things exist, and are held together, each in its own place. Space itself has no outline, but everything, as existing therein, has a Given outline, within which it exists. But the Word of God is not bound as regards space. And yet there are those who would confine the Word of God not merely to this earth, which is but a speck in the boundlessness of space, but would limit it still further to some particular spot of the earth. The people who believe in consecrated places, and make pilgrimages to them, in the hope of getting spiritual benefit thereby, are the unhappy dupes of the delusion that the Word of God is bound--bound as to place.

2. The Word of God is not bound by either of the two highest forms of supernatural existence, viz., Christ and the Church, It is in the person of Jesus Christ that God has placed Himself in a definite relation to us. Hence Christ is spoken of as the living or incarnate Word, God manifest in the flesh. Is not the Word of God, then, it may be said, as thus embodied in the person of Christ, in some sense limited or bound? It exists under the conditions of human nature; appears in a particular country; is spoken in a particular language; submits to the restrictions of a somewhat limited sphere, experience, and term of life; and have we not in all this that which fulfils, in the most complete sense, the notion of the conditioned or bound? In a word, is not the Incarnation at best a mere anthropomorphism, under which we have only a partial view of God? To this objection it may be answered in a general way that the supernatural is not necessarily bound when it moves in the line, works on the plane, and manifests its power through the sphere of the natural world, any more than a father is bound, when he freely stoops to take the hand of his child, and keeps pace, for a time, with the shorter step of the little one, in order that the child may ultimately be brought up, as nearly as possible, to the level of the father; and no more is God, as the self-existent One, bound when He reveals Himself under the forms of nature, or comes as Christ into a more definite relation to us, in order that we may be able thereby to think ourselves up to the ideas of God. At the same time, it must be admitted that if the supernatural came down into any form of permanent subordination to the natural, it would undoubtedly to that extent be bound. Accordingly, up to the time of the first advent, or prior to the ascension of our Saviour, to the right hand of God in heaven, there was a sense in which the supernatural was bound, to some extent, in its relation to the natural. That partial and temporary dispensation has given place to the dispensation of the Spirit, under which those former limitations and restrictions have passed away. If, then, the Word of God is no longer bound, even as it was by the circumstances of our Saviour’s life upon the earth, how can it be bound by any other individual, such as an infallible Head of the Church upon the earth, by an historical succession of apostles, or priestly caste of any kind, in whose hands alone that Word is supposed to reside, and by whom alone saving grace can be communicated to their fellow-men? The exaltation of Christ to the right hand of God in heaven and to the absolute supremacy of the whole world, puts an end for ever to all such pre tensions. But the objection may still be pursued under the form of the Church. We require to lay hold of some clear idea of the Church in its relation to the Word of God. Undoubtedly it is the Divinely-appointed expounder of that Word; but so long as the Church is broken up into so many little sects, and so long as spiritual matters are disposed of by the merest majority, it may be even of a sect, it is difficult to see how the whole truth of the Divine word ever can be brought out before the world, the only organ through which the Holy Spirit speaks in fullest form being a truly Catholic Church. In the existence, then, of such a body there is no restraint put upon the Word of God, because the creed of that Church would be the ever-growing and ever-brightening expression of the mind of God as contained in the sacred Scriptures.

3. The Word of God is not bound by either of the two essential qualities of personal being; viz., thought and speech. If every idea is the identity of a thinking subject and an object thought, the one absolute law of thought is the law of identification. No doubt thought in its course reveals a number of opposites or contradictories, but its last function is to unite the whole. There cannot be legitimately different schools or types of thought, any more than there can be different laws of thought in different individuals, or different principles of understanding and reason in different parts of the world. Therefore, we deem it a fallacy to say that men cannot attain to unanimity of sentiment in regard to the highest of all subjects; because they have only to be true to the deepest principles of their own intellectual being in order to come to the most perfect harmony in respect of all these important matters. If so, the Word of God is not bound when it comes under the conditions of human thought, seeing that, in its essential principles, it is one with the very laws of thought themselves. But it may still be objected--and this is the last point with which we have to deal--that if the Word is not bound by the limits and laws of thought, it is so by the limits and laws of speech. As regards the Bible there need not be much difficulty. It is simply a record of spiritual facts. It merely notes the different points in the historical development of the Divine purpose. It professes, indeed, to be a veritable history of the supernatural, as a phenomenon working itself out, in, and through the natural. And it is altogether to be tested from the point of what it claims to be. The letter of the Bible is no more a fetter on the living purpose of God than any word or letter is to the thought of which it is the free and adequate expression. It is not so evident, however, that the Word of God is not bound, when we come to the written creed of the Church; and on that account some sections of the Church dispense altogether with a written creed. It becomes, therefore, a question as to what the creed of the Church is, and what the relation of the Church to her creed. And the whole question seems to resolve itself into this--that on a basis of perfectly clear and immovable conviction, about which no one can have any real difficulty, who believes in God at all, and without which the Church, as a whole, can have no existence, every one ought to be free to carry out in detail, to the minutest and remotest ramifications of thought, those subordinate shades of spiritual life and conviction that belong to the experience of one individual as compared with another. In such a case the creed would only be an arrangement, in their simple and natural order, of the leading conceptions of Divine revelation; and thus the whole mind of the Church would be left perfectly free to explore the depths, to bring out the riches, and to reveal the glory of the Divine Word. (F. Ferguson.)

God’s Word not bound

Under the Church of Santa Maria via Lata, on the Corse, in Rome, is an ancient house which is said to have been St. Paul’s “hired house,” where be dwelt daring the two years of his abode in the Imperial City; and where, as tradition says, he converted his keeper, a soldier named Marcellus. In this house is to be seen an antique marble pillar and a rusty chain, hundreds of years old, riveted into it, bearing the inscription: “Sed verbum Dei non est alligatum”--“The Word of God is not bound.” Our Divine Master Himself was bound to the accursed tree, but His gracious words are heard throughout the world. St. Paul’s bonds turned out to the furtherance of the gospel; and God’s Word is set free by the endurance and sufferings of its preachers. The apostle’s manacled hand still pointed to the cross of his Divine Lord. When Admiral Ver Huce, a Protestant of whom Buonaparte entertained the highest opinion, went over to London, a few years after the battle of Waterloo, to represent the Bible Society of France, at the annual meeting of the British and Foreign Bible Society, he and Admiral Gambler met on the platform. The last time they had met was in deadly combat on the ocean; met as enemies, amidst the roar of cannon and all the accompaniments of a bloody conflict. Now they met, not simply as friends, but as brethren in the faith of a common Saviour, to advocate and help forward His glorious reign of righteousness and peace. As the two brave old men rushed into each other’s arms, and wept aloud, the immense assembly arose with one accord, profoundly moved by a spectacle so unlooked for and so touching. Although the Bible is the best book in the world, it has always had enemies who have tried to do away with its teachings, if they could not succeed in destroying it. For three hundred years after our Saviour lived upon earth, the emperors of Rome did their utmost to hinder the advance of the gospel, by shutting up its ministers in prison, or by putting them to death. They stirred up dreadful persecutions against Christians, some of which lasted ten years; and during one of these, more than a hundred and fifty thousand followers of Jesus were slain. Diocletian was so confident that he had accomplished his purpose that he caused a medal to be struck, bearing this inscription: “The Christian religion is destroyed; and the worship of the gods restored.” After the overthrow of the Roman empire, and the rise of the Papacy, stringent measures were inaugurated against the circulation of the Holy Scriptures. Fulgentio once preached in Venice from the text, “Have ye not read?” “If Christ were now to ask you this question,” said the bold friar, “all the answer you could make would be, ‘No, Lord, we are not suffered to do so.’” On another occasion, when preaching on Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” he told his hearers that he had been long searching for it, and had at last found it. Holding up the New Testament, he said, “Here it is in my hand!” Then, returning it to his pocket, he observed, with an arch look, “The Book is prohibited!” He was a little too venturesome in his zeal for the truth, and was burned alive. In 1553, when Pope Julius

III. asked some of his counsellors as to the best mode of strengthening the Church, several bishops gave him this advice--the original document being still in existence--“We advise that as little as possible of the gospel be read in the countries subject to your jurisdiction. The little which is usually read at Mass is sufficient, and beyond that no one whatever must be permitted to read. While men were contented with that little, your interests prospered; but when they read more, they began to decay.” A company of bigoted priests once met in Earl Street, Blackfriars, London, to consult together concerning an edition of the Bible which Wyclif had just published in the English tongue. As might be expected, they not only condemned this excellent clergyman as a bad man, but they passed this resolution: “The Bible is a dangerous book. It shall not be circulated.” These instances of the efforts made to suppress the Holy Scriptures might be indefinitely multiplied; but, instead of dwelling on so painful a subject, let us rather ask, how have such attempts succeeded? It is certainly a wonderful ordering of Providence, that on the very spot where those misguided priests met to destroy the Bible, the building erected for “The British and Foreign Bible Society” now rears its head. Aye, more than this, millions of copies of the Word of God are scattered abroad, every year, in all the languages of the earth. In Rome herself, where the Bible was so long a sealed book, it is now openly sold and distributed by colporteurs; and within a stone’s throw of the place where St. Paul was imprisoned, a large apartment has been fitted up, where multitudes of soldiers gather every night to listen to the reading of the Bible, and to learn to read it for themselves. These men come from every part of Italy, and are generally from the better classes of the peasantry. After staying in Rome for three years, they will be removed to other parts of the kingdom, or go back to their homes, carrying the Bible with them. M. Guizot, the famous French scholar and historian, on taking his seat as president of “The French Bible Society,” in Paris, truthfully and forcibly remarked, “The more the Bible is contested, the greater the number of devoted defenders who arise to affirm it and to send it forth. The Bible renews itself through trials, and its battles lead only to new conquests.” “The Word of God is not bound” to any person who preaches it. The weak and the unlearned often confound the wise and the mighty. In 1821, some wretched slaves were crowded into a Portuguese ship, on the coast of Guinea, and among them a boy of eleven, who, when the slaver was captured by a British cruiser, was carried to England. The boy manifested such excellent qualities of mind and heart that he was placed at school, where he occupied a high position in his class, and became a tutor, and then a clergyman. He returned as a missionary to his native land, and one of the first who heard the glad tidings of the gospel from his lips was his widowed mother. Converts multiplied, and a bishop was needed to govern and instruct this new community of Christians. All eyes were turned on Samuel Crowther; and on St. Peter’s day, 1864, in the grand old cathedral of Canterbury, the slave-boy was consecrated to the high office which St. Paul himself had filled.

2. “The Word of God is not bound” to any form in which it is preached.

3. “The Word of God is not bound” to any time, place, or circumstance. (J. N. Norton.)

The Word of God not bound

“When I was cast into prison all knew that I was locked up because I had read the Gospel,” said Ratushny, a Russian Christian. “When I was locked up for the second time people wondered again, and began to search after the gospel with greater zeal, and to read it. That is how our doctrines have spread, and not, as some people think, through my having propagated it.” (Sunday at Home.)

Fame through opposition

In 1834, there was a little book published by the Abbe de la Manuals, entitled, “The Words of a Believer,” which began to make some noise because of its Republican sentiments. The reigning Pope, however, went out of his way to condemn it in an Encyclical letter, which gave it an additional popularity, caused it to be widely read, and translated into the principal European languages. (H. O. Mackey.)

Useful though in prison

The Earl of Derby’s accusation in the Parliament house against Mr. Bradford was that he did more hurt (so he called good evil) by letters and conferences in prison than ever he did when he was abroad by preaching. (J. Trapp.)

I endure all things for the elect’s sake.

God’s chosen ones, whether already in the Church, or to be called into it afterwards. (Speaker’s Commentary.)

The visible church for the sake of the elect

If we were asked what was the object of Christian preaching and instruction, what the office of the Church, considered as the dispenser of the Word of God, I suppose we should not all return the same answer. Perhaps we might say that the object of Revelation was to enlighten and enlarge the mind, or to make us good members of the community. St. Paul gives us a reason in the text different from any of those which I have mentioned. He laboured more than all the apostles; and why? not to civilise the world, not to smooth the face of society, not to facilitate the movements of civil government, not to spread abroad knowledge, not to cultivate the reason, not for any great worldly object, but “for the elect’s sake.” And when St. Paul and St. Barnabas preached at Antioch to the Gentiles, “As many as were ordained to eternal life, believed.” When St. Paul preached at Athens, “some mocked,” others said, “We will hear thee again,” but “certain men clave unto him.” And when he addressed the Jews at Rome, some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not. Such was the view which animated, first Christ Himself, then all His apostles, and St. Paul in particular, to preach to all, in order to succeed with some. Our Lord “saw of the travail of tits soul, and was satisfied.” St. Paul, as His servant and instrument, was satisfied in like manner to endure all things for the elect’s sake; or, as he says in another place, “I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” And such is the office of the Church in every nation where she sojourns: she attempts much, she expects and promises little. This is a great Scripture truth, which in this busy and sanguine day needs insisting upon. There are in every age a certain number of souls in the world, known to God, unknown to us, who will obey the truth when offered to them, whatever be the mysterious reason that they do and others do not. These we must contemplate, for these we must labour, these are God’s special care, for these are all things; of these and among these we must pray to be, and our friends with us, at the Last Day. In every nation, among many bad, there are some good; and, as nations are before the gospel is offered to them, such they seem to remain on the whole after the offer--“many are called, few are chosen.” And to spend and be spent upon the many called for the sake of the chosen few is the office of Christian teachers and witnesses. That their office is such seems to be evident from the existing state of Christian countries from the first. Christianity has raised the tone of morals, has restrained the passions, and enforced external decency and good conduct in the world at large. Still, on the whole, the great multitude of men have to all appearance remained, in a spiritual point of view, no better than before. Trade is still avaricious, not in tendency only, but in fact, though it has heard the gospel; physical science is still sceptical as it was when heathen. Lawyers, soldiers, farmers, politicians, courtiers, nay, shame to say, the priesthood, still savour of the old Adam. Human nature remains what it was, though it has been baptized; the proverbs, the satires, the pictures, of which it was the subject in heathen times, have their point still. The knowledge of the gospel then has not materially changed more than the surface of things. Our Saviour’s words, spoken of the apostles in the first instance, relate to the Church at large--“I pray not for the world, but for them which Thou has given Me, for they are Thine.” In like manner St. Paul says that Christ came, not to convert the world, but “to purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works”; not to sanctify this evil world, but to “deliver us out of this present evil world according to the will of God and our Father.” This has been the real triumph of the gospel, to raise those beyond themselves anti beyond human nature, in whatever rank and condition of life, whose wills mysteriously co-operate with God’s grace, who, while God visits them, really fear and really obey God, whatever be the unknown reason why one man obeys Him and another not. It has laboured for the elect, and it has succeeded with them. This is, as it were, its token. An ordinary kind of religion, praiseworthy and respectable in its way, may exist under many systems; but saints are creations of the gospel and the Church. Not that such a one need in his lifetime seem to be more than other well-living men, for his graces lie deep, and are not known and understood till after his death, even if then. But in process of time, after death, their excellence perhaps gets abroad; and then they become a witness, a specimen of what the gospel can do. There are many reasons why God’s saints cannot be known all at once;--first, as 1 have said, their good deeds are done in secret. Next, good men are often slandered; they are mistaken by those, whom they offend by their holiness and strictness. Then, again, their intentions and aims are misunderstood. It is no triumph, then, for unbelievers that the gospel has not done what it never attempted. From the first it announced what was to be the condition of the many who heard and professed it--“Many are called, few are chosen.” Though we laboured ever so much, with the hope of satisfying the objector, we could not reverse our Saviour’s witness, and make the many religious and the bad few. We can but do what is to be done. We cannot destroy the personal differences which separate man and man; and to lay it as a fault to baptism, teaching, and other ministrations, that they cannot pass the bounds predicted in God’s Word, is as little reasonable as attempting to make one mind the same as another. There is nothing to hinder the poorest man from living the life of an angel, living in all the unearthly contemplative blessedness of a saint in glory, except so far as sin interferes with it. I mean, it is sin, and not poverty which is the hindrance. Such is the case with the poor; now, again, take the case of those who have a competency. They too are swallowed up in the cares or interests of life as much as the poor are. While want keeps the one from God by unsettling his mind, a competency keeps the other by the seductions of ease and plenty. The poor man says, “I cannot go to Church or to the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, till I am more at ease in my mind; I am troubled, and my thoughts are not my own.” The rich man does not make any excuses,--he comes; but his “heart goeth after his covetousness.” No; such a one may be far other than a mere man of the world,--he may be a religious man, in the common sense of the word; he may be exemplary in his conduct, as far as the social duties of life go; he may be really and truly, and not in pretence, kind, benevolent, sincere, and in a manner serious; but so it is, his mind has never been unchained to soar aloft, he does not look out with longing into the infinite spaces in which, as a Christian, he has free range. A sort of ordinary obedience suffices them as well as the poor. Alas! and is it so? is the superhuman life enjoined on us in the gospel but a dream? is there no meaning in our own case, of the texts about the strait gate and the narrow way, and Mary’s good part, and the rule of perfection, and the saying which “all cannot receive save they to whom it is given?” God grant to us a simple, reverent, affectionate, temper, that we may truly be the Church’s children, and fit subjects of her instructions! (J. H. Newman, M. A.)

Sufferings on behalf of the elect

The question doubtless arises, does St. Paul here, and also in Colossians 1:24, regard his own afflictions as a part of the redemptive suffering by which the elect should receive the gift of Christ’s salvation and inherit their eternal glory? This would, undoubtedly, contradict the whole tenor of his teaching elsewhere. “Was Paul crucified for you?” rings out (in 1 Corinthians 1:13) his own indignant disclaimer of any such position. Still he does assert his hope and conviction that direct and positive advantages may accrue to the elect of God from his own sufferings. The “salvation” is “in Christ Jesus”; still there are “things lacking” in the afflictions of the Lord which he and other saints are called upon to supplement, to fill up from another source. They are to be filled up in the persons of the members of Christ’s suffering body. Because these bitter sorrows effectuate or tend to produce a closer resemblance to Christ, because they may lead to a more intense consecration on the part of the elect of God, he willingly endures them all. We take it that these θλίψευς of Christ are not His atoning or sacrificial agonies, but all the contumely and repression which He endured for us and with us, and also which He endured for us and with us, and also which He, in sublime sympathy, continues to suffer in His body the Church, and which will not be completed until the last battle has been fought and the last enemy overcome. Thus the Lord dignifies every patiently borne cross, every holy death, as part of His own affliction for the sake of the elect. (H. R. Reynolds, D. D.)

The redemptive end of affliction

I. Afflictions are the more willingly sustained when they further the liberty of the Gospel.

1. For when the Word runs the plots of the wicked are prevented.

2. The wandering sheep gathered.

3. The body of Christ perfected.

4. The kingdom of God enlarged.

II. A grown Christian can suffer all kinds of afflictions.

1. For experience have taught him that afflictions are good for him.

2. Many acts make a habit; whence it falls out that tribulation worketh patience.

3. He believeth that though sorrows be bitter at the entrance, they shall be sweet in the end.

4. The Lord assisteth him, by whose strength he can do and suffer all things.

III. There be an elect people. Now concerning the elect, two things are not unworthy of our consideration--the one, their number, the other their prerogatives. For their number absolutely taken is great. The prerogatives are many, and all excellent, which are proper to the elect, for they be the objects of God’s love. The redeemed of His Son; temples of the Spirit; and co-heirs with Christ of all things.

IV. All the goodness of our sufferings is in respect of their ground and end.

V. Of the two, a true christian man had rather save souls than prosper in this world. For such know, that to save a soul is more worth than to win the world; and that they shall shine as the sun for ever and ever. (J. Barlow, D. D.)

A noble purpose

A man’s purpose in life should be like a river which was born of a thousand little rills in the mountains; and when at last it has reached its manhood in the plain, though, ii you watch it, you shall see little eddies that seem as if they had changed their minds, and were going back again to the mountains, yet all its mighty current flows, changeless, to the sea. If you build a dam across it, in a few hours it will go over it with a voice of victory. If tides check it at its mouth, it is only that when they ebb it can sweep on again to the ocean. So goes the Amazon or Orinoco across a continent--never losing its way or changing its direction for the thousand streams that fall into it on the right hand and on the left, but only using them to increase its force, and bearing them onward in its resistless channel. (H. W. Beecher.)

Supporting others

A curious old tree that supports other trees is described in a South American journal. It is stated that in Columbus there is a china tree that grew up very tall. Several years ago the top was taken off, leaving the main trunk of the tree about twenty feet high. On the top it has become somewhat decayed, but is making up for lost life by supporting a young forest. There are several different shrubs growing on its top, among others an evergreen three or four feet in height, a blackberry bush, which has put on leaves and flowers, and a water-oak which is about two inches in circumference. It is said that the spectacle is a very remarkable one, and arboriculturists take great interest in it. The old tree is a type of many lives. When God has withdrawn one of His children from active service, he is frequently able to continue his usefulness in another way, by supporting others, lifting them nearer to Heaven and sustaining them with his own stalwart spiritual growth.

Enduring for the elect’s sake

An ordinary person may rest in his bed all night, but a surgeon will be called up at all hours; a farming-man may take his ease at his fireside, but if he becomes a shepherd he must be out among the lambs, and bear all weathers for them; even so doth Paul say, “Therefore I endure all things for the elect’s sake, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Suffering to help others

Suppose that by some painful operation you could have your right arm made a little longer; I do not suppose you would care to go under the operation; but if you foresaw that by undergoing the pain you would be enabled to reach and save drowning men who else would sink before your eyes, I think you would willingly bear the agony, and pay a heavy fee to the surgeon to be thus qualified for the rescue of your fellows. Reckon, then, that to acquire soul-winning power you will have to go through fire and water, through doubt and despair, through mental torment and soul distress. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The believer’s salvation obtained by Christ and connected with glory

I. Let us consider the nature of this salvation.

1. It is a salvation from the condemnation of a broken law.

2. It is a salvation from the power and dominion of sin.

3. It is a salvation from the bondage of Satan.

4. It is a salvation from the temporary triumphs of the grave.

II. Let us inquire in what respects this salvation is in Christ Jesus. Because it was with His Son Christ Jesus that God was pleased to enter into covenant, respecting human redemption, before the world was.

III. Let us glance at the eternal glory with which this salvation is connected.

1. The persons of the saints will then be glorious. The body will be no longer subject to hunger and thirst, to pain and weariness, or to disease and decay. And then in respect to the soul, it will be formed after the Divine image, in righteousness and true holiness, made to partake, so far as a finite creature is capable, of the image of God.

2. The mansions of which the redeemed shall take possession will be glorious.

3. The society to which they will be admitted will be glorious.

4. The employments of the believer will be glorious. (Essex Congregational Remembrancer.)

That they may also obtain salvation.--Rather, that they also may; they as well as we. (Speaker’s Commentary.)

Salvation in Christ

Having Christ we have salvation also, while without receiving Christ Himself we can not have the salvation. Having the fountain we have its issuing streams. Cut off from the fountain the streams will not flow to us. Christ offers Himself to be the Bridegroom of the soul. The mistake is that of seeking the salvation instead of seeking the Saviour. Just the same mistake that the affianced would make if she should seek to have the possessions of him to whom she was engaged made over to her from him, without their union in wedlock, instead of accepting his offer of himself, and having the hymeneal bond completed by which he and all he has would become hers. (W. E. Boardman.)

Salvation

I. The nature of salvation.

1. Salvation is the great and constant theme of the whole Bible,

2. Salvation is a word of pleasing import.

3. Salvation is a full and complete deliverance from all past guilt and condemnation.

4. Salvation is a glorious deliverance from all the miseries of sin and the bondage of Satan.

5. Salvation is a deliverance from the envenomed sting of death.

6. This salvation is a deliverance from the resurrection of damnation, the horrors of the judgment, and the miseries of the lost in hell. Now for the peculiar characteristics of this salvation.

(1) It is free.

(2) Suitable.

(3) Present.

(4) Gracious.

(5) Eternal.

II. The author and source of salvation. It is “Christ Jesus.”

III. Let us point out its method. Some persons try to mystify the plan. But it is simple. The way is easy. Some want to purchase the gift of salvation, but it is not to be bought. It is here--“Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth.” Turn your eyes from the world and sin, and, by faith, look to Christ! (R. Key.)

Heaven, or the final happiness of the righteous

Let us attend to what notices we can gain from the scriptures of truth of the heavenly state, as coming under the notion of salvation and glory. Each of these sometimes is put alone for the whole of it; but being here joined together, they make the description of it more complete; the former directly signifies the negative part, a deliverance from all evil, and the latter the positive, the possession of the highest and greatest good our nature is capable of. And how significantly and emphatically is this salvation with eternal glory said to be in Christ Jesus? It is in Him, as possession purchased, in whose right we can only obtain it. It is in Him as an inheritance kept in truth, and to be conveyed by Him to the appointed heirs. It is in Him as the grand Exemplar in His human nature of the complete and final happiness of the saints. It is in Him both as a beatific object, and as a perpetual medium through which the blessed will see and enjoy God.

I. The Christian shall obtain instantly on his arrival at heaven, and everlastingly possess, a complete salvation, a perfect freedom from all manner of evil.

1. In heaven there will be a perfect and eternal salvation from all sin.

2. The salvation of heaven will be an absolute and perpetual deliverance from the temptations of Satan. In heaven, too, all wicked men, as well as evil angels, shall cease from troubling or tempting; for there shall be none of them there, no more than any matter of temptation in that blessed world.

3. This salvation will be a deliverance from all natural weaknesses; from slowness of apprehension, errors of judgment, slipperiness of memory, levity of will, a rashness or tardiness in resolving, and a heaviness in acting.

4. It will be a deliverance from all the diseases and pains which attend our mortal frame, together with the great variety of disagreeable accidents our life on earth is continually liable to.

5. It will be a deliverance from all God’s wrath and anger.

6. It is a deliverance from all relative and sympathising sufferings and sorrows.

7. It will be a deliverance from death. But it is time now to say somewhat--

II. Of the positive felicity of the heavenly world, of which the less will suffice, as several of its ingredients are easily understood from the evils and miseries which they stand in opposition to, and because we can have but a general idea of this part, rather knowing what heaven is not, than what in particular it is. However, what belongs to this state is all great, excellent and glorious. It is glory itself. Now, the glory which continues the heavenly happiness is both objective and subjective, and these reciprocally influencing each other and inseparably concurring to form it. There is a glory without, objects of unspeakable lustre and glory which will be exhibited and presented to the saints in heaven to converse with. And there will be a glory within themselves. All the parts and powers of their nature will be rendered inexpressibly glorious, as by an elevation of them into a fitness to converse with the glorious objects before them, so by an actual exercise on them and the most satisfying gratification by them. Hence the frequent expression in Scripture of their happiness in heaven is their being glorified. And it is the glory of God either way, as it is often called. He realms all the glory of heaven; He is the principal object Himself of the saints’ beatific converse, and He forms all the other objects, as well as themselves, glorious. And here we may observe that all these glories will be revealed in a propitious and amiable light. God will manifest Himself to His saints as their own God, and all His perfections and operations are arrayed in love. No room will be left for terror and dismay from the full blaze of His Majesty above, as but a few beams of it breaking in on some of His people here have oppressed their souls with the most dreadful apprehensions. Again, the revelation of heavenly glories will be made to the blessed in a measure exactly suited to their faculties and capacities. There will be no deficiency to cause an uneasy and an unsatisfied craving; no excess to overpower and exhaust the spirits.

1. There will be a perfect knowledge in heaven: a knowledge in the very best manner of the best and noblest things. This knowledge will in a great measure be intuitive, and so consequently very comprehensive, easy, clear, and satisfying.

2. In heaven there will be a perfect rectitude, and regular harmony in all the powers of the soul. As the understanding clearly and steadily beholds the beauties of holiness, the soul will naturally take and keep a correspondent impress, and be satisfied with this Divine likeness.

3. In consequence of this, the active powers will be fully and most delightfully employed in the incessant praises of God and of the Lamb, and in whatever unknown services may be assigned them, all noble and pleasurable. (J. Hubbard.)

If we be dead with Him, we shall also live with Him.

Union with Christ in death and life

I. The first branch of this “faithful saying” is, “If we be dead with Him, we shall also live with Him.” There seem to be two ways chiefly in which the soul “is dead with Christ.” If we look at the operation of the law as a manifestation of the justice of God, the law was the cause of the death of Christ--that is to say, the law being broken by the Church in whose place Christ stood, He, as a Substitute and a Surety, stood under its curse, and that curse was death. If, then, we are to die with Christ, we must die under the law just as Jesus died under the law, or else there is no union with Christ in His death. But further, Christ died under the weight of sin and transgression. Every living soul then that shall die with Christ spiritually and experimentally, must die too under the weight of sin--that is, he must know what it is so to experience the power and presence of sin in his carnal mind, so to feel the burden of his iniquities upon his guilty head, and to be so overcome and overpowered by inward transgression, as to be utterly helpless, and thoroughly unable to deliver himself from the dominion and rule of it in his heart. But there is another way in which the soul dies with Christ. Christ not only died under the law and died under sin, but He died unto the law, and He died unto sin. But in living with Christ, there will be, if I may use the expression, a dying life, or a living death, running parallel with all the experience of a child of God, who is brought to some acquaintance with the Lord Jesus. For instance, the apostle says, “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”

II. But we go on to consider another branch of this vital union with Christ. “If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him.” There can be no suffering with Christ, until there is a vital union with Christ; and no realisation of it, until the Holy Ghost manifests this vital union by making Christ known, and raising up faith in our hearts, whereby He is embraced and laid hold of. And there is no “reigning with Christ,” except there first be a “suffering with Christ.” I believe that reigning not only signifies a reigning with Him in glory hereafter, but also a measure of reigning with Him now, by His enthroning Himself in our hearts.

III. “If we deny Him, He also will deny us,” that is the next branch. The words have a twofold meaning; they apply to professors, and they apply to possessors. There were those in the Church who would deny Him, for there were those who never knew Him experimentally, and when the trial came, they would act as Judas acted. And then there were those who were real followers of Him, but when put to the test might act as Peter acted. (J. C. Philpot.)

Christ and the Christian

In matters of great worth and difficulty prefaces are used: so here. Whence observe we, that--

I. Afflictions are not easy to be endured,

II. God’s word is faithful.

III. Christ and a Christian are fellow-sufferers.

IV. Christ and a christian shall live together. (J. Barlow, D. D.)

Dead with Christ

In the fourth century a young earnest disciple sought an interview with the great and good Macarius, and asked him what was meant by being dead to sin. He said, “You remember our brother who died and was buried a short time since. Go to his grave, and tell him all the unkind things you ever heard of him. Go, my son, and hear what he will answer.” The young man doubted whether he understood; but Macarius only said, “Do as I tell you, my son; and come and tell me what he says.” He went, and came back, saying, “I can get He reply; he is dead.” “Go again, and try him with flattering words--tell him what a great saint he was, what noble work he did, and how we miss him; and come again and tell me what he says.” He did so, but on his return said, “He answers nothing, father; he is dead and buried.” “You know now, my son,” said the old father, “what it is to be dead to sin, dead and buried with Christ. Praise and blame are nothing to him who is really dead and buried with Christ.” (Christian Herald.)

Dead with Christ

“Believe, my dear Pris, what I am just beginning to learn, and you knew long ago, that the death of Christ is far, very far, more than a mere peace-making, though that view of it is the root of every other. But it is actually and literally the death of you and me and the whole human race; the absolute death and extinction of all our selfishness and individuality. So St. Paul describes it in Romans 6:1-23. and in every one of his Epistles. Let us believe, then, what is the truth and no lie--that we are dead, actually, absolutely dead; and let as believe further that we are risen and that we have each a life, our only life, a life not of you nor me, but a universal life--in Him. He will live in us and quicken us with all life and all love; will make us understand the possibility, and, as I am well convinced, experience the reality, of loving God and loving our brethren.” (F. D. Maurice to his sister.)

Suffering and reigning with Jesus

I. Suffering with Jesus, and its reward. To suffer is the common lot of all men. It is not possible for us to escape from it. We come into this world through the gate of suffering, and over death’s door hangs the same escutcheon. If, then, a man hath sorrow, it doth not necessarily follow that he shall be rewarded for it, since it is the common lot brought upon all by sin. You may smart under the lashes of sorrow in this life, but this shall not deliver you from the wrath to come. The text implies most clearly that we must suffer with Christ in order to reign with Him.

1. We must not imagine that we are suffering for Christ, and with Christ, if we are not in Christ.

2. Supposing a man to be in Christ, yet it does not even then follow that all his sufferings are sufferings with Christ, for it is essential that he be called by God to suffer. If a good man were, out of mistaken views of mortification and self-denial, to mutilate his body, or to flog his flesh, aa many a sincere enthusiast has done, I might admire the man’s fortitude, but I should not allow for an instant that he was suffering with Christ.

3. Again, in troubles which come upon us as the result of sin, we must not think we are suffering with Christ. When Miriam spoke evil of Moses, and the leprosy polluted her, she was not suffering for God. When Uzziah thrust himself into the temple, and became a leper all his days, he could not say that he was afflicted for righteousness’ sake. If you speculate and lose your property, do not say that you are losing all for Christ’s sake; when you unite with bubble companies and are duped, do not whine about suffering for Christ--call it the fruit of your own folly. If you will put your hand into the fire and it gets burned, why, it is the nature of fire to burn you or anybody else; but be not so silly as to boast as though you were a martyr.

4. Be it observed, moreover, that suffering such as God accepts and rewards for Christ’s sake, must have God’s glory as its end.

5. I must mind, too, that love to Christ, and love to His elect, is ever the main-spring of all my patience; remembering the apostle’s words, “Though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.”

6. I must not forget also that I must manifest the spirit of Christ, or else I do not suffer with Him. I have heard of a certain minister who, having had a great disagreement with many members in his church, preached from this text, “And Aaron held his peace.” The sermon was intended to pourtray himself as an astonishing instance of meekness; but as his previous words and actions had been quite sufficiently violent, a witty hearer observed, that the only likeness he could see between Aaron and the preacher was this, “Aaron held his peace, and the preacher did not.” I shall now very briefly show what are the forms of real suffering for Jesus in these days.

(1) Some suffer in their estates. I believe that to many Christians it is rather a gain than a loss, so far as pecuniary matters go, to be believers in Christ; but I meet with many cases--cases which I know to be genuine, where persons have had to suffer severely for conscience’ sake.

(2) More usually, however, the suffering takes the form of personal contempt.

(3) Believers have also to suffer slander and falsehood.

(4) Then again, if in your service for Christ you are enabled so to sacri fice yourself, that you bring upon yourself inconvenience and pain, labour and loss, then I think you are suffering with Christ.

(5) Let us not forget that contention with inbred lusts, denials of proud self, resistance of sin, and agony against Satan, are all forms of suffering with Christ.

(6) There is one more class of suffering which I shall mention, and that is, when friends forsake, or become foes. If you are thus called to suffer for Christ, will you quarrel with me if I say, in adding all up, what a very little it is compared with reigning with Jesus! “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” When I contrast our sufferings of to-day with those of the reign of Mary, or the persecutions of the Albigenses on the mountains, or the sufferings of Christians in Pagan Rome, why, ours are scarcely a pin’s prick: and yet what is the reward? We shall reign with Christ. There is no comparison between the service and the reward. Therefore it is all of grace. We are not merely to sit with Christ, but we are to reign with Christ.

II. Denying Christ, and its penalty. “If we deny Him, He also will deny us,” In what way can we deny Christ? Some deny Him openly as scoffers do, whose tongue walketh through the earth and defieth heaven. Others do this wilfully and wickedly in a doctrinal way, as the Arians and Socinians do, who deny His deity: those who deny His atonement, who rail against the inspiration of His Word, these come under the condemnation of those who deny Christ. There is a way of denying Christ without even speaking a word, and this is the more common. In the day of blasphemy and rebuke, many hide their heads. Are there not here some who have been baptized, and who come to the Lord’s table, but what is their character? Follow them home. I would to God they never had made a profession, because in their own houses they deny what in the house of God they have avowed. In musing over the very dreadful sentence which closes my text, “He also will deny us,” I was led to think of various ways in which Jesus will deny us. He does this sometimes on earth. You have read, I Suppose, the death of Francis Spira. If you have ever read it, you never can forget it to your dying day. Francis Spira knew the truth; he was a reformer of no mean standing; but when brought to death, out of fear, he recanted. In a short time he fell into despair, and suffered hell upon earth. His shrieks and exclamations were so horrible that their record is almost too terrible for print. His doom was a warning to the age in which he lived. Another instance is narrated by my predecessor, Benjamin Keach, of one who, during Puritanic times, was very earnest for Puritanism; but afterwards, when times of persecution arose, forsook his profession. The scenes at his deathbed were thrilling and terrible. He declared that though he sought God, heaven was shut against him; gates of brass seemed to be in his way, he was given up to overwhelming despair. At intervals he cursed, at other intervals he prayed, and so perished without hope. If we deny Christ, we may be delivered to such a fate. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Deniers of Christ

I. Difficult duties are greatly to be pressed.

II. To conceive the estate of a Christian is to have an eye to his latter end.

III. God’s method and the devil’s differ. He begins with death, ends with life: but Satan the contrary.

IV. Christ is not to be denied.

V. The deniers of Christ shall de denied. Helps against this sin--

1. Deny thyself.

2. Never dispute with flesh and blood.

3. Look not on death as death: but on God’s power, which is manifest in our weakness.

4. Consider the examples of so many martyrs. (J. Barlow, D. D.)

The encouragement to suffer for Christ, and the danger of denying Him

“It is a faithful saying.” This is a preface used by this apostle to introduce some remarkable sentence of more than ordinary weight and concernment. I shall begin with the first part of this remarkable saying: “If we be dead with Him, we shall also live with Him; if we suffer, we shall also reign with Him.”

1. What virtue there is in a firm belief and persuasion of a blessed immortality in another world, to support and bear up men’s spirits under the greatest sufferings for righteousness’ sake; and even to animate them, if God shall call them to it, to lay down their lives for their religion.

2. How it may be made out to be reasonable to embrace and voluntarily to submit to present and grievous sufferings, in hopes of future happiness and reward; concerning which we have not, nor perhaps are capable of having, the same degree of certainty and assurance which we have of the evils and sufferings of this present life. Now, granting that we have not the same degree of certainty concerning our future happiness that we have of our present sufferings, which we feel, or see just ready to come upon us; yet prudence making it necessary for men to run this hazard does justify the reasonableness of it. This I take to be a known and ruled case in the common affairs of life and in matters of temporal concernment; and men act upon this principle every day. The matter is now brought to this plain issue, that if it be reasonable to believe there is a God, and that His providence considers the actions of men; it is also reasonable to endure present sufferings, in hope of a future reward: and there is certainly enough in this case to govern and determine a prudent man that is in any good measure persuaded of another life after this, and hath any tolerable consideration of, and regard to, his eternal interest. In the virtue of this belief and persuasion, the primitive Christians were fortified against all that the malice and cruelty of the world could do against them; and they thought they made a very wise bargain, if through many tribulations they might at last enter into the kingdom of God; because they believed that the joys of heaven would abundantly recompense all their sorrows and sufferings upon earth. And so confident were they of this, that they looked upon it as a special favour and regard of God to them, to call them to suffer for His name. So St. Paul speaks of it (Philippians 1:29). If we could compare things justly, and attentively regard and consider the invisible glories of another world, as well as the things which are seen, we should easily perceive that he who suffers for God and religion does not renounce happiness; but puts it out to interest upon terms of the greatest advantage. I shall now briefly speak to the second part of this remarkable saying in the text. “If we deny Him, He also will deny us”; to which is subjoined in the words following, “if we believe not; εἰ ἀπιστοῦμεν, if we deal unfaithfully with Him; yet He abideth faithful, He cannot deny Himself”; that is, He will be constant to His word, and make good that solemn threatening which He hath denounced against those who, for fear of suffering, shall deny Him and His truth before men (Matthew 10:33). If fear will move us, then, in all reason, that which is most terrible ought to prevail most with us, and the greatest danger should be most dreaded by us, according to our Saviour’s most friendly and reasonable advice (Luke 12:4-5.) (J. Tillotson, D. D.)

If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him.

Suffering with Christ

In the olden time when the gospel was preached in Persia, one Hamedatha, a courtier of the king, having embraced the faith, was stripped of all his offices, driven from the palace, and compelled to feed camels. This he did with great content. The king passing by one day, saw his former favourite at his ignoble work, cleaning out the camel’s stables. Taking pity upon him he took him into his palace, clothed him with sumptuous apparel, restored him to all his former honours, and made him sit at the royal table. In the midst of the dainty feast, he asked Hamedatha to renounce his faith. The courtier, rising from the table, tore off his garments with haste, left all the dainties behind him, and said, “Didst thou think that for such silly things as these I would deny my Lord and Master?” and away he went to the stable to his ignoble work. How honourable is all this! (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Christ’s martyrs

Christ’s true martyrs do not die, but live. (E. Thring.)

Ennobled in death

“Henry V. on the evening of Agincourt found the chivalric David Gamin still grasping the banner which through the fight his strength had borne and his right arm defended. Often had the monarch noticed that pennon waving in the foremost van of the men of England who that day pierced, broke, and routed the proud ranks of France. The king knighted him as he lay. The hero died, but dying was ennobled!”(S. Coley.)

Cyril, the boy martyr

Let me tell you of a young soldier of His, who bore much for his Lord. We must go back to the early days of Christianity, and picture a martyr being led to death in the city of Antioch. At the place of execution is the judge surrounded by a guard of soldiers. The man about to die for his love to his heavenly King says to the judge--“Ask any little child here whether we ought to adore the many false gods whom you serve or the one living and true God, the only Saviour of men, and that child will tell you.” Close by there stood a Christian mother and her boy of ten years old named Cyril. She had brought her son there to see how a true servant of God could die for his Lord. As the martyr spoke, the judge spied the lad, and asked him a question. To the surprise of all, Cyril answered--“There is but one God, and Jesus Christ is one With Him.” At these words the judge was very angry. “Wretched Christian,” he said, turning to the martyr, “it is thou who hast taught the boy these words.” Then more gently, he said to the child--“Tell me, who taught thee this faith?” Little Cyril looked lovingly up to his mother, and answered, “The grace of God taught my mother, and she taught me.” “Well, we will see what this grace of God can do for thee,” cried the judge. He signed to the guards, who, according to the custom of the Romans, stood with their sheaves of rods. They came near and seized the child. Passionately the mother pleaded that she might give her life for that of her son. But none heeded her entreaties. And all that she could do was to cheer her child, reminding him of the Lord who loved him and died for him. Then cruel strokes fell upon the bare little shoulders of Cyril. In a tone of mocking, the judge said--“What good is the grace of God to him now?… It can enable him to bear the same punishment which his Saviour bore for him,” answered the mother decidedly. One look from the judge to |he soldiers, and again the cruel blows fell on the tender flesh of the boy. “What can the grace of God do for him now?” again asked the pitiless judge. Few of the spectators could hear unmoved the mother, who, with heart bleeding at the sight of her boy’s sufferings, answered--“The grace of God teaches him to forgive his persecutors.” The child’s eyes followed the upward glance of his mother, as she raised her pleading for him in earnest prayer. And when his persecutors asked whether he would not now worship the gods they did, that young soldier answered--“No, there is no other God but the Lord, and Jesus is the Redeemer of the world. He loved me, and I love Him, because He is my Saviour.” Stroke after stroke fell upon the boy, and at last he fell fainting. Then he was handed to his mother, and the question was once more repeated: “What can the grace of God do for him now?” Pressing her dying child to her heart, she answered--“Now above all, the grace of God will bring him gain and glory, for He will take him from the rage of his persecutors to the peace of His own home in heaven.” Once more the dying boy looked up and said, “There is only one God, and one Saviour, Jesus Christ--who--loved--me.” And then the Lord Jesus received him in His arms for evermore. The boy martyr went in to be with his King, that Saviour “who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”

Suffering for Christ rewarded

Agrippa, grandson of Herod the Great, once expressed a desire that his friend Caligula might soon come to the throne. Old Tiberius, the reigning monarch, felt such a wish, however flattering to Caligula, to be so little kindly to himself, that he threw the author of it into a loathsome dungeon. But the very day Caligula reached Imperial power, Agrippa was released. The new emperor gave him purple for his rags, tetrarchies for his narrow cell, and carefully weighing the gyves that fettered him, for every link of iron bestowed on him one of gold. Think you that day Agrippa wished his handcuffs and his leg-locks had been lighter? Will Jesus forget the wellwishers of His kingdom, who, for His sake, have borne the burden and worn the chain? His scales will be forthcoming, and assuredly those faithful in great tribulation shall be beautified with greater glory. (S. Coley.)

Happy ending of a suffering life

We have sometimes watched a ship entering the harbour with masts sprung, sails torn, seams yawning, bulwarks stove in--bearing all the marks of having battled with the storms, and of having encountered many a peril. On the deck is a crew of worn and weather-beaten men, rejoicing that they have reached the port in safety. Such was the plight in which many believers of old reached the haven of rest. They met with dangers and encountered difficulties. But if their course was toilsome, their end was happy. It was their joy to labour and suffer for their Lord’s sake, and they are now sharing His kingdom and His glory. (Bp. Oxenden.)

If we deny Him, He also will deny us.--

Denying Christ

There are many ways of denying Christ, both by word and action. We may take the part of His enemies, or ignore His supreme claim to our allegiance; we may transform Him into a myth, a fairy tale, a subjective principle, or find a substitute in our own life for His grace; and we may assume that He is not the ground of our reconciliation, nor the giver of salvation, nor the sole Head of His Church. If so, we may reasonably fear, lest He should refuse to acknowledge us when upon His approval our eternal destiny will turn. (H. R. Reynolds, D. D.)

If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful.

Faithless

“If we are faithless”--that is, untrue to the vows of our Christian profession, the faithlessness implies more than mere unbelief in any of the fundamental doctrines of the faith, such as the resurrection of the Lord or His divinity. (H. D. M. Spence, M. A.)

The unchangeableness and independence of Christ, proofs of His divinity

If you open any professed treatise on the divinity of Christ, you will find that one series of proofs is deduced from the ascription to our Lord of attributes or properties which can belong only unto God. And the words which we have just read to you from the writings of St. Paul contain, as it would seem, two instances of this kind of evidence. Amongst the characteristics of the Creator, characteristics which can never be transferred to a creature, we justly reckon unchangeableness and independence. You may learn from the context, it is of Christ, “the one Mediator between God and men,” that St. Paul affirms that “He abideth faithful,” and that “He cannot deny Himself.” And first, then, as to unchangeableness. You know that with the Father of lights “there is no variableness neither shadow of turning.” When it is said of God “He cannot change,” you should understand the phrase in its largest and most literal acceptation. We are as much borne out by reason as by revelation, in pronouncing it impossible that God should change. To suppose that He could change is to suppose that He could cease to be perfect, and we need not prove to you that an imperfect God would be no God at all. There is no passage in the Bible in which this unchangeableness is more distinctly ascribed to the Father than it is in our text to the Son. “He cannot,” He is not able to “deny Himself.” Such language could never have been applicable to Christ had He not been God. There is nothing in the nature of a creature, not even though it come nearest in glory and greatness to that unchangeable Being from whom its existence was derived--there is nothing, I say, in the nature of a creature which renders it impossible that it should deny itself. Now, unchangeableness is not the only attribute of Godhead which is here ascribed to Christ; a little examination will show you that independence is equally ascribed. Sublimely as God is enthroned on His own essential majesty, He depends neither on angel nor on man for one jot of His honour, for one tittle of His happiness. And you are to observe that this independence which is necessarily to be reckoned among the Divine attributes is actually incommunicable; that is, it can belong only to God, and cannot be imparted to what is finite and created. And yet the mode of expression adopted by the apostle in our text appears to me strictly to imply that the being of whom he speaks is independent. “If we believe not,” what then? will it make any difference to Christ? must His purposes be altered, as though to meet an emergency? must the terms of His gospel be lowered, so as to square better with our prejudice or our infidelity? Nothing of all this. “If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful: He cannot deny Himself.” Everything will follow the same course; we may turn the willing ear, or the deaf; we may march in the train of the Captain of our salvation, or we may fight under the banner of the apostate. “Yet He abideth faithful”; or, as the verse is paraphrased by an old prelate of our church, “He loveth nothing by it; the misery and the damage is ours; but for Him, He is the same that He was, whatever become of us.” Now, we are very anxious that whenever a portion of Holy Writ on which we are meditating contains any indirect testimony to the divinity of Christ, such testimony should be carefully worked out and set before you in its strength and in its simplicity. And there is no doctrine to which there is a greater assemblage of these indirect testimonies than there is to the divinity of Christ. Passages occur in almost every leaf of the New Testament, which do not indeed assert the divinity of Christ, which do not even seem to allude to the divinity of Christ, but which, nevertheless, are stripped of aft force, yea, of all sense, if doubt be thrown on the divinity of Christ. In reading the Epistles we seem reading the writings of men who never thought of the divinity of Christ as of a questionable or debateable thing. They buckle on the armour of controversy when the sir, fatness of the human race is to be demonstrated, and when the method of justification is to be vindicated, and when the errors of Judaising teachers are to be exposed; but, except in one or two instances, there is nothing that looks like controversy in regard to the divinity of Christ. And we attach the greatest possible worth to this indirect kind of evidence, a specimen of which we have found in our text. Certain doctrines there may be, which rest only on certain passages, and which consequently we should find a difficulty in establishing if those passages were removed. But this cannot be affirmed of the main pillar of our faith, the divinity of Christ. The doctrine rests not upon isolated passages; leave us a page of the New Testament, and I think you will have left us proof of Christ being God. And now let us take a different view of the text. It contains much both of what is alarming and what is encouraging. The threatenings and the promises of Christ, each of these, as we may learn from the text, will take equal effect, whether we ourselves believe them or whether we disbelieve them. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

Eternal faithfulness unaffected by human unbelief

I. The sad possibility, and the consoling assurance--“If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful.” I must take the sad possibility first--“if we believe not,” and I shall read this expression as though, first of all, it concerned the world in general, for I think it may so be fairly read. If mankind believe not, if the various classes of men believe not--yet He abideth faithful. The rulers believed not, and there are some that make this a very great point. They said concerning Jesus, “Have any of the rulers believed on Him?” Well, if our greatest men, if our senators and magistrates, princes and potentates, believe not--it does not affect the truth of God in the smallest conceivable degree--“yet He abideth faithful.” Many, however, think it more important to know on which side the leaders of thought are enlisted, and there are certain persons who are not elected to that particular office by popular vote, who nevertheless take it upon themselves to consider that they are dictators in the republic of opinion. However, we need not care because of these wise men, for if they believe not, but becloud the gospel, yet God abideth faithful. Yes, and I venture to enlarge this thought a little more. If the rulers do not believe, and if the philosophical minds do not believe, and if in addition to this public opinion, so called, rejects it, yet the gospel is still the same eternal truth.

2. Now, having spoken of our text as referring to the world in general, it is, perhaps, a more sorrowful business to look at it as referring to the visible church in particular. The apostle says, “Though we believe not,” and surely he must mean the visible church of God.

3. Once more I will read the text in a somewhat narrower circle. “If we believe not”--that is to say, if the choicest teachers and preachers and writers believe not, yet He abideth faithful. Here, then, is the fearful possibility; and side by side with it runs this most blessedly consoling assurance--“He abideth faithful.” Jesus Christ abideth: there are no shifts and changes in Him. He is a rock, and not a quicksand. He is the Saviour whether the rulers and the philosophers believe in Him or refuse Him, whether the Church dud her ministers are true to Him or desert Him. And as Christ remains the same Saviour, so we have the same gospel. And as the gospel is the same, so does Christ remain faithful to His engagements to His Father.

II. A glorious impossibility with a sweet inference that may be drawn from it. “He cannot deny Him self.” Three things God cannot do. He cannot die, He cannot lie, and He cannot be deceived. These three impossibilities do not limit His power, but they magnify His majesty; for these would be infirmities, and infirmity can have no place in the infinite and ever blessed God. Here is one of the things impossible with God--“He cannot deny Himself.” What is meant by that?

1. It is meant that the Lord Jesus Christ cannot change as to His nature and character towards us, the sons of men.

2. His word cannot alter.

3. He cannot withdraw the salvation which He has presented to the sons of men, for that salvation is indeed Himself.

4. And then the atonement is still the same, for that, too, is Himself: He has by Himself purged our sins.

5. And the mercy-seat, the place of prayer, still remains; for if that were altered He would have denied Himself, for what was the mercy-seat, or propitiatory, that golden lid upon the covenant ark? What was it but Christ Him self, who is our propitiatory, the true mercy-seat?

6. And here is another sweet thought: Christ’s love to His Church, and His purpose towards her cannot change, because He cannot deny Himself, and His Church is Himself.

7. Nor will any one of His offices towards His Church and people ever fail.

8. Now, my last word is about an inference. The text says, “If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful”: it runs on that supposition. Take the other supposition: Suppose we do believe. Will He not be faithful in that case? And will it not be true that He cannot deny Himself? (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The Divine immutability

Weak as man is, all powerful as God is, there is one thing which weak man can do, and which Almighty God cannot do. Man can pass his word, and almost in the same breath can call it back again. God, on the other hand, cannot promise or denounce a thing without fulfilling it to the very uttermost. This is a doctrine which there are few el us, I fear, who thoroughly believe. Whilst there are many of us who are making light of the threatenings of God, and flattering ourselves with the profane idea that they will never be fulfilled, there are others again who are equally distrustful of God’s promises. If we trust God in spirituals we mistrust Him perhaps in temporals. If we believe Him as the God of grace, we sometimes seem to doubt Him as the God of providence. If we trust Him for eternity, we are half afraid to rely on Him for time. (A. Roberts, M. A.)

Faith in God ennobles reason; unbelief degrades reason

1. Faith in God involves, in its very act, a rational appreciation of evidence. Hence it is distinct from credulity, which is belief without evidence; from scepticism, which is unbelief, though evidence is at hand; and from infidelity, which is the rejection of evidence sufficient to convince. In each of these there is either the neglect or the abuse of the reason, and a consequent injury to the intellectual as well as to the moral powers of the soul. But faith in God, distinct from all these, is belief on sufficient evidence.

2. Faith in God promotes the highest exercise of reason, because also it rests upon the most substantial and durable foundation. If, in the investigation of natural truth, it is philosophical to seek for first principles, it is equally or more so to require them in the reception of revealed truth. Now to have faith in God is to rest on first principles, and to build up knowledge and hope on a sure foundation.

3. Faith takes in the sublimest truths, and the widest circle of thought.

4. If this be our philosophy we shall not stumble at miracles. While faith admits the miracles as facts, reason co-operates with faith by showing that they are wise and good. Moreover, the great first miracle displayed in the world’s creation, which we receive by faith, prepare the mind for all other miracles, however stupendous they may be (Hebrews 11:1).

5. Guided by the philosophy of faith, we shall not stumble at mysteries. For what are mysteries? Grand truths as yet but palatally revealed; the first syllables of some vast volume to be unrolled hereafter.

6. Nor at alleged contradictions between science and revelation. We are free to admit that there are difficulties, real difficulties, between science and revelation; and there may be even greater still. What then? We are but in the position in which patriarchs and prophets were placed for ages.

7. Supported by the philosophy of faith, we shall not faint under the delay of promised good. “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years,” etc. (W. Cooke, D. D.)

Faith and the gospel

I. Unbelief is a sin. What more in the holy letters checked, condemned? Does not Christ dissuade from it? His apostles forbid it? and God everywhere commands the contrary? May not arguments be produced, if any doubt of it, to confirm, ratify it?

II. A man may not have faith yet possess the Gospel. To try the truth of thy faith, let these two rules following be well weighed of thee: First, he who hath faith receives Christ, as the wife does her husband. He will have Him and no other from this time forward, for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health, according to God’s holy ordinance, till (and after that) death shall them part. In the second place, how does thy faith work? Faith, if true and sound, will embrace Christ, purify the heart, lift up the wing of thy soul and cause thee to soar on high. It will do what God enjoins, though it strip him of reputation, promotion, life and all.

III. In preaching the word ministers are not to exclude themselves.

IV. The Lord is faithful.

V. The Lord is without change. (J. Barlow, D. D.)

Put them in remembrance.

Repetition

I. Repetition of the same things is warrantable.

1. For at the first delivery of a thing we may not fully apprehend it; the eye of our mind is but opened by degrees.

2. Our faith by often repetition may be confirmed.

3. It is a help to cause the truth in the soil of our memories to take the deeper impression.

4. We are slow to practise what we conceive, believe, and remember: therefore the reduplication of Divine things is profitable.

II. The doctrine of christ is above all things to be desired. (J. Barlow, D. D.)

Repetition

A preacher must often repeat an exhortation, because we dwell in a land of forgetfulness. (Cramer.)

A good memory

Abraham Lincoln had a marvellous memory; nothing seemed to escape his recollection. A soldier once struck a happy description of him when he said, “He’s got a mighty fine memory; but an awful poor forgetery.” How many Christians have good “forgeteries.” Charging them before the Lord.

Preaching in the sight of God

The whole section is applicable to ministers throughout the Church in all ages; and the words under consideration seem to be well worthy of attention at the present time, when so many unworthy topics and so much unworthy language may be heard from the pulpit. One is inclined to think that if ministers always remembered that they were speaking “in the sight of God” they would sometimes find other things to say, and other ways of saying them. We talk glibly enough of another man’s words and opinions when he is not present. We may be entirely free from the smallest wish to misrepresent or exaggerate; but at the same time we speak with great freedom and almost without restraint. What a change comes over us if, in the midst of our glib recital of his views and sayings, the man himself enters the room! At once we begin to measure our words and to speak with more caution. Our tone becomes less positive, and we have less confidence that we are justified in making sweeping statements on the subject. Ought not something of this circumspection and diffidence to be felt by those who take the responsibility of telling others about the mind of God? And if they remembered constantly that they speak “in the sight of the Lord,” this attitude of solemn circumspection would become habitual. (A. Plummer, D. D.)

Strive not about words to no profit.--

The spirit of controversy

The spirit of controversy is a bad thing in itself; but the evil is intensified when the subject of controversy is a question of words. Controversy is necessary, but it is a necessary evil; and that man has need of searchings of heart who finds that he enjoys ii, and sometimes even provokes it, when it might easily have been avoided; but a fondness for strife about words is one of the lowest forms which the malady can take. Principles are things worth striving about when opposition to what we know to be right and true is unavoidable. But disputatiousness about words is something like proof that love of self has taken the place of love of truth. The word-splitter wrangles, not for the sake of arriving at the truth, but for the sake of a dialectical victory (see 1 Timothy 6:4). And here the apostle says that such disputes are worse than worthless, they tend to “no profit”; on the contrary, they tend “to the subverting of those who listen to them.” This subversion or overthrow is the exact opposite of what ought to be the result of Christian discipline, viz., edification or building up. The audience, instead of being built up in faith and principle, find themselves bewildered and lowered. They have a less firm grasp of truth and a less loyal affection for it. It is as if some beautiful object, which they were learning to understand and admire, had been scored all over with marks by those who had been disputing as to the meaning and relation of the details. (A. Plummer, D. D.)

Controversy

It has been a favourite device of the heretics and sceptics of all ages to endeavour to provoke a discussion on points about which they hope to place an opponent in a difficulty. Their object is not to settle, but to unsettle; not to clear up doubts, but to create them; and hence we find Bishop Butler in his Durham charge recommending his clergy to avoid religious discussions in general conversation; because the clever propounder of difficulties will find ready hearers, while the patient answerer of them will not do so. To dispute is to place truth at an unnecessary disadvantage. (A. Plummer, D. D.)

Strife of words

Christians are not to strive about words.

1. It wasteth time, consumeth good hours, which are to be redeemed.

2. Prevents better matter.

3. Kindles strife and contention.

4. And for idle words we are to give an account.

Now, for the avoiding of these fruitless disputes, observe these following directions:--

1. Get a sound mind, a good judgment, to discern betwixt things that differ.

2. Root self-love and pride out of thy heart.

3. In matters of less moment reserve thy judgment; publish it not, lest thou trouble others.

4. Take heed of overmuch curiosity: pry not into God’s ark; neither presume above that which is written.

5. Consider wherein thou and the party with whom thou hast to deal do agree, and let that consent make a stronger union than the dissent can a separation.

6. Abandon such companions as are always complaining of Church government. (J. Barlow, D. D.)

The hydrostatic paradox of controversy

If a fellow attacked my opinions in print, would I reply? Not

I. Do you think I don’t understand what my friend the Professor long ago called the hydrostatic paradox of controversy? Don’t know what that means? Well, I will tell you. You know that if you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would stand at the same height in one as in the other. Controversy equalises fools and wise men in the same way--and the fools know it. (Q. W. Holmes.)

Controversy

Controversy has kept alive a certain quantity of bitterness, and that, I suspect, is all that it would accomplish if it continued till the day of judgment. I sometimes, in impatient moments, wish the laity in Europe would treat their controversial divines as two gentlemen once treated their seconds, when they found themselves forced into a duel without knowing what they were quarrelling about. As the principals were being led up to their places one of them whispered to the other, “If you will shoot your second, I will shoot mine.” (A. J. Froude.)

Controversy a sign of moral poverty

In the course of more than twenty-seven years, I never knew one exemplary Christian a disputer, whether amongst Dissenters or in our own Church; and it is a rule with me to conclude any person who can be taken up with a desire to make men converts to any notion, and not to Christ, or to be zealous for anything more than the life of faith and holiness from knowledge of Christ crucified, is a sounding empty professor, or, at best, in a very poor low state. (H. Venn.)

Cavilling and disputation

When Endamides heard old Xenocrates disputing so long about wisdom, he inquired very gravely, but archly, “If the old man be yet disputing and inquiring concerning wisdom, what time will he have left to use it?” Controversy may be sometimes needful; but the love of disputation is a serious evil. Luther, who contended earnestly for the truth, used to pray, “From a vainglorious doctor, a contentious pastor, and nice questions, the Lord deliver His Church.” Philip Melancthon, being at the conferences at Spires, in 1529, made a little journey to Bretton to see his mother. This good woman asked him what she must believe amidst so many disputes, and repeated to him her prayers, which contained nothing superstitious. “Go on, mother,” said he, “to believe and pray as you have done, and never trouble yourself about religious controversies.” (Sunday School Teacher.)

Study to show thyself approved unto God.

Approved

The word which he uses (σπουδάζειν) is one which scarcely occurs in the New Testament, except in the writings of St. Paul. And the corresponding substantive is also much more common in his Epistles than it is elsewhere. It indicates that ceaseless, serious, earnest zeal, which was one of his chief characteristics. And certainly if the proposed standard is to be reached, or even seriously aimed at, abundance of this zeal will be required. For the end proposed is not the admiration or affection of the congregation, or of one’s superiors, nor yet success in influencing and winning souls; but that of presenting one’s self to God in such a way as to secure His approval, without fear of incurring the reproach of being a workman who has shirked or scamped his work. The apostle’s charge is a most wholesome one, and if it is acted upon it secures diligence without fussiness, and enthusiasm without fanaticism. The being “approved” implies being tried and proved as precious metals are proved before they are accepted as genuine. (A. Plummer, D. D.)

The minister approved of God

I. In what way and manner a minister ought to show himself approved of God. It appears to me that something more is required to convince men that a minister has the smile of God than his own belief. Our text evidently implies that by his work a minister must show that God is with him. In his work four things will be found which tend to show this.

1. Its quality. It must be such as God commands.

2. Its quantity; which shall evince diligence.

3. The difficulties attending its performance; which is the trial of sincerity.

4. The spirit in which it is done. It is a work which requires a spirit of compassion and kindness.

II. What are the signs of a minister’s approval of God which should be accepted by persons?

1. I would place conversions as an evidence of Divine approval. They show Divine favour. The moral miracle of a true conversion evinces the Divine presence and power equally with any other miracle.

2. The convictions of truth and duty, which are made by his preaching to the consciences of sinners.

3. The last sign we shall notice of God’s approbation of His minister, is the effects of his preaching on the hearts of them that believe. Those that are spiritual can judge whether his preaching is scriptural. (W. Moore.)

God’s approval

Advert continually to His presence with reverence and godly fear; consider Him as always looking on the heart; trust in His almighty protection; believe in Him as a holy sin-hating God and reconciled to sinners of mankind only in Jesus Christ; value His favour above all the world, and make it the settled sole aim of your lives to approve yourselves to His pure eyes. (T. Adam.)

Desire for God’s approbation

“If you were an ambitious man,” said a person one day to a minister of talent and education, who was settled in a retired and obscure parish, “you would not stay in such a place as this.” “How do you know that I am not an ambitious man?” said the pastor. “You do not act like one.” “I have my plans as well as others--the results may not appear as soon, perhaps.” “Are you engaged in some great work?” “I am; but the work does not relate to literature or science. I am not ambitious, perhaps, in the ordinary sense of the term. I do not desire to occupy the high places of the earth, but I do desire to get near my Master’s throne in glory. I care but little for popular applause, but I desire to secure the approbation of God. The salvation of souls is the work He is most interested in, and to the successful prosecution of which He has promised the largest rewards.” (H. L. Hastings.)

“Vibration in unison”

“Something is the matter with your telephone; we can hardly hear you,” was the response, that in a faint voice came to us from the Central Office when we had answered their signal ring with the usual “Halloo!” A few minutes afterwards a young man from head-quarters stepped into our study, and taking the telephone in his hand commenced to investigate. “Yes, here it is,” he exclaimed, as he began to unscrew the ear-piece. “The diaphragm is bulged, and dust has collected around it to such an extent that it does not vibrate in unison with ours up in the office, and that spoils the sound. You see,” he added, while brushing the instrument, “that the telephones at both ends of the wire must act in harmony or there will be no voice. There,” he said, “it is all right now.” And sure enough the lowest word could be distinctly heard, There was, of course, nothing remarkable in this incident, and yet the words “vibrate in unison,” “must act in harmony or there will be no voice,” suggested higher thoughts as well. The human heart is God’s telephone in man. Through it He purposes to speak to our inner consciousness; and when our conscience, our affections, and our desires “vibrate in unison” with the breath of His lips we can hear His voice within us.

A workman that needeth not to be ashamed.

The single word which represents “that needeth not to be ashamed” (ἀνεπαίσχυντος). is a rare formation, which occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. Its precise meaning is not quite certain. The more simple and frequent form (ἀναίσχυντος) means” shameless,” i.e., one who does not feel shame when he ought to do so. Such a meaning, if taken literally, would be utterly unsuitable here. And we then have choice of two interpretations, either

(1) that which is adopted in both A.V. and R.V., who need not feel shame, because his work will bear examination, or

(2) who does not feel shame, although his work is of a kind which the world holds in contempt. The latter is the interpretation which Chrysostom adopts, and there is much to be said in its favour. Three times already in this letter has the apostle spoken of not being ashamed of the gospel (2 Timothy 1:8; 2 Timothy 1:12; 2 Timothy 1:16). Does he not, therefore, mean here also, “Present thyself to God as a workman who is not ashamed of being in His service and of doing whatever work may be assigned to him”? This brings us very close to what would be the natural meaning of the word, according to the analogy of the simpler form. “If you are to work for God,” says Paul, “you must be in a certain sense shameless. There are some men who set public opinion at defiance, in order that they may follow their own depraved desires. The Christian minister must be prepared sometimes to set public opinion at defiance, in order flint he may follow the commands of God.” The vox populi, even when taken in its most comprehensive sense, is anything but an infallible guide. Public opinion is nearly always against the worst forms of selfishness, dishonesty, and sensuality; and to set it at defiance in such matters is to be “shameless” in the worst sense. But sometimes public opinion is very decidedly against some of the noblest types of holiness; and to be “shameless” under such circumstances is a necessary qualification for one’s duty. It is by no means certain that this is not St. Paul’s meaning. If we translate “A workman that feeleth no shame,” we shall have a phrase that would cover either interpretation. (A. Plummer, D. D.)

The gospel workman

I. Look, first, at the designation the Christian minister must try to earn for himself, to be “a workman approved of God,” one whose work will bear trying in the fire; having nothing counterfeit about it, but discovering the fine gold of an unadulterated service--truthful, hearty, honest towards God and man.

1. Such a man will strive to be approved of God for his diligence, his earnestness, the anxious concentration upon the duties of the ministry of all the powers which God has given him.

2. “Approved of God,” again, a minister should strive to be for his faithfulness. Now, this faithfulness, in relation to the stewardship of souls, consists in a bold and unfaltering adherence to the terms of our gospel commission; in a jealousy, before all things, for the honour of the Lord we serve; in a deter mination that, neither in public nor in private, will we exercise any timid reservations whether men will hear or whether they will forbear.

II. But the text invites us, in the next place, to consider the Christian minister in His office as a public teacher.

1. Where note, first, it is the “word of truth” he has to divide; an expression with which we may compare the language of the same apostle on another occasion, where he says, “When ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as is in truth the word of God.” This mode of speaking of Holy Scripture seems well calculated to meet that irrepressible craving for certainty on moral subjects, which is the first need of the awakened mind.

2. But this word or truth, we are told, is to be “rightly divided”; that is, we may interpret the expression, to have all its parts distributed and disposed after some law of connection and coherence and scientific unity. The general spirit of this injunction goes to reprove all that mutilated or partial teaching in which, through an over-fondness for particular aspects of theological truth, a man is betrayed into negligence, if not into culpable reticence, about all the rest.

III. But I proceed to the last point which calls for notice in our text, or that which leads us to contemplate the Christian minister in his personal character and qualifications.

1. “Needeth not to be ashamed,” in regard of his mental culture, and attainments,, and general fitness to cope with the demands of an intellectual age.

2. “Needeth not be ashamed,” once more, in regard of his personal and experimental acquaintance with the truths he is ordained to teach. Every profession in life has its appropriate and distinctive excellence. We look for courage in the soldier; integrity in the merchant; wise consistency in the statesman; unswerving uprightness in the judge. What is that which, before all things, should distinguish the Christian minister, if it be not pre-eminent sanctity of deportment, and the spirit of piety and prayer? (D. Moore, M. A.)

Rightly dividing the word of truth.--

Cutting straight

Literally “cutting straight.” The figure has been very variously derived; from a priest dividing the victim, the steward distributing the bread or stores, a stonemason, a carpenter, a ploughman, a road-cutter. The last has been most frequently adopted. Perhaps they are right, who, like Luther and Alford, consider that the figure had become almost lost sight of in common usage, and that the word had come to mean little more than to “manage” or “administer.” (Speaker’s Commentary.)

Fearless faithfulness

The metaphor is taken from cutting roads. The characteristic of the Roman roads would be well known to the apostle, and this idea is given in the margin of the revision “holding a straight course in the word of truth.” The expression denotes a fearless faithfulness--a simple straightforwardness in the proclamation of the truth of God, whatever may be the opinions or the conduct of men. The Word has to be preached whether men will hear or whether they will forbear. (R. H. S.)

Defection dangerous

I am disposed to think that we may perhaps class this among the medical words with which these Epistles abound, and see in it a reference to the work of the surgeon, in which any deflection from the true line of incision might be perilous or even fatal. The reference in 2 Timothy 2:17 to the gangrene or cancer seems to carry on the train of thought. (E. H. Plumptre, D. D.)

Right handling

The idea of rightness seems to be the dominant one; that of cutting quite secondary; so that the Revisers are quite justified in following the example of the Vulgate (recte tractantem), and translating simply “rightly handling.” But this right handling may be understood as consisting in seeing that the word of truth moves in the right direction, and progresses in the congregation by a legitimate development. (A. Plummer, D. D.)

Straight-forwardness

St. Paul summons Timothy to a right straightforward method of dealing with the Divine word. He would have him set out clear lines for the intellect, a plain path for the feet, a just appeal to the emotions, a true stimulant of the conscience. (H. R. Reynolds, D. D.)

Rightly dividing the word of truth

I. The Vulgate version translates it--and with a considerable degree of accuracy--“Rightly handling the word of truth.” What is the right way, then, to handle the word of truth?

1. It is like a sword, and it was not meant to be played with. It must be used in earnest and pushed home.

2. He that rightly handles the word of God will never use it to defend men in their sins, but to slay their sins.

3. The gospel ought never to be used for frightening sinners from Christ.

4. Moreover, if we rightly handle the word of God we shall not preach it so as to send Christians into a sleepy state. We may preach the consolations of the gospel till each professor feels “I am safe enough: there is no need to watch, no need to fight, no need for any exertion whatever. My battle is fought, my victory is won, I have only to fold my arms and go to sleep.”

5. And, oh, beloved, there is one thing that I dread above all others--lest I should ever handle the word of God so as to persuade some of you that you are saved when you are not.

II. But my text has another meaning. It has an idea in it which I can only express by a figure. “Rightly dividing, or straight cutting.” A ploughman stands here with his plough, and he ploughs right along from this end of the field to the other, making a straight furrow. And so Paul would have Timothy make a straight furrow right through the word of truth. I believe there is no preaching that God will ever accept but that which goes decidedly through the whole line of troth from end to end, and is always thorough, earnest, and downright. As truth is a straight line, so must our handling of the truth be straightforward and honest, without shifts or tricks.

III. There is a third meaning to the text. “Rightly dividing the word of truth” is, as some think, an expression taken from the priests dividing the sacrifices. When they had a lamb or a sheep, a ram or a bullock, to offer, after they had killed it, it was cut in pieces, carefully and properly; and it requires no little skill to find out where the joints are, so as to cut up the animal discreetly. Now, the word of truth has to be taken to pieces wisely; it is not to be hacked or torn as by a wild beast, but rightly divided. There has to be discrimination and dissection.

1. Every gospel minister must divide between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace.

2. We need also to keep up a clear distinction between the efforts of nature and the work of grace. It is commendable for men to do all they can to improve themselves, and everything by which people are made more sober, more honest, more frugal, better citizens, better husbands, better wives, is a good thing; but that is nature and not grace. Reformation is not regeneration.

3. It is always well, too, for Christian men to be able to distinguish one truth from another. Let the knife penetrate between the joints of the work of Christ for us, and the work of the Holy Spirit in us. Justification, by which the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us, is one blessing; sanctification, by which we ourselves are made personally righteous, is another blessing.

4. One other point of rightly dividing should never be forgotten, we must always distinguish between the root and the fruit. “I want to feel a great change of heart, and then I will believe.” Just so; you wish to make the fruit the root.

IV. The next interpretation of the apostle’s expression is, practically cutting out the word for holy uses. This is the sense given by Chrysostom. I will show you what I mean here. Suppose I have a skin of leather before me, and I want to make a saddle. I take a knife, and begin cutting out the shape. I do not want those parts which are dropping off on the right, and round tiffs corner; they are very good leather, but I cannot just now make use of them. I have to cut out my saddle, and I make that my one concern. The preacher, to be successful, must also have his wits about him, and when he has the Bible before him lie must use those portions which will have a bearing upon his grand aim.

V. One thing the preacher has to do is to allot to each one his portion; and here the figure changes. According to Calvin, the intention of the Spirit here is to represent one who is the steward of the house, and has to apportion food to the different members of the family. He has rightly to divide the loaves so as not to give the little children and the babes all the crust; rightly to supply each one’s necessities, not giving the strong men milk, and the babes hard diet; not casting the children’s bread to the dogs, nor giving the swine’s husks to the children, but placing before each his own portion.

VI. Rightly to divide the word of truth means to tell each man what his lot and heritage will be in eternity. Just as when Canaan was conquered, it was divided by lot among the tribes, so the preacher has to tell of Canaan, that happy land, and he has to tell of the land of darkness and of death-shade, and to let each man know where his last abode will be. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Appropriate truth

Paul no doubt meant by this simile, that as a father at the dinner-table cuts and carves the meat, and divides it in proper shares to his family--a big piece for the grown-up son who works hard, and a small tender bit for the wee bairn who is propped up in a high chair next the mother--so all Christian workmen should divide religious truth, according to the capacity and the wants of the people amongst whom they labour. We are told in a fable that a half-witted man invited a number of creatures to a feast, at which he gave straw to the dog, and a bone to the ass. So, unless we think and reason, we shall be giving the wrong sort of food to the people who look to us for spiritual nourishment. When you are invited to visit the death-bed of a man whose life has been self-indulgent and occasionally vicious, and you see the tears of repentance in his eyes, it is a blunder to read him an account of the last judgment in the 25th of Matthew; but it is rightly dividing the truth to open the 15th chapter of Luke, and tell him the touching story of the father’s love to his penitent prodigal son. If you are asked to preach religious truth to a sceptic, do not ask him to believe that the whale swallowed Jonah; or that, one day, the sun stood still while an army fought out its battle. It would be like giving straw to a hungry god. Tell the sceptic the Divine parable of the humane Samaritan, and say, “If you copy the spirit of that man, you shall find it one of the gateways to God.” Would you influence for good a young man who is leaving home for the great city? Then, tell him the story of virtue as exhibited in the life of Joseph, who as a son, a brother, a slave, a servant, a overseer, a prisoner, and a prince, benefited man and glorified God. If you have to speak to children, tell them of the child Samuel, who prayed to God, and was consecrated to His service in one of the most illustrious lives of the Old Testament; and when you wish to impress upon a child that he should trust in God, read and expound to him the psalm which begins with the thrilling words, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want”; and tell him of the sacred Saviour who took the little ones in His arms and blessed them, saying, “Of such little children is the kingdom of heaven.” If you are asked to go to a prison and speak to the convicted wretches, tell them of the poor, naked, dying thief on the cross who saw Jesus, believed in Him, prayed to Him, and the same day was received into paradise. And are you moved to give a word to the outcasts? Then, give them their share of suitable spiritual food. Tell them of Mary Magdalene whose heart was cleansed from its impure demons and filled instead with sacred love. And when the penitent outcasts weep while you speak of the Divine love, one may reply, “But, sir, no good woman will befriend such as we have been!” Then, tell them that when Mary Magdalene was converted she became the companion of the mother of Christ; and that if they trust in God and do the right, He will make a sacred path for them through the world and make them perhaps as useful and as honoured as the Magdalene whose service to Christ and His mother is the charm of the world. Yes; there is in this grand gospel history a share of food for everybody; and it should be for us to find it and bestow it according to the needs of the people. (W. Birch.)

Rightly dividing the word of truth

Truth is of various kinds--physical, mathematical, moral, etc.; but here one particular kind of truth is referred to, called the word of truth--that is, the truth of the Word of God--the truth of Divine revelation--theological truth. The Bible was not given to teach men philosophy, or the arts which have respect to this life; its object is to teach the true knowledge of God, and the true and only method of salvation.

1. The truths of God’s Word must be carefully distinguished from error.

2. But it is necessary to divide the truth not only from error, but from philosophy, and mere human opinions and speculations.

3. The skilful workman must be able to distinguish between fundamental truths, and such as are not fundamental.

4. Rightly to divide the word of truth, we must arrange it in such order as that it may be most easily and effectually understood. In every system some things stand in the place of principles, on which the rest are built. He who would be a skilful workman in God’s building must take much pains with the foundation; but he must not dwell for ever on the first principles of the doctrine of Christ, but should endeavour to lead His people on to perfection in the knowledge of the truth.

5. A good workman will so divide the word of truth, as clearly to distinguish between the law and the gospel; between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace.

6. Another thing very necessary to a correct division of the word of truth is that the promises and threatenings contained in the Scriptures be applied to the characters to which they properly belong.

7. But finally, the word of God should be so handled that it may be adapted to Christians in different states and stages of the Divine life; for while some Christians are like “strong men,” others are but “babes in Christ, who must be fed with milk, and not with strong meat.” (A. Alexander. D. D.)

The right division of truth

We will suppose a workman dealing with the yet unrenewed and unshapen material--with the unconverted of his hearers; and we will study to show you how, if he would “rightly divide the word of truth,” and approve himself of his Master, he must use different modes according to the different characters upon which he has to act. To illustrate this we may refer to a passage in St. Jude, where the apostle thus expresses himself “Of some have compassion, making a difference; and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire.” Here you have gentle treatment prescribed; and you have also harsh treatment. Let us see how both will be employed by “a workman, that needeth not to be ashamed.” Of some, the minister is to “have compassion.” Is he not to have compassion of all? Indeed he is. Let him lay aside instantly the ministerial office; let him be pronounced utterly wanting in the very first qualification for its discharge, if there be the sinner whom he does not pity, for whom he is not anxious, or whose danger does not excite in him solicitude. All are to be regarded with a feeling of pity, but all are not to be treated with the same mildness and forbearance. Behold that young man whose family is irreligious, who, with perhaps a sense of the necessity of providing for the soul, is laughed out of his seriousness by those who ought to be urging him to piety--hurried to amusements which are only fitted to confirm him in enmity to God, and initiated into practices which can issue in nothing but the ruin of the soul. I could not treat that young person sternly. I could not fail, in any intercourse with him, to bear in mind his peculiar disadvantages. And though it would be my duty--else could I be “studying to approve myself unto God”?--to remonstrate with him on the madness of allowing others to make him miserable for eternity, the very tone of my voice must show that I spake in sorrow, and not in anger. Or, behold, again, that man in distressed circumstances, on whom press the cares of a large family, and who is tempted perhaps to gain the means of subsistence through practices which his conscience condemns--Sunday trading, for example. Could I go to the man in harshness and with severity? I must not, indeed, spare his fault. I must not allow that his difficulties are any excuse for the offence. I had “need to be ashamed as a workman,” if I did this; but, surely, when I think on his peculiar temptations, and hear the cries of his young ones who are asking him for bread, you will expect me to feel great concern for the man, and so to “divide the word of truth,” as to show that concern, by the manner in which I reprove his misdoing. Or, once more, a man of no very strong intellect, and no very great reading, is thrown into the society of sceptical men perhaps of brilliant powers, and no inconsiderable acquirements. Why, he will be no match for these apostles of infidelity! His little stock of evidence on the side of Christianity will soon be exhausted; and he will not be able to detect the falsehoods, and show the sophistries of the showy reasoners; and presently, by a very natural, though most unfair process, he will be disposed to conclude that what he cannot prove wrong must be right. Towards a man thus seduced our prevailing feeling will be compassion--a feeling which you cannot expect us to extend towards those who have seduced him, except in the broad sense that we are aware of their danger, and would snatch them from ruin. Again, it is melancholy to think how many an inquirer may have been repulsed, how many a backslider confirmed in apostasy, how many a softening heart hardened, how many a timid spirit scared by the mode in which the truth has been pressed on their attention. It requires great delicacy and address to deal successfully with a very sensitive nature; more especially where--to use the language of the world--there is much to excuse the faults which we are bound to rebuke. But if there be a right division of the word of truth, it is evident that whilst some of you may require the gentle treatment, others will need the more severe. There are cases of hardened and reckless men, reckless men, of the openly dissolute and profane--men living in habitual sin, and showing unblushing contempt for the truth of God. And we must not so speak as to lead you to suppose us sure that there are none amongst yourselves requiring the harsh treatment. There are men who cannot possibly be in any doubt as to the wrongness of their conduct, who cannot plead ignorance in excuse, or the suddenness of temptation, or the pressure of circumstances; but who have a decided preference for iniquity, and a settled determination to gratify their passions, or aggrandise their families--pursuing a course against which conscience remonstrates, and who would not themselves venture to advance any justification. And if we would “rightly divide the word of truth,” what treatment must we try with such men? Oh! these men may yet be saved! The word of truth does not shut them up to inevitable destruction. We are not despairing of any one amongst you, and we will not. We can yet again bring you the message of pardon. And thus whilst directed to make an effort to save you, and, therefore, assured that you are not past recovery, the word of truth enjoins severe and peremptory dealing. These are those of whom St. Jude uses the remarkable expression--“Others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire.” (H. Melvill, B. D.)

Adaptation in preaching

King Oswald, of Northumbria, sent for missionaries from the monastery of Iona. The first one despatched in answer to his call obtained but little success. He declared on his return that among a people so stubborn and barbarous success was impossible. “Was it their stubbornness or your severity?” asked Ardan, a brother sitting by; “did you forget God’s word to give them the milk first and then the meat?” (H. O. Mackey.)

Adaptation

A divine ought to calculate his sermon, as an astronomer does his almanac, to the meridian of the place and people where he lives. (J. Palmer.)

Close preaching

Do you not know that a man may be preached to liturgically and doctrinally, and never be touched by the truth, or understand that to which he listens? Suppose I were to preach to you in Hebrew, how much would you understand? Now, when I preach so that a banker, who has all along been sitting under the doctrinal preaching, but has never felt its application to his particular business, feels the next day, when counting his coin, a twinge of conscience and says, “I wish I could either practice that sermon or forget it,” I have preached the gospel to him in such a way that he has understood it. I have applied it to the sphere of life in which he lives. When the gospel is preached so that a man feels that it is applied to his own life, he has it translated to him. And it needs to be translated to merchants and lawyers, and mechanics, and every other class in society, in order that all may receive their portion in due season. (H. W. Beecher.)

Eccentric souls to be saved

Success in soul winning is only given to skill, earnestness, sympathy, perseverance. Men are saved, not in masses, but by careful study and well-directed effort. It is said that such is the eccentric flight of the snipe when they rise from the earth, that it completely puzzles the sportsman, and some who are capital shots at other birds are utterly baffled here. Eccentricity seems to be their special quality, and this can only be mastered by incessant practice with the gun. But the eccentricity of souls is beyond this, and he had need be a very spiritual Nimrod, a “mighty hunter before the Lord” who would capture them for Christ. (H. O. Mackey.)

False exposition

Few sermons are more false or dangerous than those in which the teacher professes to impress his audience by showing “how much there is in a verse.” If he examined his own heart closely before beginning, he would find that his real desire was to show how much he, the expounder, could make out of the verse. But entirely honest and earnest men often fall into the same error. They have been taught that they should always look deep, and that Scripture is full of hidden meanings; and they easily yield to the flattering conviction that every chance idea which comes into their heads in looking at a word is put there by Divine agency. Hence they wander away into what they believe to be an inspired meditation, but which is, in reality, a meaning less jumble of ideas, perhaps very proper ideas, but with which the text in question has nothing whatever to do. (John Ruskin.)

“Pray that sermon”

A young beginner at preaching, after throwing off a highly wrought, and, as he thought, eloquent gospel sermon in the pulpit, in the presence of a venerable pastor, solicited of his experienced friend the benefit of his criticisms upon the performance. “I have but just one remark to make,” was his reply, “and that is, to request you to pray that sermon.” “What do you mean, sir? I mean, literally, just what I say; pray it, if you can, and you will find the attempt a better criticism than any I can make upon it.” The request still puzzled the young man beyond measure; the idea of praying a sermon was a thing he never heard or conceived of; and the singularity of the suggestion wrought powerfully on his imagination and feelings. He resolved to attempt the task. He laid his manuscript before him, and on his knees before God, undertook to make it into a prayer. But it would not pray; the spirit of prayer was not in it, and that, for the very good reason--as he then clearly saw for the first time--that the spirit of prayer and piety did not compose it. For the first time he saw that his heart was not right with God; and this conviction left him no peace until he had “Christ formed in him the hope of glory.” With a renewed heart he applied himself anew to the work of composing sermons for the pulpit; preached again in the presence of the pious pastor who had given such timely advice; and again solicited the benefit of his critical remarks. “I have no remarks to make,” was his complacent reply, “you can pray that sermon.” (Sword and Trowel.)

In the closet

Of Mr. John Shepherd, of the United States, it is recorded that he was greatly distinguished for his success in the pulpit. When on his death-bed he said to some young ministers who were present, “The secret of my success is in these three things:

1. “The studying of my sermons very frequently cost me tears.

2. Before I preached a sermon to others I derived good from it myself.

3. I have always gone into the pulpit as if I were immediately after to render an account to my Master.” All who knew that devoted man would have united in expressing his secret in three words, “In the closet.” (Sword and Trowel.)

Nor by the depth either

A young minister having preached for Doctor Emmons one day, he was anxious to get a word of applause for his labour of love. The grave doctor, however, did not introduce the subject, and the young brother was obliged to bait the hook for him. “I hope, sir, I did not weary your people by the length of my sermon to-day?” “No, sir, not at all; nor by the depth either.” (Sword and Trowel.)

A useful preacher

I know a clergyman who valued as one of the best testimonies to his pulpit ministry the remark of a servant, overheard by a friend, after a sermon specially addressed to servants: “One would think he had been a servant himself.” (J. C. Miller, D. D.)

Advice to preachers

On the fly-leaf of a Greek Testament used by Dr. John Gregg, Bishop of York, are carefully written out the following memoranda for his own guidance. They will be found interesting to those who aim at speaking in appropriate language on a subject previously studied and thought over, and they will know that the hints given are the results of much experience: “Much depends on vitality and vigour of body, much depends on the mood and spirit in which you are; therefore pray, and feed your mind with truth, and attend to health. Much depends on subject; therefore select carefully. Much on preparation; therefore be diligent. Much on kind and number of hearers. Much on method; therefore arrange. Much on manner; therefore be simple and solemn, spirit earnest, tender and affectionate. Much on language; therefore be choice. All on the Spirit; therefore invoke His presence, and rely on His power, that you may expect docere, placere, movere. Energy depends on the state of mind and body, ease on calmness and self-possession; lifts on constant intercourse with people and variety of ranks, and much practice. Read aloud various passages and portions. Think much, and read select authors. Converse with refined and well-informed persons. Prepare well for each public occasion. Exercise your powers in public often, and always do your best. Let your public manner be an enlargement of your private, and let that be natural and simple, graceful without awkwardness or affectation.”

Shun profane and vain babblings.

Shun

The word rendered “shun” is a strong one, and signifies, literally, to make a circuit so as to avoid; or as Alford paraphrases it, “the meaning seems to come from a number of persons falling back from an object of fear or loathing, and standing at a distance round it.” The word is used in Titus 3:9. (H. D. M. Spence, M. A.)

They will increase unto more ungodliness.

Will increase

προκόψουσιν. The metaphor is from pioneers clearing the way before an army, by cutting down all obstacles: hence to make progress, to advance. (James Bryce, LL. D.)

A lax life connected with erroneous doctrine

The close connection between grave fundamental errors in doctrine and a lax and purely selfish life is constantly alluded to by St. Paul. (H. D. M. Spence, M. A.)

Error is of an encroaching nature

Let the serpent but wind in his head, and he will quickly bring in his whole body. He that saith Yea to the devil in a little, shall not say Nay when he pleases. (J. Trapp.)

The odium theologicum, the worst of social devils

On approaching my subject I shall premise four things:

1. I have no disposition to underrate the importance of right beliefs in religion.

2. I hold it to be the right of every man to endeavour to propagate his beliefs.

3. I recognise the value of a rightly-conducted theological controversy.

4. The controversy of which I have to speak is that of a conventional theology. By a conventional theology I mean a theology which a man has received from others, rather than reached by his own research; a theology which has been put into his memory as a class of propositions, rather than wrought out of his soul as spiritual convictions; a theology which is rather the manufacture of other men than the growth of individual reflection and experience; a theology which is more concerned about grammar than grace--symbol than sense--sign than substance. Now, such controversies, in the nature of the case, must always be marked by two features.

(1) Technicality.

(2) Personality.

I. Such controversies develop the most impious arrogancy. All the arrogancy of mere worldly men pales into dimness in the glare of the arrogancy which that man displays who dares pronounce a brother heretic because he subscribes not to his own views.

II. Such controversies develop the most lamentable dishonesty. The polemic of a mere scribe theology has ever been a cheat.

1. He cheats by the representation he makes of himself. He would have his readers or hearers believe that he has reached the conclusions in debate by a thorough study for himself of the holy Book. It is false. It is a law that self-reached convictions expel dogmatism. But the polemic of a mere scribe-theology cheats also by representing himself as being inspired only in the controversy by love for truth. It is not lore for truth; it is love for his own opinions.

2. He is dishonest in his representation of his opponents, he imputes motives not felt--ideas and conclusions not held.

III. Such controversies develop a most disastrous perversity. The conventional controversialist perverts the Bible, the powers of the intellect and the zeal of the heart.

IV. Such controversies develop the most heartless inhumanity. They blind the polemic to the excellences of others. The technical theologue who looks at a brother through the medium of his own orthodoxy, will fraternise with a modern scoundrel if he is orthodox; but, like Caiaphas of old, will rend his robes with pious horror at incarnate virtue if it conform not to his own views. What inhumanities have not been perpetrated in the name of orthodoxy! What built the inquisition? What kindled the flames of martyrdom? What animated Bonner? What prompted Calvin to murder Servetus? What roused the Jewish rabbis to put the Son of God to death? The remarks made will suffice to justify the proposition that the controversies of a mere conventional theology are the most effective means of developing depravity. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

Profane babbling to be avoided

I. Profane vain babblings are to be avoided. How often does our apostle condemn them? Why are they to be avoided?

1. Because the branches which bear them are evil; as weakness of judgment, frowardness of will, and disorder in tile affections.

2. And do they not blemish our reputation? obscure the gloss of grace? hinder the acts of it? kindle corruption? and turn from the faith?

II. The causes which increase sin are to be removed. (J. Barlow, D. D.)

Their word will eat as doth a canker.

Gangrene

The substitution of “gangrene” for “cancer” is an improvement, as giving the exact word used in the original, which expresses the meaning more forcibly than “cancer.” Cancer is sometimes very slow in its ravages, and may go on for years without causing serious harm. Gangrene poisons the whole frame, and quickly becomes fatal. The apostle foresees that doctrines, which really ate out the very heart of Christianity, were likely to become very popular in Ephesus, and would do incalculable mischief. The nature of these doctrines we gather from what follows. (A. Plummer, D. D.)

Unsound opintions

I. The Church in all ages hath been pestered with vain babblers,

II. Unsound opinions are of a spreading nature. And this is true of all sin, original and actual.

1. For doth not corruption, like a disease, disperse itself, and pollute every power of the soul and member of the body? What part is not infected with that leprous contagion? Hath it not spread also, by natural propagation, to all Adam’s posterity?

2. Will not all actual sin spread also? For unbelief, hath it not run into atheism? fear, into despair? anger, into fury? and that, to revenge? Foolish mirth will become madness; temporary faith, high presumption; and speculative lust, actual whoredom. Were not images, in the beginning, for civil use, to put men in mind of deceased friends; and are they not at this day, by the Romanists, religiously adored?

3. Shall we not see one error beget another?

4. Moreover, unsound opinions spread from person to person.

III. Sin will destroy, if not destroyed. (J. Barlow, D. D.)

Justification by faith

This is a most striking and accurate description of the nature of heresy--it never remains inactive--it is sure to spread; an error in any essential point is sure, eventually, to corrupt the whole body of truth, just as a gangrene in the human body appearing, at first, as a small spot, gradually spreads, eating into the sound parts near it, and they, in their turn, infecting the rest, until the whole body is destroyed. The reason for this is very simple. The truths of religion are not a set of independent and unconnected notions bound up together in a creed, as men bind loose sticks into a bundle; they are closely connected parts of a great whole, arising one out of the other, so that you cannot deny one without denying or perverting a great many others; for once you admit a truth, you admit all its consequences; once you deny a truth, you must be prepared to deny, in like manner, all its consequences. God declares that false doctrine eats into the faith of the Church like a canker. Sacramental justification does this--therefore it is false. In order to show the injurious results of this false doctrine, we will take, for our example, that Church which most strongly holds it. The Church of Rome gives us the most awful instance of its effects. The Church of Rome holds that, at his baptism, every one is made perfectly holy; that if he remain in this state of grace, or if, after falling from it, he is restored to it again, so that he be in it at his death, then he is saved. Now let us suppose a church, as yet sound upon all other points, adopting this opinion. We shall see how it eats its way. And firstly, it must lead to the perversion of the doctrine of original sin. But further; every one knows that he is constantly committing little faults. “In many things we offend all.” But Rome affirms that some sins are venial, while others are mortal. But the law of God commands as welt as forbids, and they must, by their good works, continue to deserve God’s favour! Now, in such a system, every work must have its own proper value, it must be just so much merit towards justification: a man who works because he has been justified, does not stop to reckon or to price his good works; he works from love--he cannot do too much; but he who works that he may be justified, must keep count of his good deeds, and try to ascertain their value, that he may be sure he has really done enough to secure his justification. But this is not all. In such a system of external observances, it is clear that the man most remarkable for his lastings and his many prayers is the holiest man. But we may trace it further still. These holy men, who dwell apart from the common crowd, have clearly attained a degree of holiness greater than is necessary for their own salvation. May they not, then, bestow some of it on others? So far we have been tracing the effects of this false doctrine on those who believe that they are still in a state of justification because they have retained their baptismal purity. We have now to see its effects upon those who have reason to fear that they have lost their justification. Even when men have raised their own righteousness to the utmost, and lowered God’s law to the lowest, still the uneasy doubt will intrude itself--What if, after all, I have not done enough? what if I have fallen into mortal sin? Now, in such a case, of whom would the anxious sinner seek advice and consolation? who shall decide for him each nice case of conscience, and say what is venial and what is mortal sin? what are good works and what are not? Who but his pastor, God’s minister, whose province it is to study such matters? He wilt naturally ask him to decide for him what his state may be; but if so, he must confess all his sins to him: this spiritual physician must know all the symptoms of his case before he can give his opinion upon it; and, accordingly, the penitent will soon acquire the habit of auricular confession of all his sins to his priest. But what if this adviser, when consulted, shall decide that he has fallen from grace and is even in mortal sin? The priest cannot re-baptize him; how shall he regain his justification? This confessor has a right to declare God’s forgiveness; he preaches remission of sins; what if he have a right to give it? it is but a step from saying “You are forgiven,” to “I forgive you.” The fears of the penitent, the ambition of the priest, soon take it; the inquisitor becomes a judge, the ambassador assumes the authority of the king, the minister of Christ attempts to give the sinner the peace he needs, by usurping the office of his Lord and Master, who alone tins power on earth to forgive sins. The canker eats its way! There may, however, be cases where time is too short for the performance of penance--death may be imminent. For such a state another provision must be made--it is ready. There is a scriptural and primitive custom, that the elders of the Church should pray over a sick man, “anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.” All that is necessary is, to make of this rite, a sacrament conveying to the insensible, sick man remission of sins, as baptism was supposed to have given it to the insensible infant; and then his salvation is secured. Mark, now, how the true doctrine of justification preserves from all this error. Being justified by faith “I have peace”; what need have I then to confess to man? I may come boldly into the holy of holies, through the new and living way; I need no man to tell me how great my sins may be; I can ask God to “pardon my iniquity, for it is great!” If I address myself to my fellow man, it is for counsel and consolation, not for pardon. I have no need of extreme unction, I have “an unction from the Holy One”; I have no need of purgatorial fire, for “the blood of Christ cleanses from all sin.” “Being justified by faith I have peace with God.” (W.G. Magee.)

Saying that the resurrection is past already.

Error concerning the resurrection

The resurrection of the body, always a difficulty in ancient modes of thought, was especially so to those who, with the Essenes amongst the Jews, the Neo-Platonicians, and most of the early sects which afterwards expanded into Gnosticism, had adopted the dualism of the East, and held matter to be evil--sometimes the Evil Principle or his embodiment. Hence they were ready to avail themselves of the other sense of resurrection, the rising of those who were baptized into Christ to newness of life (Romans 6:3; Romans 6:5; Colossians 2:12); and they denied that any further revelation was to be believed. This error had been early taught in the Corinthian Church (1 Corinthians 15:12). (Speaker’s Commentary.)

And overthrow the faith of some.

Overthrowing the faith of others

After an infidel had succeeded in sapping the foundation of his mother’s faith in the Christian religion, he received a letter from her one day, informing him that she was near death. She said that “she found herself without any support in her distress; that he had taken away that only resource of comfort upon which in all cases of affliction she used to rely, and that she now found her mind sinking into despair. She did not doubt that her son would afford her some substitute for her religion; and she conjured him to hasten to her, or, at least, to send her a letter containing such consolations as philosophy could afford to a dying mortal.” He was overwhelmed with anguish on receiving this letter, and hastened to Scotland, travelling day and night; but before he arrived his mother expired.

Unreliable ministers

A misplaced buoy caused the wreck of a steamer worth £25,000, the loss of a valuable cargo and peril to many lives recently. The steamer, which was called the City of Portland, left Boston on her voyage to St. Johns, N.B., with seventy passengers on board and considerable freight. The night was clear, and as the steamer passed the Owl’s Head just before daybreak, the captain saw a striped buoy indicating the presence of a sunken rock. The course was altered in accordance with the position of the buoy, but in a few minutes the steamer struck a ledge. The pumps were started at once, distress colours set, and the boats cleared. The officers and crew retained their presence of mind, and despatched a boat for help. In a short time a steamer arrived, and took off the terrified passengers, but the steamer and cargo were a total loss. The captain of the ship was in no way blameable. The buoy, which was put there to be a means of safety, was by its displacement the cause of disaster. It had drifted. Similarly some preachers drift from orthodox positions, and their change of position may cause the wreck of the souls of those who flock to hear them.

Ministerial responsibility

During a voyage, sailing in a heavy sea near a reef of rocks, a minister on board the vessel made, in a conversation between the man at the helm and the sailors, an inquiry whether they should be able to clear the rocks without making another tack, when the captain gave orders that they should put off to avoid all risk. The minister observed, “I am rejoiced that we have so careful a commander.” The captain replied, “It is necessary I should be very careful, because I have souls on board. I think of my responsibility, and remember that, should anything happen through carelessness, souls are very valuable.” The minister, turning to some of his congregation who were upon the deck, observed, “The captain has preached me a powerful sermon; I hope I shall never forget, when I am addressing my fellow-creatures on the concerns of eternity, that I have souls on board.” (Archbp. Benson.)

The foundation of God standeth sure.

Nevertheless

We should give full force to the μέντοι. If the spirit of the apostle was perturbed with vain babblings, or cruel mortification, or the spread of plausible or perilous theories, he required to fall back upon great and deep principles. (H. R. Reynolds, D. D.)

The foundation

Rather, “God’s firm foundation stands,” i.e., the Church, the “great house” of 2 Timothy 2:20, but here designated by its “foundation,” because the antithesis is to the baseless fabrics of heresy. Other explanations have been: the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, the promises of God, the fidelity of God, Christ, the Christian faith, the election of God. But the context and the analogy of Ephesians 2:19-22 leave little doubt of the correctness of the first interpretation. (Speaker’s Commentary.)

The foundation of God

The scene here is one of destruction and desolation. On all sides houses are shaken and overturned. The houses are individuals or communities professing to believe the gospel. The faith of some, of many diversely minded and diversely influenced, is overthrown. But, amid the storm and wreck occasioned by false principles issuing in corrupt practice, there is a building which standeth sure. Now it may be the Church collective of which it is said, the Church which has the Lord’s promise that the gates of bell shall not prevail against her. But it may also be the individual believer that is intended; for the collective Church and the individual believer are on the same footing. For my present purpose I take the text in this latter view, and hold it to be descriptive of the Christian man, continuing steadfast and firm in his faith amid many surrounding instances of backsliding and apostasy. He is a tower, or temple, or building of some sort standing sure; being the foundation of God. And in token of that security he is sealed. He is doubly sealed; sealed on both sides.

I. “The Lord knoweth them that are His.”

1. The Lord knoweth them that are His by signs or marks or tokens bearing on His interest or right of property in them, His ownership of them. Thus, He knows them as given to Him by the Father from before all worlds, in the everlasting covenant. The Lord knoweth them that are His as redeemed by Him. He knows them by the Spirit’s work in them also.

2. The other class of marks or tokens by which the Lord knoweth them that are His, those bearing upon their interest or right of property in Him, do unquestionably come within the range and sphere of your consciousness and experience. They are, in fact, in the main, but an expansion, or unfolding, of the last of the three former ones, the work of the Spirit making you Christ’s, and Christ yours, and keeping you evermore in this blessed unity.

(1) The Lord knoweth them that are His, by the need they have of Him.

(2) By the trust they put in Him.

(3) By the love they bear to Him.

(4) By the work they do for Him.

(5) By their suffering for and with Him.

(6) As waiting for Him.

Now, put together all these marks by which the Lord knoweth them that are His, and say what must His thus knowing them mean? what must it imply and involve? Nay, rather, what will it not include of watchful care, tender pity, unwearied sympathy, unbounded beneficence and liberality and bountifulness?

II. “Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.”

1. Naming the name of Christ comes before departing from iniquity. This is the evangelical arrangement. And it is the only one that can meet the sinner’s case.

2. Naming the name of Christ is to be followed by departing from iniquity: and that not only in the form of a natural and necessary consequence to be anticipated, but in that of obedience to a peremptory command. It is not said, He that nameth the name of Christ may be expected, or will be inclined, or must be moved by a Divine impulse, to depart from iniquity. But it is expressly put as an authoritative and urgent precept. “Let him that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.”

3. Naming the name of Christ and departing from iniquity thus go together. They are not really twain, but one. There is not first a naming of the name of Christ, as if it were an act or a transaction to be completed at once, and so disposed of and set aside; and then thereafter a departing from iniquity, as its fitting consequence and commanded sequel. The two things cannot be thus separated. For, in truth, naming the name of Christ involves departing from iniquity; and departing from iniquity is possible only by naming the name of Christ. (R. S. Candlish, D. D.)

The palace and its inscription

I. The safety of the church is founded on God’s immutability. Whether the truth is regarded as an abstract existence, or as personified in the Church, it takes its stand on this attribute of the Divine Being. All ecclesiastical history is but a commentary upon the fact that “the foundation of the Lord standeth sure.” The pledge of Church safety rests on Fact and Promise. Time would fail us to trace out the former. We see it in that dark vessel ploughing the waves of an ocean-sepulchre, and settling on the crest of Ararat. We see it in those weeping tribes by the river of Babylon; for though their harps are silent, the very breeze that stirs the willow echoes the voice of Israel’s God! We see it in that pillar of cloud and in that pillar of light. We hear Daniel rejoicing over it in the lion’s den, and the faithful Hebrews proving it in the furnace of fire, and all the countless multitudes of Christ’s confessors deepen the voice of confirmation! History is our stronghold of proof. We dare the sceptic to unbolt the door of the past, and show us wherein the Divine immutability has failed. Shall we turn to Promise, to show the Church’s safety? It is like turning to a sky lighted with constellations of suns, or to a world bespangled with rarest flowers, or to a land flowing with milk and honey. To record the promises were a task almost equal to transcribing the entire Bible.

II. The seal with which God has enstamped the Church partakes of his immutability. There is no mistaking it. Time does not obliterate it. The “seal” cannot be successfully counterfeited in the eye of God. He knows His own.

1. This “seal” is ornamental. A monarch’s star is a mere toy--give it time and it will rot. Young men, you seek after the decorative, here it is! It “shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck.”

2. This “seal” is a passport to confidence. Christianity has won many compliments in its practical outworking, from those who effect to despise the evidence on which its claim to divinity is founded!

3. This “seal” is an earnest of future glory. Such is the testimony of Scripture (2 Corinthians 1:21-22; Ephesians 4:30).

III. The seal indicates discrimination and appreciation of character. “The Lord knoweth them that are His.” What mean those strange words? In the wide sense of creation all men are God’s--in the sense of Providence all are the pensioners of His bounty; and Jesus Christ is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. There are standing places in the universe, from which all humanity may be regarded as the peculiar property of God. But there is an inner circle in which are found hearts differing from the majority--hearts bearing the “seal” of God-property.

1. The thought that God appreciates the Christian character, and will finally glorify it, is to the believer a source of comfort.

2. This thought, moreover, imparts a sense of security.

3. This thought, again, suggests principles of action. Fond as we may be of comfort, and anxious to be assured of security, there is something positive expected from our Divine relationship. If God knows me, the world must know me too. The Christian has a profession to maintain.

IV. Distinctions in moral character may exist without the seal of divine appreciation. If all men were God’s in the peculiar sense of the text, there would be no special meaning in its terms. A class is referred to, in contradistinction to all other classes. There are only two sections in the domain of moral being--the good and the bad; these again being broken up into almost endless sub-divisions, shades and stages of development. To make the leading proposition clearer, take a sample of instances:--

1. Here is a man of keen religious sensibility. A tender heart is a great treasure, indeed, but let not a few tears be considered proof of penitence.

2. Here is the rigid formalist. Religion is a life, not a form: it is an actual power and not an elaborate creed. The Cross, and not the pew, is the true way to heaven.

3. A third hopes in the mercy of God. A benevolent God, he argues, will not destroy one of His own creatures. He forgets the harmony of the Divine attributes. Overlooking an outraged justice, he hopes in an insulted love. Terrible is the portion of those who bear not God’s seal (Revelation 9:3-4).

V. The church, as a palace, must have unity, completion, and design. The Church is not a broken fragment or a shattered limb. It is a whole, where individual members have their part to play. The largo stones and the small ones must be side by side. The position that each shall occupy in the temple must be determined by the wise Master-builder. If one member is jealous of another’s position there is an end to unity and progress. We are each dependent on the other. (J. Parker, D. D.)

The firm foundation

The time in which we live presents two striking, and to many minds incongruous, features.

1. There is great unrest in the realm of religious thought and life. On every side are heard voices of dissent from both theological and ecclesiastical dogmas. Schools and Churches are shaken with strife. Many are anxiously questioning concerning the stability of the Christian faith, and not a few are prophesying evil. There is a strong and increasing revolt against traditionalism. But With this commotion in the realm of religious thought there is

2. a great increase of practical Christianity. Missions both at home and abroad are pushed more vigorously than ever, and with larger results. Education for the people advances with leaps and bounds. Philanthropic enterprises multiply in number and increase in wisdom and efficiency continually. The Church is stripping off her dainty garments and grappling with social problems in a new spirit. There is a broadening application of Christianity to life, such as no past age has witnessed. In a word, the situation is this: The power of dogma wanes, but the power of truth waxes; forms are decadent, life is crescent; religious authority is challenged on every side, spiritual influence broadens and deepens. Here is a seeming contradiction or anomaly. Many do not understand the times. In their alarm over the upheaval in the realm of religious thought they fail to see or to appreciate the uplift in the realm of religious life. Can we not see that

“God fulfils Himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world”?

There is a “firm foundation of God.” A careful study of the Scriptures, of history, and of experience makes clear--

(1) That the essential basis of Christianity is not an institution, nor even a book. Christianity was before the Church. Christianity was before the New Testament. It produced the Gospels and Epistles, as in the olden time the prophetic spirit and experience antedated and produced the prophetic history and literature. Men forget this. They forget that God and the soul, and God revealing Himself to the soul, precede the institutions and records of religion.

(2) It is clear also that the essential basis of Christianity is not a creed. Faith existed before dogma. It terminates in a personality and not in a proposition or any series of propositions. Dogma is the result of an attempt to express and justify faith as an intellectual possession. It is natural and inevitable that men should make this attempt. But the process which goes on in the sphere of the understanding, or even its result, must not be identified with Christianity any more than physiology should be identified with the exercise of physiological functions, or dietetics with eating, or optics with seeing. Creeds change as life and thoughts change. They must change if there is life. Thought grows. Experience deepens. All creeds save the simplest, the most elemental, are left behind. They are not basal, but resultant. They belong to the sphere of the understanding.

(3) The essential basis of Christianity is a personal revelation of God in and through “the man Christ Jesus,” and a personal experience of a Divine communion and a Divine guidance. How do we know God? Not by argument, but by experiencing the touch of God on the soul. There is a Divine impact on the spirit of man. Argument is always subordinate to experience. How do we know God as Father? Through the revelation of the archetypal Divine Sonship in Christ and the experience of sonship through fellowship with Him. Spiritual experience underlies Christianity. The great spiritual verities comes to us always as experiences. They authenticate themselves in consciousness. “How do you know that Christ is Divine?” said a Methodist bishop to a frontiersman whom he was examining for admission into the ministry. The brawny-limbed and little-cultivated but big-hearted man looked at the bishop a moment in silence, and then, as his eyes filled with tears, he exclaimed: “Why, bless you, sir, He saved my soul!” It was another way of saying : “I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him until that day.” This experience of God is inseparable from the perception and the acceptance of an inclusive ethical principle that makes life the progressive realisation of a Divine ideal of righteousness. The experience of a Divine communion and the attraction of a Divine ideal belong to the essence of Christianity. “Let every one that nameth the name of the Lord depart from unrighteousness.” Christianity has its essential basis, then, in a personal revelation of God in and through the Christ, and a personal experience of God as life and love, as source and goal, as ideal and law. The Book, or the institution, may be a means to the experience, but the experience is fundamental. Along this line of experience lies the test of all doctrines. Truth is realised in being. This foundation stands sure. It is not shaken by changes in Church or creed. History is full of illustrations. The Reformation came shattering the mediaeval Church as with throes of earthquake. Many sincere souls cried out in dismay that Christianity was overthrown. But the convulsion passed, and Christianity put on new power to bless the world. Within the present century geology began to tell its marvellous story of creation, and many devout souls saw in it a deadly menace to religion. Genesis became a rallying-ground for the alarmed theological hosts. But truth had its way. Old ideas and interpretations of the Mosaic cosmogony fell away, and Christianity spread more and more widely among the people. Then came Darwin, with his appalling and atheistical ideas of evolution! Then, indeed, the ark of God was in danger! Doughty champions of the faith drew their weapons for battle, while the timid were ready to exclaim that Church and Bible alike were doomed unless the new foe were vanquished. The foe has proved the best of friends. Evolution soon appeared to be a great structural principle of thought in all realms of study. It has entered the domains of sociology, politics, history, philosophy, and even theology. Meanwhile Christianity, better understood by the very principle that seemed to threaten its life, increases in power continually. Nothing is shaken and overturned by human progress but what ought to be shaken and overturned. Nothing true ever perishes. Christianity has proved itself hospitable to every advance in knowledge, and to every social and political change that has been a step forward in the long battle-march of humanity. They are guilty of a great error who base the validity of the gospel of Divine love and eternal life on any theory of creation or inspiration, or on any fixed scheme of social and political organisation. They say; If this theory of inspiration or salvation or church order is discredited, Christianity is discredited. But a hundred theories have been discredited, and even disproved, and Christianity is better authenticated and has a wider and stronger hold on the world to-day than ever. “The firm foundation of God standeth.” These are marks of abiding Christianity: The personal experience of God and the spiritual attraction of righteousness--God in the soul, a motive and an ideal. Cultivate the passion, not for safety, but for righteousness, the realisation of love in conduct. Strive not for fixedness, but for growth. Spiritual permanence is permanence of growth in knowledge and goodness. Love for God and man walks with sure feet through paths where selfishness stumbles and sinks in bogs of doubt and despair. Keep the mind open to the ever-teaching Spirit of God. There are withheld revelations that wait for the unfolding of capacity in man to receive God's disclosure. Be content with nothing. Let faith in God and love to man be the broad base on which to build the aspiring structure of an eternal life. That foundation standeth sure. Trust God for the future of humanity. The world was not made in jest, nor does the kingdom of God rest on a contingency. Faith, as well as love, casteth out fear. Two boys were talking together of Elijah's ascent in the chariot of fire. Said one; “Wouldn't you be afraid to ride in such a chariot?” “No,” said the other, “not if God drove!” God drives the chariot of human progress, and it mounts as it advances. God is in His world, not outside of it. He is redeeming it from sin. He is making men. He is fulfilling His holy and beneficent purpose. Fear not, but believe and hope, for the power as well as the glory is His to whom be glory for ever and ever. (P. S. Moxom.)

The foundation and its seal

I. First, let us think of the lamentable overthrow which the apostle so much deplored.

1. The apostle observed with sorrow a general coldness. It was in some respect coldness towards himself, but in reality it was a turning away from the simplicity of the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith (see the 15th verse of the previous chapter).

2. Furthermore, the apostle saw with much alarm that teachers were erring. He names two especially, Hymenaeus and Philetus, and he mentions the doctrine that they taught--not needlessly explaining it, but merely giving a hint at it. They taught, among other things, that the resurrection was past already. I suppose they had fallen into the manner of certain in our day, who spiritualise or rationalise everything.

3. In Paul’s day many professors were apostatising from the faith because of the evil leaders. Sheep are such creatures to follow something that, when they do not follow the shepherd, they display great readiness to follow one another.

4. Paul also deplored that ungodliness increased. He says that the profane and vain babblings of his time increased unto more ungodliness.

II. Now let us turn to the subject which supplied Paul with consolation. He speaks of the abiding foundation: “Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure.” What is this foundation which standeth sure? Those who have interpreted the passage have given many meanings to it, but I believe that all those meanings are really one. For the sake of clearness I would give three answers to the inquiry: the foundation is, secretly, the purpose of God; doctrinally, the truth of God; effectively, the Church of God; in all, the system of God whereby He glorifies His grace.

III. Now, we are to look at this foundation and observe the instructive incription. I think this figure best expresses the apostle’s intent; he represents the foundation-stone, as bearing a writing upon it, like the stone mentioned by the prophet Zechariah of which we read, “I will engrave the graving thereof, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day.” The custom of putting inscriptions upon foundation-stones is ancient and general. In the days of the Pharaohs, the royal cartouche was impressed upon each brick that was placed in buildings raised by royal authority. The structure was thus known to bare been erected by a certain Pharaoh. Here we have the royal cartouche, or seal, of the King of kings set upon the foundation of the great palace of the Church. The House of Wisdom bears on its forefront and foundation the seal of the Lord. The Jews were wont to write texts of Scripture upon the door-posts of their houses; in this also we have an illustration of our text. The Lord has set upon His purpose, His gospel, His truth, the double mark described in the text--the Divine election and the Divine sanctification. This seal is placed to declare that it belongs to the Lord alone, and to set it apart for His personal habitation. If I might use another illustration, I can suppose that when the stones for the temple were quarried in the mountains, each one received a special mark from Solomon’s seal, marking it as a temple stone, and perhaps denoting its place in the sacred edifice. This would be like the first inscription, “The Lord knoweth them that are His.” But the stone would not long lie in the quarry, it would be taken away from its fellows, after being marked for removal. Here is the transport mark in the second inscription: “Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” The first mark--

1. Is concerning God and us. “The Lord knoweth them that are His.”

2. The text teaches us that the Lord discriminates. Some who bear His name are not His, and He knows them not.

3. “The Lord knoweth them that are His” signifies that He is familiar with them, and communes with them. They that are really the Lord’s property are also the Lord’s company: He has intercourse with them.

4. Further, the words imply God’s preservation of His own; for when God knows a man He approves him, and consequently preserves him. The second seal is concerning us and God--“Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” Observe how the practical always goes with the doctrinal in holy Scripture. Those whom free grace chooses, free grace cleanses. This is a sweeping precept as to the thing to be avoided: let him “depart from iniquity”--not from this or that crime or folly, but from iniquity itself, item everything that is evil, from everything that is unrighteous or uuholy. The text is very decisive--it does not say, “Let him put iniquity on one side,” but, “Let him depart from it.” Get away from evil. All your lives long travel further and further from it. Do you know where my text originally came from? I believe it was taken from the Book of Numbers. Read in the sixteenth chapter the story of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. In the Septuagint almost the same words occur as those now before us. The Lord Jesus is exercising discipline in His Church every day. It is no trifling matter to be a Church member, and no small business to be a preacher of the gospel. If you name the name of Christ, you will either be settled in Him or driven from Him. There is continually going on an establishment of living stones upon the foundation, add a separating from it of the rubbish which gathers thereon. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The stability of God’s purpose

It may be asked, how did it happen that under the direct observation of the apostles themselves, standing as they did on such exclusive ground, acting in the name and by the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, and clothed with all the awful powers of their high office--how happened it that so many and such dangerous errors arose? It might be permitted--

1. To ascertain the faith and put to the test the obedience of the sincere. There must be heresies that these may be proved and made manifest.

2. To show that the claims of the religion of Jesus Christ are not guided or influenced by secular authority, and that men’s minds are left perfectly free, at liberty to think and determine for themselves.

3. To illustrate the nature of the early discipline of the Christian Church. It was not such as affected men’s properties or lives, as has too frequently been the case where ecclesiastical authority has been felt. Paul put down error by virtue of his authority as an apostle; but we find nothing carnal in any of his proceedings.

4. To furnish occasions for developing more clearly the essentials of Christianity. Three topics of reflection are suggested to us here--

I. The stability of God’s purpose. The idea which we found on this part of the subject is, the certain continuance and continual accomplishment of God’s purposes, spite of all difficulties, oppositions, and enemies. But it has respect chiefly--

1. To the truth of God; and

2. To the Church of God.

II. The special objects of God’s purpose. “The foundation of God standeth sure; having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are His,” etc.

1. In speaking of the special objects of God’s love, we shall notice chiefly the character under which they are described--they are “His.” This implies knowledge, discrimination, approbation, acknowledgment. They are “His”--His by dedication.

2. His in consequence of a gracious influence on their hearts.

3. His in consequence of an interest in Christ. But this question is naturally suggested: How are we to determine whether we are His? How are we to know that we belong to the number of the called, and chosen, and faithful? The answer is ready--“Let every one that nameth the name of Christ, depart from iniquity,” and this leads us--

III. To consider the Holy character which ought to result from Christian principles. Consider here--

1. The profession assumed. They “name the name of Christ.” This includes in it an admission of His authority--a reception of His doctrines--a public avowal of their sentiments and convictions.

2. The obligation enjoined. Let him “depart from iniquity.” To depart from iniquity is to hate it--to be habitually opposed to the commission of it--to avoid it with the greatest circumspection--to seek and pursue whatever is opposed to it.

3. This is enjoined by the authority of Him whose name we bear. Can we think on that holy name without calling to mind the purity it should inspire? He gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity. Think of His character--it was holy and heavenly: of His doctrines--every word of God is pure: of His institutions--they are all designed to promote our sanctification: of the great ends and designs of His government--these are all connected with our purity. There is not a doctrine, not a testimony, not a precept which Christ has laid down, not a promise which He has caused to be recorded, which does not lead to the inculcation of holiness. On all parts of the Christian system we see inscribed, “Be ye holy, for I am holy.”

4. This is enforced by the peculiar discoveries of revelation. Can you mention a doctrine which does not lead to holiness?

5. This departure from iniquity is an essential and constituent part of the salvation of the gospel.

6. This is provided for by the continual agency of the Holy Spirit.

7. This is the design of all gospel institutions.

8. This is the great end of all providential dispensations.

9. It is that without which all our professions would be nullified and useless. (J. Fletcher, D. D.)

What is religion

We have come in our day into times precisely like those of the apostle, in which there is a great movement throughout the whole civilised world, and a great change of feeling, either of apprehension or of words, in regard to the stability of the Christian religion. I declare that the essential elements of Christianity were never so apparent as to-day; that they were never so influential; that they were never so likely to produce institutions of power; that they never had such a hold on human reason and human conscience; and that the religious impulse of the human race was never so deep and never so strong in its current. In the first place, then, we must recollect that there may be very great changes around about religion, in its external forms, without any essential interior change, nay, even with the augmentation of its interior power. Some men think that anything which is a revelation from God must be always one and the same thing; but God’s revelation is alphabetic; it is a revelation of letters, and they can be combined and recombined in ten thousand different words, varying endlessly. The great facts which are fundamental to consciousness, once being given, are alphabetic; and these facts may be combined; and with the development of the human race in intelligence and moral excellence they go on taking new forms, and larger experiences must have a larger expression. It is said that men do not believe in virtue. Well, when a man tells me that the refinements of the schoolmen are lapsing on questions which relate to eternal regeneration through the Son of God, and that many of the fine distinctions between ability natural and ability spiritual are going outer men’s thoughts and out of much use, I admit it; but I say that the great fundamental truths of religion, namely, the nature of man, the wants of man, and Divine love as a sufficient supply for human wants--instead of growing weaker are growing stronger in men’s minds. After all the pother that is made about the doctrines of human depravity, and the need of regeneration by the power of the Holy Ghost, are they not true? Men kick them about like so many footballs; but do they not recognise them as true when they are stated in a different way from that in which they have been accustomed to hear them stated, and in a way which is suited to the experience of our times? Men think these truths are passing out of the world; but I say they are simply taking another form of exposition. The truths themselves are inherent, universal, indestructible. Religion is not one thing. It means the moving of the human soul rightly toward God, toward man, and toward duty. He who is using his whole self according to laws of God is religious. Some men think that devotion is religion. Yes, devotion is religion; but it is not all of religion. Here is a tune written in six parts, and men are wrangling and quarrelling about it. One says that the harmony is in the bass, another that it is in the soprano, another that it is in the tenor, and another that it is in the alto; but I say that it is in all the six parts. Each may, in and of itself, be better than nothing; but it requires the whole six parts to make what was meant by the musical composer. Some men say that love is religion. Well, love is certainly the highest element of it: but it is not that alone. Justice is religion; fidelity is religion; hope is religion; faith is religion; obedience is religion. These are all part and parcel of religion. Religion is as much as the total of manhood, and it takes in every element of it. All the elements of man hood, in their right place and action, are constituent parts of religion; but no one of them alone is religion. It takes the whole manhood, imbued and inspired of God, moving right both heavenward and earthward, to constitute religion. I ask you to consider what religion is according to the definition of Paul--“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.” I do not care whether a man whitewashes or blackwashes his fence, or whether he uses guano or barn-yard manure, or what his mode of cultivation may be, the question is, Does he get good fruit? If he does, his method is good. Now, I take it that the apostle is speaking of religion when he speaks of the fruit of the Spirit; and the fruit of the Spirit is what? Orthodoxy? Oh, no. Conscience? Not a bit of it. One of the fruits of the Spirit is love; and is love dead? Another fruit of the Spirit is joy; and is joy gone? Peace, the strangest of fruits--is it not slowly coming to be that which is the unison of all other qualities with blessedness in the soul? Ye, then, who mourn because particular modes are changing, and think that religion is dying out, look deeper, and pluck up hope out of your despair, and confidence out of your fear; and to you that think religion is going away because of science, let me say that science is the handmaid of religion. It is the John Baptist, oftentimes, that clears the way for true religion. By religion I do not mean outward things, but inward states. I mean perfected manhood. I mean the quickening of the soul by the beatific influence of the Divine Spirit in truth, and love, and sympathy, and confidence, and trust. That is not dying out. (H. W. Beecher.)

The sure foundations

It is the nature of truth, as it is developed by human intelligence and used for practical purposes, to gather to itself instruments and institutions. The permanence of great fundamental truths, and the infinite variability of the exponents of truth, in the form of law, custom, philosophical statement--these are the two great truths with which we are to expound the past history of religion in the world, and by which also we are to prepare the way for its development in the days that are to come. After a while men lose sight of the truth in the instruments of it. They cease to worship the thing, and worship its exponent; so that, by-and-by, it is not the truth that men follow so much as its institutions. And so, as soon as this takes place, men, following their senses and their lower nature, begin a process of idolatry, of professionalism; and they become worshippers of the sensuous. So it comes to pass that all religions tend on the one side downward, and on the other side upward. The tendency to carry on truth to a higher and nobler form co-exists with another tendency to hold the truth in just the same confined forms with which it has hitherto been served. And so Churches find in themselves the elements of explosion and of controversy. Then comes revolution or reformation. Then comes sectarianism, or the principle, rather, from which sects grow. Now, in the time of St. Paul, vast changes were taking place. Mosaism, or religion as developed through the instrumentality of Mosaic institutions, had ripened and gone to seed, and was passing away; and in so far as the Gentile world was concerned, there was no further attempt on the part of the apostles to teach religion by the old forms and under the old methods. If you turn your eyes toward the Greek nation, which was the thinking nation of the world, they had knowledge, philosophy and art, but they had no moral sense. If you turn to the Roman empire, there was organisation, there was law, and an effete idolatry. Now came Christianity. But Christi-unity in itself, in its very origin, was vexed with schisms, with disputings; and it was in the midst of these confusions that Paul made the declaration of our text, that “the foundation of God standeth sure.” No matter what this man thinks, or that man teaches; no matter what shadows come or go, be sure of one thing--that the immutable foundations of religion stand. They will not be submerged permanently, nor will they rot in the ground; and they have this seal or superscription, written, as it were, on the corner-stone: “The Lord knoweth them that are His.” There is the great truth of Divine existence, and intelligence, and active interference in human affairs. God is not blotted out by men’s doubts, or reasonings, or philosophies, themselves caused by the interpenetration of Divine thought upon human intelligence. “God knoweth them that are His.” “Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” That is the other seal--aspiration for goodness; departure from all evil; an earnest, thorough and persistent seeking after a godly manhood. There are the two elements. There are fundamental elements in a Christian Church which we ought to speak of, and which we ought to mean when we speak of fundamental doctrines, and there are those which are necessary for the formation of the individual character, and for the transformation of man from an animal to a spiritual being. These are the fundamental truths which stand connected with the existence, government, and power of God in the world; and also with the organised development of human nature, that it may rise toward God. Now, it so happens that there are a great many things fundamental to theology which are not at all fundamental to human nature; and it so happens, on the other side, that there are in human nature a great many things which are fundamental to the organisation of a noble and manly character, but are hardly recognisable in theology at all. We ought, then, to clear our minds of the misuse of the term fundamental doctrines. No doctrines are fundamental except those that teach the Divine existence and government, or that teach the condition and wants of human nature, and its reconstruction, its re-organisation into Christian manhood. Men cannot live without religion. They cannot be men without it. The State calls for it; art calls for it; home and domesticity call for it; the voice of mankind and the voice of the ages have called and are calling for it; and they are either ignorant or cowardly who fear that any great disaster is going to befall religion in consequence of the progress which is taking place in the investigation of truth. Do you believe in a providence? Is this great world floating without a rudder, without a pilot or a captain? is time made up of chance-drifts? or is there a God? If there is a God, has He a future, and is He steering time and the race towards that future? And will He sleep or forget, and allow the race to run to ruin? The Word of God, the foundations of God, stand sure. Now, this general fear will lead us to take into Consideration the necessity of a closer union and affiliation of true Christian people. It seems to me what we need is, not to go back to old systems, or to cling to the old Churches, but simply this: that we should search for the great fundamental facts and truths which stand connected with the development of human nature from animalism to spirituality, and work together on these common grounds. Not that I would abolish ordinances, days, or institutions. I say to every sect, “Act according to your belief in regard to these things. Keep your theory; ordain as you think best; organise as you think best; let your ordinances be such as you think best; make your philosophical systems such as you think best; but stand with your brethren. Do not let the veins of your life run just as far as the walls of your church, and then come back again; let them go forth throughout Christendom.” (H. W. Beecher.)

The foundations of the Christian faith

The scepticism which we have to meet to-day concerns itself not with specific doctrine, but with the very roots and foundation of Christian faith itself. Time was when t, he foundation of Christian faith was the authority of the Church. The authority of the Church as the foundation of Christian faith has passed away. Nor is the Bible, the printed Book, in any true and profound sense the foundation of our Christian faith. Underneath the Bible there is a foundation on which the Bible itself rests. Now modern thought proposes, in lieu of these two foundations, another, the human reason, and it asks us to bring all our questionings and our faiths to the bar of the intellect, and have them adjudged and determined there. I shall not stop to argue whether reason be a sufficient foundation for our Christian faith; but I undertake to say that it is not the foundation of our Christian faith, and that we believe not because things are asserted by the Church, not merely because they are printed in the Book, not merely because they commend themselves to our reason. Deep down in the human life there is yet a foundation underneath all these. We do not object to bringing all Christian faiths to the bar of reason. We believe our Christian faith is not unreasonable; but there are truths which are not arrived at by argumentative processes; they are not reached by processes of logic; they are not demonstrated; they are known. AEsthetic truths, we do not prove them, we see them. All our moral beliefs rest on this foundation; we do not argue them, we know them. Love, patriotism, honesty, justice, truth, by what chemical processes will you analyse these? How will you put them into the scales and weigh them; by what logical demonstration will you prove they exist? Now that which is true in respect of all the aesthetic elements of life, that which is true in respect of the moral element of life is true in respect of the great spiritual realm. Our articles of Christian faith rest on our vital, personal, living experience in them. Why do I believe in God? Why do you believe in your mother? You have seen her. I beg your pardon; you never saw your mother. You have seen the eyes, the forehead, the cheeks, the face--that is not mother. If that be mother, then why, when the form lies prostrate, and you press the kiss upon the lips, and they give no answering kiss back, and you press the hand, and it gives no answering pressure back, why burst you into tears? Why wring your hands with grief? The lips are there, the brow is there, the cheeks are there, all that you ever saw is there. But mother is gone; and love, patience, fidelity, self-sacrifice, long-suffering--that is what makes the mother that you loved--that you have never seen. And we believe in God because we have known the tenderness of His love, because in times of great weakness He has strengthened us, and in times of great sorrow He has comforted us, and in times of great darkness He has guided us, because we have known in our inmost experience the power that is of God in life’s struggle. Why do you believe in immortality? It is not because of the philosophical arguments that have been addressed to you; it is not because of the proof texts you can find in the Scriptures; we know that we are immortal, as the bird knows that it has power to fly while yet it lies in its nest, and waits for the moment when it shall soar off into the invisible air. There is no better argument for immorality than that of the French Christian to his deistical friend. When the deist had finished a long scholastic argument, the Christian Frenchman replied, with a shrug of the shoulders, “Probably you are right; you are not immortal, but I am.” Now, when this view of the foundation of the Christian faith is employed, men sometimes object to it and say, “You are appealing to our feelings, you are not willing to test Christian truth where all truth must be tested, in the clear light of reason; you are appealing to our feelings, to our prepossessions, to our desires, to our sentiments.” Not at all. I am putting our Christian faith on that foundation on which all our knowledge and all our belief rest, albeit our Christian faith stands closer to the foundation than anything else. All that science has taught us, all that travel, all that history, all that observation, either of our own or observations of others, all is based, in the analysis, upon this--the truthfulness either of our own personal consciousness, or of the consciousness of others. Now, we carry in our hearts the consciousness of a Divine presence outside ourselves. We look upon this life of Christ, and it stirs within us a new and a Divine life. We know the power there is in the pardoning and atoning grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Why do we believe the Bible is an inspired Book? Because it is an inspiring Book, because it has given us comfort that no other book ever did, life that no other book ever gave, strength that no other book ever gave, because in our own personal use and experience of it it has been the life of God in our hearts. Moreover, our Christian faith rests not merely upon our own consciousness, it rests upon the concurrent consciousness of innumerable witnesses. But mark you one thing more. Our Christian faith rests on our consciousness, on the concurrent consciousness of witnesses verified by actual testimony. Christianity is not a theory. It proposes to do something for me. Compare old Rome with England or America of to-day with all our vices, with all our shortcomings, with all our corruptions, and behold what is the answer of history to the claim that Christ has made. Why, when Mr. Morse first proposed the magnetic telegraph it was not strange that men were sceptical. When he said “By touching a little key here I communicate a message to a man a thousand miles yonder,” no wonder that wise and conservative people shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders, and said, “Impossible!” But when the wire had been laid from Washington to Baltimore, and the first message was flashed through that wire, “Behold what God hath wrought,” how could any man doubt when the work was achieved? Some of you will say, “Ah! this will not give us a well-defined theology.” Well, perhaps not. But who can stand and look out into the vast future, and define immortality? Who can look up into the heavens and define God? Who can look into his own soul and define there the sins that have oppressed him, or the Saviour that has redeemed him from them? No, no; our experiences do transcend all our definitions, being beyond them. And some of you will say, “This is well for those of you that have this experience, but I have it not.” Is that any reason why you should not believe? Now, let us reason this matter one moment. Because you do not enjoy the music of Beethoven will you therefore conclude that all musical enjoyment is a myth? Because you, standing on the deck of an Atlantic steamer, cannot see the light of the far-distant lighthouse which the ship captain with his better trained eye does see, will you conclude that he is mistaken and you are right? If it be true that there is a testimony coming from innumerable hosts of witnesses to the reality of God’s presence, to the certainty of immortality, to the inspiration of God’s Book, to the vital saving power of a living Christ, will you reject the light because you are blind? Will you deny the truth because you see it not? A father and his son stand on the shores of the Bay of Fundy. A great tidal wave forty feet in height comes roiling in, when the boy catches the father’s hand in terror, and cries, “Run, father, run; the ocean is going to wash us away.” The father looks and smiles upon the lad, and says, “Wait, wait.” The great wave dashes itself into innumerable atoms of foam upon the great rock, and sweeps back into the ocean. And when this tidal wave of scepticism shall have expended its force it will be found broken into innumerable atoms of foam at the foot of a rock which shall stand through all the future, as in all the past, the Rock of Ages. (L. Abbott. D. D.)

The Lord knoweth them that are His.

All God’s people favourites

It is said of Tiberius, the emperor, that he never denied his favourite Sejanus anything, and often prevented his request; so that he needed only to ask and give thanks. All God’s people are His favourites, and may have all that their hearts can wish, or their need require. (J. Trapp.)

Affectionate remembrance

At Bury St. Edmunds, I went to the infirmary of the workhouse, where, amongst other patients in bed, I conversed with an old m an, who, if I remember rightly, was over eighty years of age. As it lay outside the counterpane, I noticed that his arm from the elbow to the wrist was covered, after the manner of sailors’ tattooing, with numerous letters. On asking him what they were, he said, “Why, you see, sir, I’ve had nine children, and all are gone; some I know be dead, and some I don’t know whether they be dead or alive, but they’re all the same to me; I shall never see any of them again in this world. But I’ve got all their initials here on my arm; and it’s a comfort to me as I lie here to look at ‘em and think of ‘em.” It was all that this poor old man could do for his sons; but he held them in affectionate remembrance, though he needed not the sight of their initials to remember them by. Our heavenly Father knoweth and taketh pleasure in all them that are His. He bears them all on His heart, and His power to help and to bless them is as great as His wealth of love. (B. Clarke.)

Hidden Christians

There are stars set in the heavens by the hand of God, whose light has never reached the eye of man; gems lie covered in the dark abysses of earth that have never yet been discovered by the research of man; flowers which have grown in blushing beauty before the sun, that have never been seen by the florist; so there may be Christians, made such by God, who are hidden from the knowledge of this world. (John Bate.)

Unknown, yet well known

Many of the greatest saints have lived and died unknown and uncared for by the world. These are God’s secret ones, unknown to men, well-known to God. About some of the saints and apostles we hear much; the lives and works of St. Paul and St. Peter are familiar to us all. It is not so with St. Bartholomew, and yet none of the martyrs worked more faithfully, or suffered more severely. He who laboured so successfully for Christ, and suffered so severely, is only mentioned four times in the New Testament, and then very slightly. There is no word to record his hard toil, his burning love, his patient suffering, and his noble death. And so it is with many of the greatest of God’s saints. No one knows the name of Naaman’s little servant, who brought her master to God. The names of the Holy Innocents appear in no earthly book. That pious widow who gave all she had to the Temple is not named; and there are thousands of others, who though “unknown, are well known to God, whose names are not written on earth, but are written in heaven. There are many who are now living for God, and working for Him, and suffering for Him, of whom this world knows nothing. There will not be, perhaps, a paragraph about them in the newspapers, but “the Lord knoweth them that are His.” God has hidden saints in everyplace, dwelling under cottage thatch, as well as in great houses. These are the gems which no earthly eye has ever valued, but they will shine none the less brightly on that day when God makes up His jewels. (H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, M. A.)

The Lord knoweth them that are His

The Church at Ephesus, at a very early age, suffered from that stumbling-block--the “falling away” of professors. Oh! I do not wonder at the pain and the perplexity which the young missionary at Ephesus seemed to feel, at the thought of “the falling away” of many whom he had been wont to teach, and love, and hope, and pray for. But mark the delightful emphasis of that “nevertheless”--“Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure.” Perhaps, of those who set out with you on the road to heaven, some years ago, it may have been your painful lot to see one after another stop, lie down, and go to sleep, and die. “Nevertheless, nevertheless! the foundation of God standeth sure.” Or, look again at that “nevertheless.” One by one the friendships and the happinesses of life have been melting away from you. And now every idol has been pulled down; and now almost the only hope of your earthly support is gone: oh! with what sweetness at such amoment will that thought come back to you, “Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure!” You have a Friend that never can leave you. Or it may come closer than this. It may please God to bring trial more home to your heart. He may lead you through a long, dark cloud, where it may seem to you as if every trace of comfort was obliterated for ever,--“Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure.” Beneath the feet the “foundation” stands. The building may fall, but the “corner-stone” is safe. There is pardon; though there is no sense of it. There is faith; though there is not “the joy in believing.” There is Christ; though there is not the feeling of Christ. That cloud will roll over, and when the morning breaks, it will light up that “foundation,” brighter, clearer, and more saving, for ever. For “Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure.” You see, then, that the whole of a man’s peace and all his security depend upon this,--What is his “foundation”? It is the plainest of all plain Scriptural truths, that the only “foundation” of any soul’s safety is the Lord Jesus Christ. “Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Christ Jesus.” “Other foundation” may have a momentary peace; but this only can support the super-structure for eternity. Now this truth the apostle carries out into a little more detail. In order to do it, his mind borrows an image from a ceremony common at the commencement of the erection of a public building, when a king, as he lays the foundation-stone, sets upon it the impression of the royal seal. In like manner, as if to give the believer’s hope a two-fold security, God is said not only to “lay the foundation,” but to “seal” it; and when He “seals” it, He seals it to Himself, by the “oath” with which He “confirms it”; and to the believer, by the Spirit in which He gives it. Now, that “seal,” with which God stamps every converted soul, is two-fold. Or, to speak more accurately, it is a single “seal” which has two faces. Accordingly, on the heart of every child of God, on the ground of it, there will be found two inscriptions, which the hand or” seal” of God has engraven there. In other words, there are two fundamental principles which God has placed there. The one stands out clear, legible, and large--“The Lord knoweth them that are His.” And the other is like unto it--“Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” The “seal” must have been twice stamped--both inscriptions must have been there--before the soul is safe, and stands quite “sure.” Now, let us look at the two sides of that “seal”; first, separate; and then together.

I. The first in the relation, as also the first that is laid upon the heart, is the impression of God’s love. “The Lord knoweth them that are His.” This records that truth of truths on which the whole gospel rests, as upon one base--that salvation is all of God’s eternal, sovereign love. This must be held by every man who wishes to enjoy the peace of God: that it was God who “knew” me, loved me, and cared for me, and drew me long before I ever had any thoughts of Him. The whole of a man’s safety depends upon this: “The Lord knew” me from all eternity; “the Lord knew” me when He drew me to Himself; “the Lord knows” me now--all my little thoughts and works: “the Lord knows” I am trying to serve Him; “the Lord knows” I wish to love Him. But as the one side of God’s “seal” is privilege, the other is duty.

II. The one is God’s love, the other is your holiness. “Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity.” The two sides must never be divided. But as the stamp of God’s love is laid, so must the stamp of man’s obedience be laid. God’s love first, to teach that there can be no real obedience till there is first a sense of God’s love. Feelings often have deceived us, and they will deceive again. But the question is, practically, Are you “departing from iniquity”? Observe the expression. It is not one single act; but it is a gradual, progressive retiring back from evil, because, more and more, the good prevails. Now, bow is it? Say you have conquered the acts of sin, have you conquered the desires? Say you have conquered the desires, have you conquered the thoughts? Do you think that your temper is being every day more subdued? Is your pride lessened? Your worldliness, and your covetousness--are they receding? Would your own family--would your own dearest friend have cause to say, that you are growing every day in grace? Is it a “seal,” think you, that can be “read of all men” upon you? Could they see it exemplified? (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

Inscription on foundation stones

The figure is probably drawn from the practice of engraving inscriptions on one or both sides of the foundation-stone. So, in Revelation 21:14, the names of the twelve apostles are found on the twelve foundations of the mystical Jerusalem. “The Lord knoweth them that are His.” Not as expressing the knowledge that flows from an inscrutable decree, but, as in 1Co 8:3; 1 Corinthians 13:12; John 10:14, the knowledge, implying love and approval, which Christ has of those who are truly His. This represents one side of the life of the believer, but, lest men interpret the truth wrongly, the other side also needs to be put forward, and that is found in personal holiness. (E. H. Plumptre, D. D.)

The chosen known to God

“The Lord knoweth them that are His” is a citation from the Septuagint of Numbers 16:5, and a moment’s consideration will show bow appositely the apostle quotes this passage. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram had gathered themselves together against Moses on the plea of the holiness of the whole congregation: “all the congregation,” they said, “are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them: wherefore then lift ye yourselves up above the congregation of the Lord?” Hero then certain bad men had got hold of a true principle, but were applying it wrongly and rebelliously. It was quite true that all the congregation were holy, but it was also true that God had especially sanctified the sons of Levi above the remainder of His people. Korah and his company came forward with specious pretensions to superior spirituality; they asserted that all the people of Israel were priests of God--a great truth in itself, but not, therefore, to supersede another truth, viz., that God had chosen a certain tribe to be specially His priests. So Hymenaeus and Philetus asserted a great truth, viz., the nature and importance of the spiritual resurrection; but because they so asserted it as to supersede by it another plainly revealed truth, they undermined and overthrew the very faith itself, and proved themselves to be the children of Satan, and not of God. (M. F. Sadler, M. A.)

Inconspicuous lives related to heaven

In modern times it has been found out that, by a wise adaptation of electricity, an organ can be played many miles away, under certain conditions. If the keyboard is connected with the battery, and the wires run, no matter how far, even hundreds and thousands of miles--if the battery be properly charged and the wires run, say, to New Orleans, the organist sitting here may thunder there the majestic tones of an anthem. And if you consider that the human soul is a battery, and that all its wires run into the heavenly land, there are many inconspicuous persons living in the world of whom we see and hear and know nothing, but from whom to heaven wires go, and around whose souls are angel assemblies gathered together chanting joyful songs; and there are many men a knowledge of whom the telegraph wires are busy communicating, and about whose fame the newspapers pile telegraph upon telegraph; there ate many noisy men respecting whom there is much ado made on earth, but there is not a single wire that runs between them and the other life. (H. W. Beecher.)

God’s knowledge of His children

I remember a story of Mr. Mack, who was a Baptist minister in Northamptonshire. In his youth he was a soldier, and calling on Robert Hall, when his regiment marched through Leicester, that great man became interested in him, and procured his release from the ranks. When he went to preach in Glasgow he sought out his aged mother, whom he had not seen for many years. He knew his mother the moment he saw her, but the old lady did not recognise her son. It so happened that, when he was a child, his mother had accidentally wounded his wrist with a knife. To comfort him she cried, “Never mind, my bonnie bairn, your mither will ken you by that when you are a man.” When Mack’s mother would not believe that a grave, fine-looking minister could be her own child, he turned up his sleeve and cried, “Mither, mither, diona ye ken that?” In a moment they were in each other’s arms. All, the Lord knows the spot of His children! He acknowledges them by the mark of correction. What God is to us in the why of trouble and trial is but His acknowledgment of us as true heirs, and the marks of His rod shall be our proof that we are true sons. He knows the wounds He made when exercising His sacred surgery. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Pretended spirituality

It is as if Paul said, “Here are false teachers who, under a show of great spirituality, have overthrown the faith of some in the Ch4) Perseverance.

3. The faithful steward, lie had--

(1) embraced,

(2) lived,

(3) spread,

(4) defended the truth.

II. Great tranquillity in regard to the trials of life.

1. His knowledge of them.

(1) Of their honours--“To be offered.” Martyrdom.

(2) Of their nearness--“Is at hand.”

2. His preparedness for them--“Ready.”

3. His benefit by them--“Departure.”

III. Glorious expectation in regard to the reward of life.

1. In value it will be the highest possible. “Crowns.”

2. In principle it will be the most indisputable. “Crown of righteousness.”

3. In bestowal it will be the most honourable.

(1) Given by the Highest Being.

(2) On the most august occasion.

(3) In association with the most distinguished company. (B. D. Johns.)

Paul’s review of his life

I. The past filled him with satisfaction.

1. He had been a warrior. And his contest was with no phantom or abstraction; not with a mere principle of evil, employed without will or intelligence, but with a real enemy. Paul evidently acted continually under the impression that he was in an enemy’s country,--that he was watched by an invisible foe, resisted by a being mightier than priest or prince. He recognised a terrible unity in sin--an energy and ubiquity which are angelic. He considered himself an officer in an army which has regiments contending in battlefields far away from this earth. Paul’s enemy was God’s enemy. He had no quarrels of ambition, or revenge, or covetousness, or pride, to settle. His eye was fixed on the prince who led the revolt in heaven, and had brought it down to earth. Against him Paul proclaimed an open and uncompromising war--a war of extermination; and he extended it to everything that enlisted under Satan. Hence it began in his own heart, against the traitors long entertained there; and with them he proclaimed an unrelenting war.

2. He had been a racer, also. What was the goal? It was, to attain and accomplish the highest ends man can seek; the highest personal perfection consistent with being on earth; attaining, as he styles it, “to the resurrection of the dead”; the exalting Christ among men; the leading men to him; the confirmation of the Churches in their faith; the leaving behind him writings which should be the means of glorifying God, edifying His people, and converting men, to the end of time. He had aimed at these achievements; and, by the grace of God, he had accomplished them.

3. He had been a steward. His life presented in this aspect a trust discharged. “I have kept the faith.”

II. A future filled with blessedness. He had honoured his Redeemer, and he knew that Christ would honour him. He looked for “a crown.” It has been a common thing in the world’s history to contend for a crown. The Christian hero here stands on the level of the earthly hero. But, when we come to compare the nature of these respective crowns, the character of their conflicts, and the umpires to whom the warriors look, the Christian rises to an elevation infinitely above the earthly hero. There is nothing selfish in the war, the victory, or the coronation. (E. N. Kirk, D. D.)

Paul the hero

I. Here is a man whose entire being is under the supremacy of conscience. With other men con science often has theoretical supremacy; with St. Paul its reign was actual. Other men may waver and fluctuate in their obedience to its behests; St. Paul is held to this central power as steadily as the planets to the sun. There was no sham about this man. What he seemed to be, that he was. What he declared to another, that his inmost soul commended as truth and attested to its own secret tribunal.

II. His life was also under the dominion of another regnant power--the supremacy of an overmastering purpose. Every man needs the inspiration of a great purpose and a great mission to lift him above the pettiness and cheapness which are the bane of ordinary lives. Some great undertaking, with an element of heroism and moral sublimity in it, the very contemplation of which quickens the blood and fires the soul and awakens an ever-present sense of the dignity and significance of life- this is an essential condition of all great achievement. Such an inspiring purpose and ennobling work stirred the heart and stimulated the powers of St. Paul. Though nothing low had previously ruled or influenced him, it happened to him- as it has to many another man at his conversion--that the supreme purpose of life was formed in that supreme hour when the transforming touch of the Divine hand was felt upon the soul, and life’s sublime work opened before the clarified vision.

III. But the supremacy of conscience and of a great purpose are not sufficient in themselves alone to produce such a character and such a life as St. Paul presents for our study. To these two ruling forces must be added another--greater than either, and co-ordinate with both--the supremacy of an all-conquering faith. Christ to him was not a myth, not merely the incomparable Teacher of Galilee, not the theoretic and historic Saviour of men; He was infinitely more than that, the ever-present Partner of his life, the unfailing Source of his strength. His faith perpetually saw this personal Jesus, felt the warm beating of His loving heart, heard His sacred voice in solemn command or inspiring promise, and walked with Him as with an earthly friend. As well separate the spirit from the body, the beating heart from the respiring lungs, as separate this inspired apostle from this inspiring Christ. Anything is possible to such a man. Indeed, it is no longer a question of human ability at all, but of human co-operation with the Divine Christ- the natural man giving the supernatural agency full play and power. (C. H. Payne, D. D.)

I have finished my course.--

The Christian’s course

I. We are to consider the way or path in which the Christian is to run.

1. The way in which the Christian is to run is a way of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

2. The way the Christian is to run is a way of holiness (Psalms 119:32; 1 Thessalonians 4:7). Christians, in proceeding on this course, do it not with the same life and vigour; some appear cold and indifferent, whilst others are quick and lively; some make great advances, whilst others go on by slow degrees. Some begin the heavenly race soon, in the bloom of life, whilst others loiter till towards the evening of their days.

II. We now come to consider how we are to run, that we may finish our course with advantage.

1. That we may run the Christian race well, it is necessary that we cast off every weight.

2. We must begin and continue in a dependence upon Christ.

3. We must run with patience, courage, and resolution.

4. We must be watchful and diligent. Be upon your guard, Christian, the way you run is difficult, and it is attended with many snares and temptations.

5. We must keep pressing forward and persevere to the end of our course. You may meet with many discouragements, but still keep on, the further you go, the less ground remains to be trod, therefore let not your hearts be troubled.

III. The encouragement Christians have to run this race.

1. There is a glorious crown before us.

2. He that begins aright shall at length certainly finish his course.

3. Every one that finishes his course shall as surely receive the prize. To conclude, with some improvement of the point.

(1) The further-we proceed in our text, the more we see the difficulty of the Christian life, and the vanity of their hopes who content themselves with a mere form.

(2) How foolish are all those that run after perishing enjoyments, and neglect the prize of immortality.

(3) What arguments are there for running this race.

(4) How should every one that has begun this race rejoice in the encouragements that have been offered. (S. Hayward.)

The finished race

To this end we must run--

1. Rightly.

2. Speedily.

3. Patiently.

4. Cheerfully.

5. Circumspectly.

6. Resolutely.

7. Perseveringly. (T. Hall, B. D.)

Best at last

In our Christian course it is but too generally and too truly observed, that as we grow older we grow colder; we become more slack, remiss, and weary in well doing. The reverse ought to be the case, for the reason assigned by the apostle when stirring up his converts to vigour and zeal and alacrity: he says,” For now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.” In a race the push is made at last. (Bishop Horne.)

I have kept the faith.--

Keeping the faith

What does St. Paul mean by the faith which he has kept? Is he rejoicing that he has been true to a certain scheme of doctrine, or that he has preserved a certain temper of soul and spiritual relationship to God? For the term “faith” is a very large one. There can be no doubt, I think, that he means both, and that the latter meaning is a very deep and important one, as we shall see. But this term, “the faith,” did signify for him, beyond all doubt, a certain group of truths, all bound together by their common unity of source and unity of purpose. Paul was too wise and profound not to keep this always in sight. That there must be intellectual conceptions as the base of strong, consistent, and effective feeling is a necessity which he continually recognises; and the faith which he is thankful to have kept is, first of all, that truth which had been made known to him and to the Church by God. The first thing, then, that strikes us is that, when Paul said that he had kept the faith, he evidently believed that there was a faith to keep. The faith was a body of truth given to him, which he had to hold and to use and to apply, but which he had not made and was not to improve. We want, then, to consider the condition of one who, having thus learned and held a positive faith, continues to hold it--holds it to the end. He keeps the faith. We need not confirm our thought to St. Paul. An old man is dying, and as he lets go the things which are trivial and accidental to lay hold of what is essential and important to him, this is what comes to his mind with special satisfaction: “I have kept the faith.” The true faith which a man has kept up to the end of his life must be one that has opened with his growth and constantly won new reality and colour from his changing experience. The old man does believe what the child believed; but how different it is, though still the same. It is the field that once held the seed, now waving and rustling under the autumn wind with the harvest that it holds, yet all the time it has kept the corn. The joy of his life has richened his belief. His sorrow has deepened it. His doubts have sobered it. His enthusiasms have fired it. His labour has purified it. This is the work that life does upon faith. This is the beauty of an old man’s religion. His doctrines are like the house that he has lived in, rich with associations which make it certain that he will never move out of it. His doctrines have been illustrated and strengthened and endeared by the good help they have given to his life. And no doctrine that has not done this can be really held up to the end with any such vital grasp as will enable us to carry it with us through the river, and enter with it into the new life beyond. And again, is it not true that any belief which we really keep up to the end of life must at some time have become for us a personal conviction, resting upon evidence of its own? I know, indeed, how much a merely traditional religion will inspire men to do. I know that for a faith which is not really theirs, but only what they call it, “their fathers’ faith,” men will dispute and argue, make friendships and break them, contribute money, undertake great labours, change the whole outward tenor of their life. I know that men will suffer for it. I am not sure but they will die to uphold a creed to which they were born, and with which their own character for firmness and consistency has become involved. All this a traditional faith can do. It can do everything except one, and that it can never do. It can never feed a spiritual life, and build a man up in holiness and grace. Before it can do that our fathers’ faith must first by strong personal conviction become ours. And here I think that, rightly seen, the culture of our Church asserts its wisdom. The Church has in herself the very doctrine of tradition. She teaches the child a faith that has the warrant of the ages, full of devotion and of love. She calls on him to believe doctrines of which he cannot be convinced as yet. The tradition, the hereditation of belief, the unity of the human history, are ideas very familiar to her, of which she constantly and beautifully makes use. And yet she does not disown her work of teaching and arguing and convincing. She cannot, and yet be true to her mission. She teaches the young with the voice of authority; she addresses the mature with the voice of reason. And now have we not reached some idea of the kind of faith which it is possible for a man to keep? What sort of a creed may one hold and expect to hold it always, live in it, die in it, and carry it even to the life beyond?

1. In the first place, it must be a creed broad enough to allow the man to grow within it, to contain and to supply his ever-developing mind and character. It will not be a creed burdened with many details. It will consist of large truths and principles, capable of ever-varying applications to ever-varying life. So only can it be clear, strong, positive, and yet leave the soul free to grow within it, nay, feed the soul richly and minister to its growth.

2. And the second characteristic of the faith that can be kept will be its evidence, its proved truth. It will not be a mere aggregation of chance opinions. The reason why a great many people seem to be always changing their faith is that they never really have any faith. They have indeed what they call a faith, and are often very positive about it. They have gathered together a number of opinions and fancies, often very ill-considered, which they say that they believe, using the deep and sacred word for a very superficial and frivolous action of their wills. They no more have a faith than the city vagrant has a home who sleeps upon a different door-step every night. And yet he does sleep somewhere every night; and so these wanderers among the creeds at each given moment are believing something, although that something is for ever altering. We do not properly believe what we only think. A thousand speculations come into our heads, and our minds dwell upon them, which are not to be therefore put into our creed, however plausible they seem. Our creed, our credo, anything which we call by such a sacred name, is not what we have thought, but what our Lord has told us. The true creed must come down from above, and not out from within. (Bp. Phillips Brooks.)

On keeping the faith

I. What is meant by keeping the faith.

1. It may signify that we firmly believe the doctrines God has revealed, and steadfastly maintain them. We read of a “faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3). These, therefore, coming from God are certainly worthy of our credit, deserve our notice, and ought to be steadfastly maintained by us.

2. The expression signifies that we faithfully observe the vows and engagements we have brought ourselves under, to our glorious Master, and hold on with integrity and constancy in His service.

II. The necessity and importance of keeping the faith.

1. It is the distinguishing characteristic of a real Christian. That profession that is not set upon good principles will never hold.

2. In keeping the faith, the Christian’s comfort is greatly promoted. The glorious doctrines of faith are of the most excellent nature; they abundantly recompense the Christian in his steady belief of and attachment to them, by the unspeakable supports they yield in every circumstance and station of life.

3. Keeping the faith is necessary to promote the honour of Christ, and to secure the Christian from those errors and snares to which he stands exposed.

4. Without a steadfast perseverance in the faith our hopes of heaven are vain and deceitful. Perseverence in the faith does not entitle us to eternal life, but there is no eternal life without it. A word or two of improvement.

(1) Is keeping the faith the distinguishing character of a Christian? Then how few are there in the present age. The honours of the world lead away some, the sensualities of life ensnare others.

(2) Is perseverance in the faith the character of a real Christian? How melancholy must their state be who never yet set forward in the ways of God.

(3) Is it so important to keep the faith? Then let us seriously examine our own hearts concerning it. (S. Hayward.)

Guarding the faith

I. The preciousness of that which he had kept. He was the emissary of the great Physician, who had but one remedy, one panacea for the one radical disease of man. In Rome he said, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation unto every one that believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” In Corinth he would say, “The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness; but to them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.” In Galatia he would say, “God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.”

II. The strenuousness with which he had guarded it. Think you that he had no difficulties with which to cope? Was there to him no maze in Providence, no labyrinth which he found it impossible to track and thread? Providence in many of its movements was to him, as to us, an impenetrable mystery; but still he “kept the faith.” Think you that he found no difficulties in comprehending the dispensations through which God had manifested Himself to man; and that the wonder never rose up in his mind how it was that thousands of years had to pass away before the incarnation of the Son of God and the redemption of the Cross? He must have been less than man, or greatly more than man, if he could have sounded this depth; but still he “kept the faith.”

III. His success in guarding the faith. How he kept it he does not tell us here; but we catch glimpses, here and there, of the secret of his power. He kept it on his knees, kept it when he prayed night and day with tears. And be sure there is no faith, no true faith, no faith that will hold a man firm, which can be kept apart from fellowship with God. We can keep a creed without Divine help--we can keep a creed through the force of prejudice- through the force of obstinacy--through the force of ignorance--through the force of custom and social sanction--through the force of policy. To keep a creed is the easiest thing in the world, for it can lie, made up and dead, in some undisturbed chamber of the brain. But oh! to keep a faith is far from easy; for a faith to be a faith at all must be living, and if it be living, it must meet the onset of a thousand circumstances by which it will be tested. It will be tested by the influence of our obstinate corruption--it will be tested by the temptations of the world, by its maxims and customs--it will be tested by promises of advantage if only we will be faithless to our profession--it will be tested by changes in our circumstances, whether they be from poverty to wealth, or from wealth to poverty--it will be tested by those strange aspects of providence which bewilder at times the strongest minds, and make their feet almost to slip--it will be tested by the indifference or lukewarm ness of those around us. Happy the man who brings his faith through all these things. He is like a fire-safe, which guards its treasure unhurt, amid the flames which have raged around it in vain. (E. Mellor, D. D.)

Martyrdom

To die for truth is not to die for one’s country, but for the world. (J. P. Richter.)

Keeping the faith

When Bernard Palissy, the inventor of a kind of pottery called Palissy ware, was an old man, he was sent to the French prison known as the Bastille because he was a Protestant. The king went to see him, and told him he should be set free if he would deny his faith. The king said. “I am sorry to see you here, but the people will compel me to keep you here unless you recant.” Palissy was ninety years old, but he was ashamed to hear a king speak of being compelled, so he said, “Sire, they who can compel you cannot compel me! I can die!” And he remained in prison until he died.

St. Paul keeping the faith

Paul kept the faith at Autioch, even when the infatuated crowd attempted to drown his voice with their clamour, and interrupted him, contradicting and blaspheming. He kept the faith at Iconium, when the envious Jews stirred up the people to stone him. He kept the faith at Lystra, when the fate of Stephen became almost his, and he was dragged, wounded and bleeding, outside the ramparts of the town, and left there to languish, and, for aught they cared, to die. He kept the faith against his erring brother Peter, and withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. He kept the faith when shamefully treated at Philippi, and made the dungeon echo back the praises of his God. He kept the faith at Thessalonica, when lewd fellows of the baser sort accused him falsely of sedition. He kept the faith at Athens, when, to the world’s sages, he preached of Him whom they ignorantly worshipped as the unknown God. He kept the faith at Corinth, when compelled to abandon that hardened and obdurate city, and to shake off the dust from his garment as a testimony against it. He kept the faith at Ephesus, when he pointed his hearers not to Diana, but to Jesus Christ as their only Saviour. He kept the faith at Jerusalem, when stoned by the enraged and agitated mob--when stretched upon the torturing rack, and bound with iron fetters. He kept the faith at Caesarea, before the trembling, conscience-stricken Felix, when he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come. He kept the faith before Agrippa, and, by his earnestness, compelled the king to say, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian”; and even in the closing hours of life, when the last storm was gathering over his head, when lying in the dark and dismal Roman cell, he wrote these triumphant words, “I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall given me at that day.” (J. R. Macduff.)

Keeping the faith

The apostle kept the faith. But does not the faith keep the man? It does; yet only as he keeps it. The battery keeps the gunners only as they stand to the guns. The fort keeps the garrison, yet only as they guard its walls. Never was a time when fidelity on guard was more needed than now, when the sappers are approaching the citadel of the faith, and there is treason in the camp of heaven- men in Christ’s uniform, having been so deceived by successful crime, and so blinded by dalliance with mammon as to give utterance and organisation to the shameless sentiment that the prosperity of a community can be built upon sin. It is a true soldier’s business to guard the faith. The Roman sentinel that was exhumed at Pompeii, grasping his spear, perished rather than desert his post. He wears the immortality of earth. But he that guards the faith, when dug out of the forces that overwhelm him while he stands his ground, shall inherit the immortality of God, and walk with warrior feet the streets of gold, a living king over a lofty realm. (J. Lewis.)

A crown of righteousness.--

The crown of righteousness

I. Let us consider the prize the apostle had in view, “a crown of righteousness.” Royalty is the highest pitch of human grandeur. Those that wear earthly crowns have got to the very summit of earthly honour, and are in that station in which centres all worldly glory and happiness. What an idea is this similitude designed to give us then of that glorious world, where every saint wears an unfading, incorruptible and immortal crown?

1. This crown consists of perfect and everlasting righteousness. The sparks of this crown are perfect holiness and a conformity to God.

2. This crown was purchased by the righteousness of Jesus Christ. It cost a valuable price, and therefore is of inestimable worth.

3. We come to the possession of this crown in a way of righteousness. Its being purchased for us does not lay a foundation for our slothfulness, sin and security.

II. Consider the person by whom this crown is bestowed, and his character as a righteous judge. This illustrious person is everywhere represented to be our Lord Jesus Christ. Thus, Acts 17:31. Christ is the appointed person, and He is every way fitted for the great and important work, He being God as well as man: He is absolutely incapable of committing the least mistake or error. And He is a righteous judge. He will display His righteousness in the last sentence that He will pass upon every creature.

III. Consider when this crown shall be completely possessed and be fully given. It is here said to be given “at that day,” viz.: The day of Christ’s appearance to judge the world.

IV. Consider the persons to whom this crown shall be given. “To all those who love His appearing.” The apostle was one of that happy number. They love His appearing, for then every enemy will be vanquished. (S. Hayward.)

The heavenly crown assured

This assurance is--

1. Attainable.

2. Tenable.

3. Desirable. (T. Hall, B. D.)

The crown of righteousness

I. The reward. It is described as a “crown of righteousness”; and, without question, such a phrase conveys the idea of some thing exquisitely pure, brilliant, and honourable. The crown is the reward of a conqueror; the righteousness is the diadem of deity Himself. And yet we cannot deny that it would be difficult to follow the idea into detail, and keep unimpaired its interest and its beauty. There is something indefinite in the phraseology, if we wish to ascertain from it the precise character of the recompense. When, however, we turn to the Being, by whom the recompense will be bestowed, and find Him described as “the Lord, the righteous Judge,” we “may gain that precision of idea which is not elsewhere to be procured. For we should never forget that, by our thoughts and actions, we lie exposed to God’s righteous indignation. And from this we may proceed to another fact. We require you to observe that a surprising change must have been effected ere a sinner can dwell with anything of delight on the title now under review. We press on you the truth, that if the crown is to be bestowed by the hands of the Lord, the righteous Judge, the recipient must have been the subject of a great moral revolution; for he is not only to be acquitted, he is actually to be recompensed. The bliss of an angel may be great, the splendour of an angel may be glorious; but it was not for angels that Jesus died, it was not for angels that Jesus rose. There will be for ever this broad distinction between the angels and the saints. The angels are blessed by the single right of creation; the saints by the double right of creation and redemption. Who, then, can question that the portion possessed by saints will be more brilliant than that possessed by the angels?

II. the time at which the crown shall be bestowed. It must be that day when, with the cloud for His chariot, the archangel’s trump for His heraldry, and ten thousand times ten thousand spirits for His retinue, the Man of Sorrows shall approach the earth, and wake the children of the first resurrection. And from this we conclude that St. Paul did not expect the consummation of his happiness at the very instant of his departure from the flesh. He knew, indeed, that to be “absent from the body” is to be “present with the Lord”; he knew that in the transition of a moment the prison dungeon would be exchanged for the palace, the turmoil of earth for the deep rapture of peace which never ends; but he knew also that the crowning time of the saints shall not precede the second coming of their Lord. The crown, indeed, was prepared, but then it was “laid up.” It should never be forgotten, that the resurrection of the body is indispensable to the completeness of happiness. If it be not, the whole scheme of Christianity is darkened, for the Redeemer undertook to redeem matter, as well as spirit.

III. The persons on whom the crown shall be bestowed. There is nothing more natural to man, but nothing more opposed to religion, than selfishness. He who has earthly riches, may desire to keep them to himself; he who has heavenly, must long to impart them to others. It is an exquisitely beautiful transition, which St. Paul here makes, from the contemplation of his own portion, to the mention of that which is reserved for the whole company of the faithful: “not to me only, but unto all them also that love His appearing.” He could not gaze on his own crown, and not glow with the thought, that myriads should share the coronation. Ye wish to ascertain whether ye be of those who love His appearing. Take these simple questions, and propose them to your hearts, and pray of God to strengthen you to give faithful answers. Do ye so hate what is carnal that it would be delightful to you to be at once and for ever set free from the cravings of earthly desires? Do ye so long to be pure in thought, in word, and in deed, that you feel that perfection in holiness would be to you the perfection of happiness? But, finally, if we would win the “crown of righteousness” which is spoken of by St. Paul, we must use the means. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

The crown of righteousness

The crown of righteousness is a crown whereof righteousness is the material. This crown is of the same fabric and texture as that which it should decorate; it is a crown whose beauty is moral beauty, the beauty not of gold or precious stones, but of those more precious, nay, priceless things which gold and gems can but suggest to us, the beauty of justice, truthfulness, purity, charity, humility, carried to a point of refinement and of high excellence, of which here and now we have no experience. Once and once only was such a crown as this worn upon earth, and when it was worn to human eyes it was a crown of thorns. It may seem to be a difficulty in the way of this statement that the happiness is said elsewhere to consist in the beatific visions--that is to say, in the complete and uninterrupted sight of God, whom the blessed praise and worship to all eternity. “We know we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” But what is it that makes this vision of God the source of its promised happiness? What is it in God that will chiefly minister to the expected joy? Is it His boundless power? Is it His unsearchable wisdom? Will they cry for ever, “Almighty, Almighty, Almighty,” or “All-knowing, All-knowing, All-knowing”? Will they, do they not say, without fatigue, without desire for change, “Holy, holy, holy”? And why is this? Because essentially God is a moral being, and it is by His moral attributes that He perfectly corresponds to, and satisfies the deepest wants in our human nature. The “crown of righteousness” means a share, such as it is possible for a creature to have in God’s essential nature, in His justice, His purity, and His love; since while we can conceive of Him, had He so willed it, as never having created the heavens and the earth, we cannot, we dare not, think of Him, in any relation with other beings as other than just, true, loving, merciful--in other words, as other than holy. He is, indeed, Himself, the “crown of righteousness,” the crown with which He rewards the blessed, and there is no opposition between the idea of such a crown and the beatific vision. They are only two different accounts of that which is in its essence the same. “The crown of righteousness!” Some crown or other, I apprehend, most men are looking for, if not always, yet at some time in their lives; if not very confidently, yet with those modified hopes which regard it as possibly attainable. Human nature views itself almost habitually as the heir apparent--of some circumstances which are an improvement on the present. An expectation of this kind is the very condition of effort in whatever direction, and no amount or degree of proved delusion would appear permanently to extinguish it. But the crowns which so many of us hope may be laid up for us somewhere, and by some one--what are they? There is the crown of a good income in a great mercantile community like our own. This is the supreme distinction for which many a man labours without thought of anything beyond. And closely allied to this is another crown--the crown of a good social position. “I have made great efforts, tempered with due discretion; I have finished the course which has appeared to bring me unbounded pleasure, but which has really meant incessant weariness. I have observed those laws of social propriety, which are never to be disregarded with impunity; and so henceforth there awaits me an assured position, in which I indeed may be reviled, but from which I cannot be dislodged--a position which society cannot but award, sooner or later, to those who struggle upward in obedience to her rules.” And, then, there is the crown of political power. “I have fought against the foes of my party or my country; I have finished a course of political activity which has borne me onwards to the end. I have kept to my principles, or I have shown that I had reason to modify or to abandon them; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of political influence which is almost from the nature of the case independent of office, and which a great country will never refuse to those who served it long and have served it well.” And once more there is the crown of a literary reputation. “I have had a hard time of it; I have finished what I proposed to it; I have been true to the requirements of a great and exacting subject; henceforth there is reserved for me the rare pleasure of a reputation which wealth and station cannot command, and which envy cannot take away; henceforth I have a place in the great communion of the learned, those elect minds in whom genius is wedded to industry, and whose works are among the treasures of the human race.” Here are the crowns, or some of them, for which men toil and with which are they not seldom rewarded. But do they last?… As we get nearer death, the exaggerations of self-love cease to assert themselves; we see things more clearly as they really are; we distinguish that which lasts from that which passes; we understand the immense distinction between all the perishable crowns and the “crown of righteousness.” That crown does not pass. It is laid up, it is set aside for its destined wearer by the most Merciful Redeemer, who is also the Eternal Judge, and who watches with an unspeakable, tender interest each conqueror as he draws nearer and nearer to the end of his earthly course, and as, in the name of the great redemption, he dares to claim it. (Canon Liddon.)

A crown of righteousness

If I had three things to wish, I should wish for Paul’s threefold crown.

1. The crown of grace, a great measure of grace to do Christ much service.

2. His crown of joy, a great measure of joy to go through with that service.

3. The crown of glory which he was here assured of.

In the words we have first the concluding particle, henceforth, lastly, as for that which remains.

1. A crown is not given till the victory be gained (chap. 2:5).

2. It notes the perpetuity of the glory, incorruptible, never fading crown (2 Peter 1:4; 1 Corinthians 9:24).

3. It notes the perfection of it, as the crown compasseth the head on every side; so there is nothing wanting in this crown of life. So the saints in glory shall be crowned with goodness when all the faculties of the soul and members of the body shall be perfect and filled with glory.

4. It represents to us the dignity of the saints and the glory of their reward. They are all kings and shall be crowned. The day of judgment is their coronation day.

Of righteousness--

1. Because it is purchased for us by the righteousness of Christ. By His perfect righteousness and obedience He hath merited this for us.

2. In respect of His promise, His fidelity bindeth Him to perform it. God hath promised a crown of life to such as serve Him sincerely (Jam 1:12; 1 John 2:25; Revelation 2:10; Revelation 3:21).

3. It may be called a crown of righteousness, because it is given only to righteous men, and so it showeth who shall be crowned, and what is the way to it; but not for what merits or desert of ours it is given. (T. Hall, B. D.)

The crown of righteousness

It is not the diadem of noble, prince, or king, but the wreath of victory for those who have contended (See Matthew 11:12). This crown can never fit the brows of the indolent, the lover of ease, the self-indulgent man of the world who acquiesces in Christian doctrines and Christian customs, whether of worship or social life, because he shuns the trouble of inquiry and of choice. To contend, to strive, to fight is the first condition of conquering, even as the conqueror alone can win the crown. Who, in that day, will deem the contest too hard when he has received the crown? Then, again, it is the crown of righteousness; and righteousness is the square and the perfection of all moral character and virtue, moulded and shaped by Christ’s Spirit after Christ’s example. Therefore, only that stage of character in which feeling, desire, choice and motive are genuine and pure, can be expressed by this word. This fabric of righteousness thus inwrought into the man himself will receive its topstone from Christ. No bye ways, no short cuts lead to heaven, only the narrow way of righteousness. (D. Trinder, M. A.)

A crown without cares

The royal life which Paul anticipated in heaven will not only be a life of dignity, and power, and grandeur, but it will be all that, without any of the disagreeable concomitants which earthly royalty has to experience. In this world greatness and care are twins. Crowns more commonly prove curses than blessings to those who wear them. Isaac, the son of Comnenus, one of the most virtuous of eastern rulers, was crowned at Constantinople in 1057. Basil, the patriarch, brought the crown to him surmounted with a diamond cross. Taking hold of the cross, the Emperor said, “I, who have been acquainted with crosses from nay cradle, welcome thee; thou art my sword and shield, for hitherto I have conquered with suffering.” Then taking the crown in his hand he added. “This is but a beautiful burden, which loads more than it adorns.” The crown of the triumphant Christian is a crown of righteousness, which will neither oppress the head, afflict the heart, nor imperil the life of any that receive it. (J. Underhill.)

Historic crowns

Napoleon had a magnificent crown made for himself in 1804. It was this crown that he so proudly placed upon his head with his own hands in the cathedral of Notre Dame. It is a jewelled circle, from which springs several arches surmounted by the globe and cross, and where the arches join the circle there are alternately flowers and miniature eagles of gold. After his downfall, it remained in the French Treasury until it was assumed by another Bonaparte, when Napoleon

III. made himself Emperor in 1852. It is now in the regalia of France, which have only just been brought back to Paris from the western seaport to which they were sent for security during the Prussian invasion, just as the Scottish regalia were sent to Dunnottar. If we may judge from some of the German photographs of the Emperor William, the crown of the new German Empire is of a very peculiar shape, apparently copied from the old Carlovingian diadem. It is not a circle, but a polygon, being formed of flat jewelled plates of gold united by the edges, and having above them two arches supporting the usual globe and cross. Of the modern crowns of continental Europe, perhaps the most remarkable is the well-known triple crown or Papal tiara, or perhaps we should say tiaras, for there are four of them. The tiara is seldom worn by the Pope; it is carried before him in procession, but, except on rare occasions, he wears a mitre like an ordinary bishop. Of the existing tiaras, the most beautiful is that which was given by Napoleon I. to Pius VII. in 1835. It is said to be worth upwards of £9,000. Its three circlets are almost incrusted with sapphires, emeralds, rubies, pearls and diamonds; and the great emerald at its apex is said to be the most beautiful in the world.

A lost crown

A lady in a dream wandered around heaven, beholding its glories, and came at last to the crown-room. Among the crowns she saw one exceedingly beautiful. “Who is this for?” “It was intended for you,” said the angel, “but you did not labour for it, and now another will wear it.”

Seeking to obtain a crown

A French officer, who was a prisoner upon his parole at Reading, met with a Bible. He read it, and was so impressed with the contents that he was convinced of the folly of sceptical principles and of the truth of Christianity, and resolved to become a Protestant. When his gay associates rallied him for taking so serious a turn, he said, in his vindication, “I have done no more than my old schoolfellow, Berna dotte, who has become a Lutheran.” “Yes, but he became so,” said his associates, “to obtain a crown.” “My motive,” said the Christian officer, “is the same; we only differ as to the place. The object of Bernadotte is to obtain a crown in Sweden; mine is to obtain a crown in heaven.”

More crowns left

On one occasion, preaching from the text of St. Paul, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course,” he suddenly stopped, and looking up to heaven, cried with a loud voice, “Paul! are there any more crowns there?” He paused again. Then, casting his eyes upon the congregation, he continued, “Yes, my brethren, there are more crowns left. They are not all taken up yet. Blessed be God! there is one for me, and one for all of you who love the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Life of Father Taylor.)

A congruous crown

There is such a congruity between righteousness and the crown of life, that it can be laid on none other head but that of a righteous man, and if it could, all its amaranthine flowers would shrivel and fall when they touched an impure brow. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Preaching for a crown

The Rev. H. Davies, sometimes called “the Welsh apostle,” was walking early one Sabbath morning to a place where he was to preach. He was overtaken by a clergymen on horseback, who complained that he could not get above half a guinea for a discourse. “Oh, sir,” said Mr. Davies, “I preach for a crown I” “Do you?” replied the stranger, “then you are a disgrace to the cloth.” To this rude observation he returned this meek answer, “Perhaps I shall be held in still greater disgrace in your estimation, when I inform you that I am now going nine miles to preach, and have but seven-peace in my pocket to bear my expenses out and in; but I look forward to that crown of glory which my Lord and Saviour will freely bestow upon me when He makes His appearance before an assembled world.”

Shall give me at that day.--

St. Paul a witness for immortality

As example is better than precept, so is the man more valuable than his doctrine, when he lives it. And when we study the apostle as he appears to us in his last written letter, we come face to face with the exemplification in living reality of a sublime doctrine, which proves itself stronger than adversity, animating and supporting a great soul amid circumstances which threaten to afflict and even crush its hopes. The chains hung round his hands and feet. Death menaced him with every approaching footstep. Only a tyrant’s breath stood between him and the executioner’s sword. In such a moment a man is likely to be true to himself. False reckonings are corrected, self-flatteries cease; then, if ever, he faces his real position.

I. St. Paul bequeaths the example of a finished career. Labour and suffering, threatenings and persecution, have failed to wrest from him the prize which, above all others, is most worth keeping--the faith of God as revealed in Christ.

II. What had he in the present? A certain conviction that a treasure was, at the very moment when he wrote, laid up in safe keeping for his future benefit. Though the Roman sword shall soon sever the apostle’s wearied head from his weakened, tired body, the crown shall survive, and he, too, who shall wear it. Death will not extinguish his being, nor bear him off into the great stream of existences that have passed away. The followers of Auguste Comte, the so-called Positivist, profess to hope for an immortality in the mass of human beings that follow in our wake, as if the fact that others are living were a compensation for our dying, or as if we could live again in those who carry on the race and profit by our example. Not so the great apostle. There is laid up for me, for that being who has wrestled, who has fought, who has kept the faith, the crown of righteousness, even as I am being kept to wear it.

III. How grandly does the prospect of the future burst upon the keen eye of the faithful warrior! The hope of this crown is not a privilege of a few, still less a monopoly for himself. Not only does he know that it is kept safe for him, but he tells the day and the manner of its bestowal. The day of labour gives place to one of rest, strife is followed by peace, suffering is forgotten in undying vigour of mind and body. This certainty of future recompense at the hand of Christ, the Righteous Judge, blends with what has gone before, and adds to this legacy all that was wanting to its completeness. The benefits of past experience, the certainty of present conviction, and the assured hope of a righteous award in the great day of account, from One who lives and has made His life felt in the holy strivings and faithful efforts of His redeemed servants on earth; these form a triple cord which cannot easily be broken. (D. Trinder, M. A.)

An assured hope

I. An assured hope is a true and scriptural thing. It cannot be wrong to feel confidently in a matter where God speaks unconditionally--to believe decidedly when God promises decidedly--to have a sure persuasion of pardon and peace when we rest on the word and oath of Him that never changes. It is an utter mistake to suppose that the believer who feels assur ance is resting on anything he sees in himself.

II. A believer may never arrive at this assured hope, which Paul expresses, and yet be saved. “A letter,” says an old writer, “may be written, which is not sealed; so grace may be written in the heart, yet the Spirit may not set the seal of assurance to it.” A child may be born heir to a great fortune, and yet never be aware of his riches; may live childish, die childish, and never know the greatness of his possessions.

III. Why an assured hope is exceedingly to be desired.

1. Because of the present comfort and peace it affords.

2. Because it tends to make a Christian an active working Christian.

3. Because it tends to make a Christian a decided Christian.

4. Be cause it tends to make the holiest Christians.

IV. Some probable causes why an assured hope is so seldom attained.

1. A defective view of the doctrine of justification.

2. Slothfulness about growth in grace.

3. An inconsistent walk in life. (Bp. Ryle.)

All them also that love His appearing:--

I. Who they are that love the Lord’s appearing:--I might answer such a question very shortly by saying, those who are prepared for it. “But who,” you may ask, “is the prepared servant?” I answer--he who has received that Lord as his Redeemer, who, he expects, will be his Judge.

II. Why they love it. If you had received a multitude of obligations from an unseen friend, you would surely long to set your eyes upon him. If you heard that you were soon to meet him, you would be pleased exceedingly; you would exclaim, “Oh, come the day!” And here then is a reason why the saved sinner loves to think of the appearing of his Saviour. The very sight of his Redeemer will be rapture to his soul. But look at the words immediately be fore our text, and there you will see a further reason of the fact we are considering. There are we told of a prize which the believer has to look for in the day of his Lord’s coming. It will be a day when the present evil course of things will be for ever over. Again, the Lord’s people love the day of His appearing, because then He will be All in All. (A. Roberts, M. A.)

The love of Christ’s appearance the character of a sincere Christian

I. I shall open the character of a sincere Christian.

1. There must be a firm persuasion, or assent of mind, upon just grounds, to the truth of this proposition, That Christ will appear; for it is a wise and reasonable love, not a rash and unaccountable thing. They don’t love they don’t know what, or without a sufficient reason. “They look for these things according to His promise” (2 Peter 3:13).

2. It imports earnest desire of it. This is essential to the love of anything. Love always works by desire towards an absent good, and so it is constantly represented. Looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearance. And to them who look for Him shall He appear the second time. The word signifies earnest desire, looking with great expectation. The Church is represented making this return to Christ, “Behold I come quickly: Even so come Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20). They often think it long, and are ready to say, in the warmth of their desire, and under the sense of present burdens, Oh, when will He come! why are His chariots so long a coming? But then it is not a rash and impatient desire, or an impetuous, unruly passion. Though they earnestly desire it, they are content to stay the proper season, and wait with patience notwithstanding the longest delay, and the greatest exercise in the mean time.

3. There is pleasure and satisfaction in the expectation and hope of it. This is the nature of love too. It is desire towards an absent object, but delight in it when present. Besides that there is a pleasure in the desire. Now, though the appearance of Christ is a future thing, yet the thoughts of it, and the hopes of it, are present things.

4. It is powerful and influential. The expectation of His appearance will not only give a pleasure, but form the mind suitable to it, and direct the conduct of the life. For example, it will engage to answerable diligence, excite to faithfulness, and promote a constant readiness and preparation for it.

II. I shall consider the reasons of it, and show why sincere Christians have such a love to His appearance.

1. With respect to Christ, who is to appear. This will be evident if you consider either His person or His appearance itself. He is the great object of their love now. Whom having not seen, they love, from the representations of Him in the gospel, and the benefits they receive from Him. And how can they but love His appearance whom they so great]y love? And His appearance will be most highly honourable to Him; for He will appear in the state of a judge and the majesty of a king. He will then appear as He really is, and not in disguise, or under a disadvantage. And how reasonable is the love of His appearance in this view, as every way most honourable to Him, and the greatest display of His glory before the world?

2. With respect to themselves. It will be every way to their advantage. Our Lord says, “Thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just: When He shall appear, they will be like Him, and receive a crown of life.”

III. The privilege and blessing annexed to this character, and which belongs to it; the righteous Judge will give them a crown of righteousness. Conclusion! Let us often contemplate the appearance of Christ. This is the noblest subject of thought, and of the greatest concern to us. The consideration of this is proper to raise our love to Him, and reconcile our minds to His dispensations towards us.

2. The great difference between sincere Christians and other men. They love to think of His appearance, but others dread it; they wish and long for it, but others are afraid of it, and wish He would never come at all, or say in scorn, Where is the promise of His coming?

3. Can we make out this character? Are we lovers of His appearance? Is it the powerful motive to proper duty, and all suitable regard to Him?

4. How great is the Divine mercy in bestowing such a blessing upon sincere Christians. (W. Harris, D. D.)

Loving the Second Advent

See where St. Paul places a “love” of the Second Advent. He was writing as “Paul, the aged,” with his own “crown of righteousness” now full in view. But who shall share it? The rest of the college of the apostles? Those who had “fought,” his “good fight’--run his “course”--and “kept” his “faith” to the end? He stretches the bond of fellowship far higher. He makes the condition of the attainment very simple; but perfectly definite. All that is required to get the “crown,” is to “love” very dearly Him that brings it. There are four attitudes of mind in which we may stand respecting the “appearing” of Christ. By far the worst is “indifference”; and that indifference may be either the dullness of ignorance, or the apathy of the deadness of the moral feelings. The next state is “fear.” There is always something very good when there is “fear.” It requires faith to “fear.” But above “fear” is “hope.” “Hope” is expectation with desire; knowledge enough to be able to anticipate, and grace enough to be able to wish it. And here the ladder is generally cut off; but God carries it one step higher--“love.” “Love” is as much above “hope” as “hope” is above “fear”--for “hope” may be selfish, “love” cannot be; “hope” may be for what a person gives, “love” must be for the person himself. Therefore a man might deceive himself, by thinking all was right in his soul, because he “hoped” for the Second Advent; but he might, after all, be set upon the pageant; and the rest; and the reward. But to the individual that “loves” it, there must be something infinitely dear in it; and that one dear thing is the Lord Jesus Christ. All Rome “hoped”, for the return and the triumph of Caesar--but Caesar’s own child “loved” him. Remember no motive concerning anything ever satisfies God, until it is the reflex of His own motive; and God’s motive is always “love.” Christ will come “lovingly”--therefore He must be met “lovingly.” But the “love of Christ’s appearing” is, evidently, not a simple idea; but one composed of many parts. I would separate four, which four at least go to make it. The moment of the manifestation--the original word is the epiphany--“epiphany,” you know, is the same as “manifestation” the moment of the manifestation of Christ will be the moment of the manifestation of all His followers. Then, perhaps, for the first time in their united strength and beauty--declared, and exhibited, and vindicated, and admired, in the presence of the universe. And, oh! what a subject of “love” is there. Some we shall see selecting and individualising us, as they come, with the well-remembered glances of their loving smiles. But all sunny in their sacred sweetness and their joyous comeliness. Never be afraid to “love” the saints too much. Some speak as if to “love” Christ were one thing--but to “love” the saints were another thing; and they almost place them in rivalry! But the saints are Christ. They are His mystical body, without which Christ Himself is not perfect. Another part of “the appearing”--very pleasant and very loveable to every Christian--will be the exhibition that will then be made of the kingdom and the glory of Jesus. If you are a child of God, every day it is a very happy thought to you, that Christ gains some honour. Only think what it will be to look all around as far as the eye can stretch, and all is His!” On His head are many crowns!” His sceptre supreme over a willing world! Every creature at His feet! His own, all-perfect His name sounded upon every lip! His love perfect in every soul! But there is another thing after which you are always, panting--you are very jealous over it with an exceeding jealousy. You are m the habit of tracing the ebb and flow of it every night, with the intensest interest. I mean, the image of Christ upon your soul. “Why am I not more like Him? Does His like ness increase at all in me? When shall I be entirely conformed--no separate will--no darkening spot upon the little mirror of this poor heart of mine, to prevent His seeing His own perfect mind there?” But now you stand before Him--in His unveiled perfections--and you are like Him--for you “see Him as He is!” And if “His appearing” is to appear in you, is not that cause to love Him? Therefore all His Church love Him--because then they shall be as that “sea of glass” before the throne, wherein God can look and see Him self again in their clear truth, and their holy stillness, and their unsullied brightness! But why speak of the shadows when you will have the substance? We shall look on Him and there will not be a feeling which ever throbbed in a bosom which will not be gratified! There will not be a desire, which ever played before the eye, which will not be surpassed! Another mark of the believer is that he loves the person of Christ. Others may love His work--he loves Him--for His own sake--because He is what He is. He loves Him to be with him--to see him--to know him--to converse with him. This fills his heart. All that is “love,” and it is satisfied. But, will not all other “love,” that ever was “loved,” be as no “love,” to the “love” that will then fill the soul? (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

A crown for all the saints

A king rejoices in his crown, not only because it is rich in gems and a symbol of power, but because he is the only man in the kingdom who has one or who is permitted to wear one. Suppose that some peer of the realm or some rich commoner should have a crown royal made for himself, and should wear it in public, what would the king do? Would he be glad that there was somebody else who possessed and was worthy of that symbol of royalty? Would he say: “I would that all my people were kings?” No, indeed! That presumptuous, self-crowned subject would either be pat in an asylum as a lunatic or in prison as a traitor. Such is the Christian spirit in contrast with that of selfishness. Such is the joy of heaven in contrast with that of earth. Let us see how much purer and nobler it is. The Christian spirit, so beautifully illustrated by the great apostle when he could not think of his own without thinking also of the crowning of his brethren, is the spirit that will fill heaven with the joy that springs from love. Would that we had more of it here and now.