and preparation. We have yet to survey the crowning struggle, in comparison of which all the action and endurance that preceded was but the sport of children. Then what prodigies of efforts might we behold!—what straining of faculties to their utmost pitch of exertion and resistance!what eagerness of emulation!-what blazing ardour of courage!—what steadfast might of patience!-what breathlessness, and dust, and sweat, and tumult, and hope and fear, and long repelled defeat, and dearly purchased victory! Perhaps we cannot form a more striking or a more correct idea of the incredible energy which formed the whole spirit of what an ancient poet therefore calls the "Isthmian labour," than by remembering that the word which properly signifies competition in the games of Greece has been adopted in another sense into our tongue, and that that word is agony."

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These then are they of whom the apostle speaks, and this is what they do. And why? Wherefore all this preparatory toil and self-constraint, and slavery and suffering? Wherefore this immense expenditure of active and of passive energy in the actual knot and strain of competition? It is that "they may obtain a corruptible crown;" that the victor may bind his brow with a wreath of laurel, or, as was the practice at the Isthmian festival, of pine; garlands which, though of evergreens, yet soon waxed sere and red, and drooped, and shed their leaves, and mouldered into dust. True, indeed, the fading garland formed to the eager and emulous spirits of the Grecian youth, not so much the reward itself, as the symbol of the reward for which they panted. That reward consisted chiefly in the honour which adorned the conqueror's name, and not his forehead; in the admiring gaze of congregated Greece; in the applauding shouts which rent the air from that vast multitude, as glowing and panting from the victorious strife, and soiled with not dishonourable dust, the youthful conqueror advanced to receive the hard-won chaplet; in the accents of trium phal music which hailed his success, and the strains of prevailing poets which promised to bear his name upon the wings of song to distant climes and distant generations. Yet was it all a perishable glory he thus obtained, almost as brief and fading as the laurel on his brow. The fickle breath of popular applause soon veered and shifted round; in the full tumult of acclamation the tones of envy and of jealousy were heard mingling,— perhaps the more distinctly from the discord which they made, the aspiring nature within felt, even while the applause continued, that it was not worth the price that had been paid for it,—that it could not fill the soul as it had filled the ear; before long the last echoes died away into silence, and before much longer into oblivion. Another name filled the mouths of the multitude and the trumpet of renown; and such immortality as bards had promised vanished into an idle dream,-the veriest illusion which ever fascinated to mock the soul of man. So that with respect to the glory as well as to the verdure which made the Isthmian chaplet seem so bright and

beautiful, so worthy an object of ambition and pursuit, the apostle could emphatically exclaim, "Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown."

With the case thus described of a competitor in the Isthmian labour, pursuing with such eagerness and exertion a perishable reward, the apostle contrasts that of a Christian pursuing, by somewhat of the same means, a reward that is imperishable. "They do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible."

The earthly preparation of the Christian for the inheritance above bears, in many respects, a strong resemblance, and is therefore frequently compared in Scripture to the training and the contest of an Olympic combatant. It is true the Christian is not allowed to look to his future glory as, simply and strictly speaking, the reward of his own exertions or his own endurance; the result of these in precisely the same way in which it might be said of the victorious competitor for the pine wreath or the laurel, that he had merited his glory,-that he had earned his crown. It is not our business at present to explain very much at large the consistency of the two different views which Scripture gives us of the celestial inheritance; sometimes representing it as "the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord," and sometimes as a prize to be "sought by patient continuance in well-doing." Suffice it to observe, that while the doctrine of human merit is equally indefensible on the principles of reason and of revelation; while from the justice of heaven, man, viewed in himself, deserves nothing at any stage of his existence but punishment; still it is obvious that the Sacred writers show no reluctance to employ the terms "reward" and "recompense," in reference to the future glory of the saints. Nor are such terms, even when we keep in mind the great fundamental doctrine of the gospel, that " we are saved by grace," unmeaning or obscure. We must recollect that the reward itself is not of debt but of grace; that it is that to which, previous to the promise, no man could have advanced a claim, and which, even after the promise, no man can secure without the aids of God's renewing and sanctifying Spirit. Yet still there are many circumstances connected with the eternal felicity prepared for believers, on account of which it is appropriately described by the name of reward. Heaven is the Christian's reward, inasmuch as it is inseparably connected with his sanctification. "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord." Heaven is the Christian's reward, inasmuch as it will be bestowed expressly as a mark of God's approbation of the conduct to which it is annexed. "Well done," is the blissful invitation with which the saint is welcomed to Paradise, "Well done, good and faithful servant, thou hast been faithful over a few things; be thou ruler over many things; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." Heaven is the Christian's reward, because its glories and felicities will be dispensed to him in proportion to the degree of faithful service rendered by him here to the Lord and his Anointed; in proportion to his "work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope." "Every

man shall receive according to his own labour." He that gains five talents in trading for his Lord, shall have the rule of five cities in the celestial commonwealth; he that hath gained ten, shall be viceroy over ten. "He that soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly, but he that soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully."

In the doctrine of rewards, thus understood-while there is nothing inconsistent with the doctrine of grace-there is much that is fitted to call out and stimulate to eager exertion all those powers and principles of our being which take aim at our own felicity and interest, and to enlist them on the side of a high and generous and energetic Christianity; and we are authorized by the frequent exhortations and the recorded examples both of saints and of the King of saints-of Moses, for example, whose eulogy it is, that he "had respect unto the recompense of the reward"— or of Jesus, whose conduct in this particular is expressly proposed for our imitation, that, "for the joy set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame," to consider eternal glory as so connected with present holiness, that encouragement and impulse to the cultivation of the latter may, at all times, be legitimately derived from the anticipation of the former-even as the preparations and the struggles of the Olympic or Isthmian candidates were animated and upheld by the distant prospect or the nearer view of the triumphal crown. Now that course of earthly holiness which comprehends the Christian's training and his actual struggle for the prize, is one which, if pursued as Scripture requires it to be pursued, presents the occasion, nay, makes the demand, of an exhibition of vigour and self-government, and zeal, and energy, and patience, much resembling that required of old from the candidates for glory in the Grecian games. If we would pursue a course of Christian holiness, such as Holy Writ requires, we must "deny ungodliness and worldly passions, and live soberly, righteously, and godly in the world;" we must "deny ourselves and take up our cross;" we must "exercise ourselves unto godliness;" we must, as the apostle-the very apostle who climbed the loftiest height of holiness ever ascended by mere man, felt himself continually constrained to do" keep under the body and bring it into subjection," habituating every inclination to submit to the control of those great aims and principles of which the end is heaven-"being temperate in all things"-rejecting all indulgences which, either from their nature or their degree, are fitted to pollute the purity, to impair the energy, to deaden the alacrity, to check the growth, of that new and spiritual principle which has been breathed into our natures by the Holy Ghost. We must "mortify the deeds of the body;" we must "make no provision to fulfill its deceitful passions;" we must "crucify it with its affections and its lusts." We must continually view ourselves in the character, and act in the spirit of champions vowed to an achievement which claims for its successful accomplishment the utmost vigour of our faculties-the entire devotion of our natures; as those who have an arduous race to run, a difficult war to

wage. We must "lay aside every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset us, and run with patience the race set before us;" we must "take to us the whole armour of God, that we may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil; for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickednesses in high places." And while our general course as Christians must thus be one of habitual vigilance, and selfdenial, and exertion, and devotion to one great selected end, we must look for occasions on which we shall be called to put forth more eager efforts, to endure more furious assaults, to accomplish a more arduous resistance, than usual. There are occasions in the life of most Christians when, if they would remain faithful to their character and calling, they must pass through an agony distinguished from the tenor of their ordinary spiritual existence, somewhat as the closing strife on the arena was from the course of continued exercises which formed the athlete's education for victory occasions, when the great antagonist of the believer, perceiving some combination of outward circumstances in the Christian's lot, or of inward movements in the Christian's mind, peculiarly adapted to further his malignant views, attacks him with subtler device or more furious onset than usual, throws him back upon his last resources, and reduces him, as it were, to the uttermost extremity. Yet even on these occasions it is required of the Christian to sustain the contest manfully, and to terminate it victoriously. There is no danger of defeat if he only use the means of resistance in his reach; if, "strong in the Lord and in the power of his might," which how to obtain in the hour of need he knows, he persevere in wielding aright the sword of the Spirit and the shield of faith. But the use of these means, the management of these arms, so as to overcome at last, is what will demand, most probably, an intensity of effort and a patience of suffering, a steadfast resolution and a fervid zeal, which may be not unaptly likened to those required of the Grecian combatant, when, firmly planting the foot and stretching the nostril wide, in the crisis and agony of decisive struggle, he poured out all the energies of body and of soul in determined grasp at victory.

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It is to be feared that, in all this description, many will feel as if there were something stretched and strained; something even ludicrously inconsistent with reality and with experience, as if we had been driven, by want of living models, to delineate from fancy, in order to make the thing compared the Christian life-at all correspond to the thing with which it is compared the Isthmian labour. But no; we have been drawing not from fancy, but from the Bible. Every part of the preceding description is sustained by most certain warrant of Holy Writ-the greater portion of it is expressed in the very words of Holy Writ themselves. What, therefore, is the conclusion to be drawn from the apparent contrast between the character of personal religion as the Bible describes it, and that of personal

religion as professing Christians exhibit it, in respect of the self-denying, self-exhausting energy which the Scriptures require—and of the easy selfindulgent feebleness which our Christian characters display? What, but that, in very many cases, there is too much reason to doubt the genuineness of that religion altogether which resembles so little the standard and model of true religion in the oracles of God. What, but that, in all cases, we have but too much cause to apprehend, that even if ours be a genuine, it is only an infant Christianity—that we must be content to be "saved as by fire," instead of having "ministered to us an abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." The consideration should excite us every one diligently to consider in what respects our Christian walk and conflict may be accommodated more exactly to the statements and the requisitions of our Lord—and, instead of repining that our condition and our calling, rightly understood, summon us to more painful sacrifices, and more arduous labours, and more perilous contests, than we have hitherto imagined, we should rejoice to have so discovered the possibility of verifying more distinctly in our experience the scriptural import of the name we bear, and of so preparing to occupy a sublimer and a happier place among those who, having continued "faithful unto death," shall inherit the "crown of life."

But while this is the course to which our God and Saviour has summoned the Christian who wishes to walk worthy of the high vocation wherewith he is called, he has not been so unmindful of our nature and necessities as to address to us a bare call to arduous duty, unfortified with motives and encouragements of appropriate strength. These motives, as propounded in Scripture, are very numerous and very powerful. Nor is that the least lofty and spirit-stirring, which the apostle presents, when, under the image of "an incorruptible crown," we are reminded of "the glory, and honour, and immortality," reserved "for those who seek, by patient continuance in well doing, eternal life." We have seen already what power was exerted of old in developing energy, in stimulating exertion, and upholding resolution, by the prospect of an attainment which consisted in nothing more precious or more durable than a wreath of quickly withering leaves, or the shout of a multitude's applause. Oh, then, what power should not be exerted over the believer's mind, by the anticipation of the glorious and incorruptible crown laid up in heaven for him that overcometh in the Christian combat. That glorious crown, woven by the hands of angels, is, as the apostle Peter calls it, an amaranthine garland," not composed of the fading foliage or the vanishing flowers of earth, but from the flowers and trees which shade the river of life in the eternal paradise of God; the symbol of perpetual honour-perpetual purity-perpetual joy, and, therefore, known in the Bible by three majestic appellations, composed, as it were, of three resplendent circlets—" the crown of glory"" the crown of righteousness "the crown of life." Nor shall

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