CHAPTER XVI. THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES. "The glorious company of the apostles: praise thee. The goodly fellowship of the prophets : praise thee. The noble army of martyrs: praise thee. The holy church throughout all the world: doth acknowledge thee; The Father of an Infinite Majesty." "Wherefore seeing we are also compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God."- HEBREWS 12: 1, 2. How practical is every truth of Christianity! The bright catalogue of saints who, being dead, yet speak, which the apostle has given, is not like the catalogue of the ships in Homer, a mere amusing description, or in the oration of Demosthenes, a mere flourish; it is followed by a close, personal and practical purpose: "Wherefore," he says, "because we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight." How thoroughly in earnest is every writer of the New Testament! There is not the least hint of a sentiment or expression that would indicate that the apostolic mind was not charged with the intensest and the deepest earnestness. They contemplate a world in ruins, souls perishing, a God of mercy, instant forgiveness for the greatest sin, instant acceptance for the chiefest of sinners; and with an urgency, and an eloquence, simple but intensely earnest, they bid all flee for refuge to the hope set before them in the Gospel. At the conclusion of the bright roll, full of the richest poetry, charged with the most vivid and beautiful illustrations, is the practical corollary: "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us." Being dead, they all speak. ---- Whatever incidents are recorded in the Old Testament, in the Patriarchal, in the Levitical, or in the New Testament, that is, in the Christian dispensation, are not put there as dead facts, mere characteristics of the ages, and instructive to those that were the subjects of them; but they were written aforetime for our learning; these names are teachers to us alike by lip and life; these are voices which are still sounding along the corridors of centuries, and reasoning, in the midst of the nineteenth century, with a force that grows, and an eloquence that becomes weightier as the world rolls on, of righteousness, and of temperance, and of judgment; and, so far, every character who adorned the history of the past lived, not for himself, but for us. I have often thought of the great and striking fact, that every man's life is, in its measure, vicarious; that every man lives, whether he like it or not, not for himself, but for others. If he will not give his life a holy offering for the benefit of others, God will exact it from him as a reluctant sacrifice for the benefit of others. It is true of every man, - the worst and the best, the saint and the sinner, "Being dead, they yet speak," and their life lives after them. I have said, every one has two immortalities: one that shoots beyond the stars, and finds its enjoyment in the presence of God and of the Lamb; another immortality, as if the shadow of it, walks the world, the - accustomed haunts in which he lived, the society with which he mingled, and there acts, if that of a holy man, for the good of souls, their happiness and progress. Those saints in the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews lived that we might live; they labored that we might enter into their labors; they died that we might hear them still. The race-course on which we are to run (to employ the figure used by the apostle) has been beaten smooth by the countless feet that trod it on their course to glory; and now these men stand around us like lights to illuminate our course to bliss; like stars overhead, shining splendidly upon us; like pillars of fire by night, and pillars of cloud by day; each one emitting a directive voice, "This is the way: : walk ye in it." What renders these witnesses, with whose cloud we are surrounded, so precious to us, is the variety of their experience. Are we, like Abel, associated with depraved and wicked brothers? Then, like Abel, we must serve God, whether others will join or will resist. Are we, like Enoch, alone in the midst of the world? And this is often the case when a single person becomes a Christian in the higher walks of life, and he must walk with God and against those that are about him, and in spite of those that love him, and often amid the satire, and the sneers, and the scorn, of those who ought to know better. If we are alone, like Enoch, we must walk with God alone. If, like Abraham, we are summoned to leave our own country, we must do it, going we know not whither. If, like Moses, we are covered with reproach, let it be the reproach of Christ, and it will be resplendent with honor. Do you think that one single witness, in this sparkling catalogue, repents of what he did, or of what he suffered? Not one. In a very few years (for the old must soon die, and the youngest may soon die), all in the world that shines, captivates, ensnares, will be of no more value than a transient sunbeam that has passed away, or the echoes of the wind that has swept through a broken archway. Then to know that we chose the better part, that we embraced the Saviour, that we held fast, and counted all but loss for him, will make the future so bright and so happy, and the past so memorable in our retrospect of it! The expression employed to denote the number of the witnesses is "a cloud." I do not think, with many of the commentators whose sentiments I have consulted on the passage, - but I speak as to reasonable men; judge ye, that the word "cloud" refers at all to the pillar of cloud that guided the Israelites in their journey through the wilderness. I think it is employed just in the sense in which it is used by heathen writers. Every schoolboy knows that, in his Homer, the words véços Teway mean, literally, "a cloud of Trojans," νέφος Τζωῶν and also vέços εtv, literally, "a cloud, or number, of footsoldiers." "A cloud of witnesses 66 means a vast collec tion," a great multitude." And just as the cloud in the sky is the collection of a countless multitude of drops that are exhaled from the earth, and, in the form of vapor, float past us, or envelop and cover us, so we have, on each side and over us, a great multitude, a "great cloud" of witnesses. And, perhaps, it is not forcing the figure when I say, that just as the globules of water that compose the cloud are exhaled from the earth, and are borne sky-ward by the beams of rising and setting suns, so the origin of these believers was of the earth earthy; they were sufferers like us; every trial that we have they had; every pain that we feel they felt; but, as the cloud, when it has risen from the earth, is fringed and sometimes gilded with the golden glories of rising and of setting suns, and shines with a splendor that is not its own, but borrowed from that sun by whose beams it exhaled from the earth, so the mighty company of them that have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb will shine in a splendor not their own, but borrowed from the Sun of righteousness, unto whom alone they give the glory, the praise, the thanksgiving, and the honor. Whatever was in their original state was from beneath; whatever is in their present glory and beauty is from above. us. "Be ye stead But they are not only a cloud, but a "cloud of witnesses." They witness to something; and, therefore, they are called witnesses. They witness to the preciousness of truth, to the importance of real religion, to the happiness of loving, and fearing, and serving God. They illustrated their testimony with their lives, and they surrendered those lives freely when it was needed, to illustrate their testimony by their death. They are witnesses, a cloud of witnesses, for us. Just as the cloud descends in showers and waters the earth, or wards off the too hot sunbeams from us that are below, so these witnesses float as a cloud before us, not for themselves, but for Never was a witness' testimony committed to the air, or a martyr's blood shed upon the earth, that has not its aim, its end, its object, that does not still cry, the blood from the earth, and the testimony from heaven, fast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord." But there is not only "a cloud of witnesses," but it is said to be a cloud of witnesses encompassing us. In other words, we are here represented as moving in the midst of a shining throng. The image of the apostle is, that we are running on a race-course; a race-course is of a continuous length, and of a certain breadth; and he supposes standing upon each side of the race-course these illustrious witnesses, from Abel down to Rahab, each witness standing with his deposition in his hand, inscribed with his testimony, his struggles, his victory, each casting light upon the course in order to guide us; each a voice upon the right hand and upon the left, saying, “This is the way walk ye in it." The apostle supposes that we are running a course that may, in some way, interest the saints in glory; and that we are surrounded, while we run, with |