FOR THE CROWN. -1 Cor. And every man that striveth in the games is temperate in all things. Now they do it to receive a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.ix. 25. " So, says St. Paul, praising the effort and contemning the prize, they do it to receive a corruptible erown." And yet there was a soul of goodness in this evil thing. Though these festivals were indissolubly intertwined with idolatry, and besmirched with much sensuous evil, yet he deals with them as he does with war and with slavery-he points to the disguised nobility that lay beneath the hideousness, and holds up even these low things as a pattern for Christian men. 1. One of the most famous of the Greek athletic festivals was held close by Corinth. Its prize was a pine-wreath from the neighbouring sacred grove. The painful abstinence and training of ten months, and the fierce struggle of ten minutes, had for their result a twist of green leaves that withered in a week, and a little fading fame that was worth scarcely more, and lasted scarcely longer. The struggle and the discipline were noble ; the end was contemptible. And so it is with all lives whose aims are lower than the highest. They are greater in the powers they put forth than in the objects they compass, and the question, "What is it for?" is like a douche of cold water from the cart that lays the clouds of dust in the ways. 2. There is both comparison and contrast here. Comparison, because there is between the athlete and the Christian a likeness upon which the Apostle is very fond of dwelling. Both have entered the lists; both have engaged in a contest wherein a vast amount of resolution and endurance is needed; both have set their hearts upon a certain prize. Contrast, because there is between the athlete and the Christian this great difference, among others, that the prize is of little worth in the one case, of unspeakable value in the other. "They do it to receive a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible." I. THE DISCIPLINE. 1. Strenuous effort.-If people would work half as hard to gain the highest object that a man can set before him as hundreds of people are ready to do in order to gain trivial and paltry objects, there would be fewer stunted and half-dead Christians among us. "That is the way to run," says St. Paul, "if you want to obtain." Look at the contrast that he hints at, between the prize that stirs these racers' energies into such tremendous operation and the prize which Christians profess to be pursuing. They do it to receive a corruptible crown "-a twist of pine branch out of the neighbouring grove, worth half-a-farthing, and a little passing glory not worth much more. They do it to obtain a corruptible crown; we do not do it, though we professedly have an incorruptible one as our aim and object. If we contrast the relative values of the objects that men pursue so eagerly with the objects of the Christian course, surely we ought to be smitten down with penitent consciousness of our own unworthiness, if not of our own hypocrisy. ¶ Everybody knows about the athlete, and knows that whatever he goes in for, there is no mistake about it. You cannot play cricket, or football, or anything else to any purpose-with half your strength, or with half your heart. To do anything, to distinguish yourself in the least, you have to give yourself up to it. Everything else must give way; and everything that hinders, or enfeebles, or injuriously affects the play, must be given up. Everybody knows that. "They do it," says the Apostle; they really do it; there is no humbug or pretence about it. If they play, they do not play at playing; they do it, and no mistake. It is possible to say that a man is a fool to make such efforts, and incur such sacrifices, in order to wear a cap of a certain colour, or be known as the champion in a certain game. But, at any rate, he has achieved something with much toil, and effort, and loss of rest, and after tremendous exertions; "they do it."1 1 R. Winterbotham. Here is a little kingdom, which we shall characterize as the kingdom of merely muscular competition. Men are going to try muscular force with their fellow-men,-they are going to have a boat race. You and I cannot walk along the river-side and instantly take into our heads the notion that we will have a spin with these men and beat them all. That can't be done. Strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leads even to athletic supremacy. The men are going into training; they are going to put themselves under tutors and governors; they are going to submit to a bill of fare and a course of discipline which you and I would take to very unkindly. But why are they going to do so? Because they have determined to take a higher seat in the kingdom of mere athletic exercise and enjoyment. Now it is a very strange thing that you, a man fourteen stones weight, cannot just get into the very first boat that comes in your way and outstrip the men who have been in drill and training and exercise for the last three months. But you cannot do so. As a mere matter of fact, a man who has been drilled, disciplined, exercised, will beat you, except a miracle be wrought for your advantage.1 2. Rigid self-control.-Every man that is striving for the mastery is "temperate in all things." The discipline for runners and athletes was rigid. They had ten months of spare diet-no wine-hard gymnastic exercises every day, until not an ounce of superfluous flesh was upon their muscles, before they were allowed to run in the arena. And, says St. Paul, that is the example for us. They practised this rigid discipline and abstinence by way of preparation for the race, and after it was run they might dispense with the training. You and I have to practise rigid abstinence as part of the race, as a continuous necessity. They did not only abstain from bad things, they did not only avoid criminal acts of sensuous indulgence; they abstained from many perfectly legitimate things. So for us it is not enough to say, "I draw the line there, at this or that vice, and I will have nothing to do with these." You will never make a growing Christian if abstinence from palpable sins only is your standard. You must lay aside every sin, of course, but also every weight. Many things are weights that are not sins; and if we are to run fast we must run light; and if we are to do any good in this world we have to live by rigid control and abstain from much that is perfectly legitimate, because, if we do not, we 1 1 Joseph Parker. shall fail in accomplishing the highest purposes for which we are here. Only on one occasion have I seen him angry, and I mention the circumstance now because I feel convinced that his lack of disciplinary power, which has been noted in the matter of his Harrow work, was due to excess rather than to defect of moral force. Conscious of his power, he was, I believe, afraid to let himself go, and so habitually exercised a severe self-restraint. It was in the early Peterborough days, as he and I were starting out for a walk, that, in passing through the passage, which was then being tiled, he remarked to the man at work that he was not laying the tiles straight. The man contradicted him, and then my father said something which seemed to annihilate the culprit. I was astonished at my father losing his temper, but more astonished still at the effect of his wrath: the man trembled and turned pale, and I thought he would be falling down dead.1 The perfect poise that comes of self-control, That unvexed music of the body and soul That the Greeks dreamed of, made at last complete.- Too often, while the air we vainly beat, Love's perfect law of liberty we miss.2 3. Concentration of aim.-There are few things more lacking in the average Christian life of to-day than resolute, conscious concentration upon an aim which is clearly and always before us. Do you know what you are aiming at? This is the first question. Have you a distinct theory of life's purpose that you can put into half a dozen words, or have you not? In the one case, there is some chance of attaining your object; in the other, none. Alas! we find many Christian people who do not set before themselves, with emphasis and constancy, as their aim the doing of God's will, and so sometimes they do it, when it happens to be easy, and sometimes, when temptations are strong, they do not. It needs a strong hand on the tiller to keep it steady when the wind is blowing in puffs and gusts, and sometimes the sail bellies full and sometimes it is almost empty. The various strengths of the temptations that blow us out of our course are 1 Life and Lellers of Brooke Foss Westcott, i. 351. Annie Matheson. such that we shall never keep a straight line of direction-which is the shortest line, and the only one on which we shall “ obtain "unless we know very distinctly where we want to go, and have a good strong will that has learned to say "No!" when the temptations come. ¶ It is not enough to have earned our livelihood. Either the earning itself should have been serviceable to mankind, or something else must follow. To live is sometimes very difficult, but it is never meritorious in itself; and we must have a reason to allege to our own conscience why we should continue to exist upon this crowded earth. If Thoreau had simply dwelt in his house at Walden, a lover of trees, birds, and fishes, and the open air and virtue, a reader of wise books, an idle, selfish self-improver, he would have managed to cheat Admetus, but, to cling to metaphor, the devil would have had him in the end. Those who can avoid toil altogether and dwell in the Arcadia of private means, and even those who can, by abstinence, reduce the necessary amount of it to some six weeks a year, having the more liberty, have only the higher moral obligation to be up and doing in the interest of man.1 Doth life resemble clouds that come and go? Not so! Man's life is vast and deeper than the sea, He moulds and carves his own futurity. Is life a senseless weary wail of woe? Life's meaning is as lofty as the sky, Is life a noxious weed which whirlwinds sow? Not so! A life well spent has not its weight in gold, 1 R. L. Stevenson, Familiar Studies of Men and Books. |