CHAPTER XVII. LOOKING TO JESUS. O Lord, thou seest, from yon starry height, Before my spirit, and an image fair Shall meet that look of mercy from on high, As the reflected image in a glass Doth meet the look of him who seeks it there, "Wherefore seeing we 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, 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. I HAVE endeavored to explain the nature of the cloud of witnesses here described as constantly enveloping us. I have showed that those who are enumerated in that bright catalogue, the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, beginning with Abel, and ending with all that were stoned and sawn in sunder, and sealed their testimony with their blood, are the leading witnesses alluded to by the apostle. These witnesses are said to be formed into a cloud. A cloud is the water drawn from the seas, the rivers and the earth, floating in innumerable drops in the form of a cloud, minute drops, indeed, but still drops: their origin is from the earth, but the splendor with which the cloud is gilded often amid setting suns, the golden and the gorgeous hues which these clouds frequently assume, are all derived from that sun by whose beams the component particles of the cloud were extracted or exhausted from the earth. Our origin is from the earth, but our splendor is from the sun the Sun of righteousness. All that we have as men is of the first Adam, the earth, earthy: all our moral beauty and splendor as believers is from the transforming touch of the rays of that unsetting Sun who has risen with healing under his wings. I have unfolded the idea of the apostle, that of a race-course which we are to run; on each side of which there is a long line of martyr-witnesses beholding us in our struggles, our toils, our temptations, our trials, constantly witnessing, constantly looking on, anxious, if anxious they can be, about the issue, and waiting and panting till it be accomplished. I said, these may be, not simply the witnesses here named, with their depositions in their hands, showing how holily they lived, how faithfully they died; but it may be actually and truly the sainted dead, nay, not the dead, but the spirits of just men made perfect, who may see us, though we cannot see them, and hear our groans and sorrows, and prayers and praises, though we cannot hear them for those that are gone before may be nearer those that are left behind than those that have crossed the channel are to us that are upon this side of it. But I added, as guarding it, that if it be so, if Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, may see us, - if fathers and mothers, and sisters and brothers, and relatives in glory, may be witnesses of our struggle and our race, - they are not media between God and us, they are neither to be assumed as praying for us, nor we to suppose that we are warranted to pray to them. If they hear at all, they hear simply as witnesses, having nothing to do with us, and we having nothing to do with them, except under the consciousness that so splendid an array is around us, the spectators of what we are doing, to acquit ourselves as men, to fight the good fight, and finish the course, and enter on the joy that is set before us. I next stated that the race is "set before us." Thank God that it is so! We cannot select it: it is set before us. There is but one way, one race-course, that leads to the goal, that leads to the feaßevīns, as he was called, the One that holds the prize in his hand, the One that we are to look at; and if we do not run on that race-course, we never can reach the prize. The Bible is the map that describes it, the chart on which we see it clearly and distinctly before us. It may run through many a winding,—through trade, through merchandise, through traffic, through parliament, through the palace. It may have smooth parts and rough parts, and clouds and shadows. In other places it may have steep hills, it may have innumerable difficulties. But onward is our course: we are not responsible for the smoothness or the roughness of the road-God settles that; we are only responsible for the enjoyment of the privilege and the discharge of the duty of running on it, our eyes upon the prize, our hearts with the Saviour, our hope to the end. I have showed how we are to run it, "with patience." I have showed that courage was the mission of the few; patience is the duty of us all. While impatience, like a moth, frets the fair robe of contentment and of peace, patience keeps our minds in quiet, and is the equilibrium and the balance of the human affections and the human faculties. And, in the next place, I showed that we are to lay aside every weight. Weights, I showed, were incumbrances, not sinful The man who is hundred pounds in themselves, but obstructions to our progress. There is no more sin in being rich, than virtue in being poor. It is a most miserable estimate of Christianity to think that a man with five thousand pounds a year cannot be as good as a man with a hundred pounds a year. Avarice is not in the amount we have, but in the grasp we take of it. truly large-hearted will be so, if he have a a year or a hundred thousand pounds a year; just as a man will be temperate whether he drink from a bottle or a cask. It is what a man is that determines the use that will be made of what he has. So here, the weights that hang upon us may be in themselves innocent, but when we hold them so fast that, though we see them standing in our way, we will not let them go; that, though we feel that we have to run at our utmost speed, and must lay aside every weight that would prevent us doing so; if we cannot do this, we retain the weights, and we may lose the race. I have also remarked that, besides these weights, there is "the sin which doth so easily beset us." Now, that must be cast away, because it is in itself evil. The former we subordinate, the latter we sacrifice. Sin must be expiated through Christ's blood, extirpated by Christ's Spirit, or it will utterly obstruct our course to glory. It seems I shall notice, in this closing chapter, a subject very large, but on which I can offer a very few thoughts" looking unto Jesus." This expression is very remarkable. It means looking off to Jesus." This shows how purely Protestant, how truly evangelical, is the New Testament. absurd to say so, it almost requires an apology for saying so; yet one must see how guarded the sacred penmen are, that every one shall be taught to look at nothing on earth but One who is the great path to glory, the great title to heaven, the only Saviour of sinners. As if Paul had said, “I have laid before you a splendid catalogue, and reviewed the whole of that moral galaxy, sparkling and illustrious, like ten thousand stars; but amid all this splendor you must not be dazzled with it. You must not look at Abel, nor at Enoch, nor at Moses, nor at the best that ever lived, or the most sainted that ever were admitted into glory, although they are all splendid; but, when you run the race, you must look off from them all, and concentrate your first look and your last look, your first hope and your last hope, upon Jesus. Seeing we 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, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking— not to the witnesses but unto Jesus." What a fine parallel to this is that passage in the first chapter of John, where it is said of the apostle Andrew, and one of John's disciples, that they "heard John speak, and they followed Jesus," not John. We perceive how we are to see the witnesses sparkle, but are yet to look, not at the witnesses, but at Jesus. It seems as if Paul had caught the last and the first words of the Baptist, "Behold the Lamb of God," and had echoed those words again: "Run the race set before you, looking, not at the sides of the race-course, lest the stars that sparkle there dazzle you; not looking downward at the fairest flowers that bloom in amaranthine beauty under your feet, lest you stumble; looking, not behind, but forgetting the things that are behind, lest you be drawn back again; and looking forward and upward at Jesus; and, as you look at him, you will run with safety, with certainty, with speed, the race that is set before you in the Gospel." Now, then, since looking at Jesus implies that we are to look to him for what will enable us to run that race, we are led naturally to inquire, what shall we look to Jesus for as strengthening and sustaining us in the race? First, we are to look to Jesus as the only atonement for our sins. Abel's blood that first and illustrious witness was shed, but |