May 1929
2.16
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did not forfeit their lives, but they lost their reward. What is here in view is not what is commonly spoken of as the Great Assize, where penal verdicts are pronounced. There is a day coming for all of us Christians, which will reveal how we have spent our time here. I think that that day will reveal much; obscure people will be called forward, and prominent people will be sent back. Those who have lived for the public eye, who have sought only the limelight, may find that they got their reward here; the thing they sought they received, as those religionists who made long prayers at street corners that they might be seen of men, and of whom our Lord said , “Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.” When? When they were seen of men. That is what they aimed at, and that is what they hit; that is what they sought, and that is what they got. There are others who have not sought these things, and have, perhaps, not been highly esteemed of their fellows, but who have been consistent and diligent in the task which God has appointed them. The day will reveal it, when they are called to receive the prize. T he C astaway A castaway Christian does not go to hell, but he does lose his crown. There is a terrible possibility that at last in the light which heaven shall pour in upon our hearts, we may find that we have lost something beyond recovery; not life, let me say again, but the crown, the reward of loyalty here and now to Jesus Christ. The word “lest” indicates the value of fear as a motive in Christian life—“lest”—and I do not want the shadow of that fear ever to be off my path. I want ever to be reminded of the ever-present danger. Prominent places are dangerous places, giddy heights are full of peril; and is there anything more tragic than that, having preached to others, having pointed others to the way of life, having shown to others the possibility of life victorious, the preacher himself shall fail; that, having coached others to box and race, and having taken part himself in the boxing and in the racing, he should be told, in the day when the Judge distributes the prizes, that there is no prize for him? “Be earnest, earnest, earnest, Mad if thou wilt, Do what thou dost as if the stake were Heaven And that thy last deed ere Judgment Day.”
Paul did not believe, as some philosophers of his day believed, that the body was essentially evil; but he did believe that in order to obtain self-mastery it must be taken thoroughly in hand. And for two reasons, among others, because it is the weapon with which the law of sin and death fights us, and also because it is the sphere within which the spiritual powers of evil come within our reach to be bruised and destroyed. The body is a good servant but a bad master. The tendency in all of us, and all the time, is to pamper the body and to neglect the spirit. Where that tendency is yielded to, there is no self- mastery. The grace of God will do very little for you and for me if we are resolved to do nothing for ourselves. God calls us to cooperate with Him unto the perfecting of character, and we must discipline ourselves; we must get down to the business of life. We must come to see where we are weak and should be strong, where we are strong and should be weak. We must school ourselves, we must penalize ourselves, we must discipline ourselves. Nobody else can do it, and Almighty God will not. It is your business, and it is mine. E ndurance U nto T h e E nd There must, with this, be patient endurance. Endur ance is one of the sterling qualities. Without it the most commendable efforts must prove abortive: “Whosoever endureth unto the end, the same shall be saved.” The dis cipline and effort of the athlete are of short duration, but the Christian’s are loftg protracted. Our preparation is not over in ten months, nor our effort in an hour. A lifetime is the scale on which we work, and this calls for patient endurance. For a one-hundred-yard race you must sprint all the time, but not for a ten-mile race. The body is not subdued in a day. There is no self-mastery without endurance. There must, therefore, as a means to this end, be concentration, and self-discipline, and patient endurance. What is the issue to be dreaded? It is stated in these solemn words: “Lest by any means, after that I have preached to others, I myself should be rejected.” Here we see the possibility of a Christian becoming a castaway, and that this is a possibility, the text plainly declares. The. meaning of “castaway” must be determined by the whole passage, and more especially by the figures em ployed. The competitors who lost the race or the fight,
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Old Wells Dug Out Gen. 26:18; Isa. 12:3. B y D r . G. B. M. C louser
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the footprints of the Divine Master, and which was to remain forever the center of the moral and religious world. Here in this foreign land Abraham became a great prince before he possessed a foot of it, and while the Philistines still dwelt in their walled cities. Regarded as a prince by the inhabitants, he was permitted to sojourn here with his ever-increasing flocks and servants, digging wells where needed to slake the thirst of man and beast. But these wells became a source of' strife, a bone of conten tion, between his servants and those of Abimelech, king of Gerar, and it was only by great tact and princely bear-
HOSEN to fulfill a unique and important mis sion, Abraham was called out from the land of his nativity to become the father of a people * greatly favored of heaven, through whom Jehovah’s mighty power would be made known in the earth (Ps. 106:8). In a strange land where the patriarchs were destined to journey for centuries, Abraham was told to lift up his eyes and look northward, southward, eastward and westward, “for all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed forever.” And there by faith he accepted as a gift the land which was destined to be the battlefield of the ages, the soil of which was to be made sacred by
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