Lecture VII · The Saint's Death—Gain

TO any person at all familiar with the apostle’s writings, it is evident that this was with him a deep and most influential conviction. It often comes before us, and in none of his letters more distinctly and emphatically than in the second to Timothy, which was written very shortly before his martyrdom, and when he was in full expectation of it,—the time therefore when, if ever, doubts and fears might have been expected to take possession of him. ‘I am now ready to be offered,’ he says there, ‘and the time of my departure is at hand. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.’ It was with him a conviction, in the strict sense of the term,—not an impression merely, but a judgment, to which he had been brought by the careful examination of evidence ; a judgment of which a man so intelligent as Paul, and so candid ‘toward himself as well as toward others, could not but frequently re-test the grounds, and which thus, when the time of severest trial came, bore the strain.

This conviction did not rest on observation or speculation. Observation and instinctive feeling would lead a man to hold death as the very reverse of ‘ gain,’ as a very great and frightful evil. Death is emphatically and pre-eminently, as he is named in the book of Job, ‘ the king of terrors ἢ and his sceptre casts a broad shadow, dark, and chilling, and blighting. ‘Through fear of death’ men are ‘subject to bondage.’ Even when viewed altogether apart from religious considerations, there is very

much in and about death to scare the imagination, to alarm the mind, and to revolt the heart. It takes us away from the world and the friends we know, from the work and the pleasures which we understand and are interested in; and sends us out into a state of existence of which we have no experience, and in regard to which we can form no distinct conception. Its usual precursors are all of a kind calculated to alarm and distress,—sickness and pain, restlessness and debility ; and its. effects on the body are such as deeply to humiliate.

Our hearts shrink from the thought of death, as utterly and awfully unnatural, wholly alien and opposed to our original nature. The deepest instincts of our being echo the teaching of Scripture, that God made—that God cannot but have made —man to /live, not to die. It is natural to hate death and to fear death, just because death is unnatural. No thoughtful person, I should suppose, ever stood by a dead body, ever attended a funeral and heard the earth rattle on the coffin-lid, © without feeling this. That of the friend we knew and loved, a friend, it may be, whose mind had been full of noble thoughts, whose heart had glowed with warm and tender affections,—a friend with whom but a few days ago, but yesterday perhaps, we had pleasant and elevating converse,—all that to-day remains with us should be a mass ‘of inanimate clay, and even this soon necessarily, for the comfort and welfare of the living, to be taken away and laid in a pit in the earth, there as we know to _ moulder to dust ;—all this is wholly repugnant to the instincts of our hearts, utterly unnatural. And that the same shall certainly one day happen to us,—that the pulses now so full of life shall be still, the eye now so bright be dim, the limbs now 50 active be motionless,—that over our fixed unanswering features, as we lie cold in the coffin, some who love us will weep,—that — we too, like the generations before us, shall be laid away in the churchyard,—that our place in the world, which knows us now ~ so well, shall know us no more for ever,—and that in the course of a very few years, while the great world goes on as before, oF 4 j

buying and selling, planting and building, marrying and giving in marriage, as if we had never lived, or never died, we shall be utterly forgotten, utterly unthought of, by all the dwellers beneath the skies, except when some careless, casual eye reads our name upon a tombstone ;—how hard it is for us, brethren, to realize all this, to present it vividly to our minds as a fact ! Even taken simply by themselves, too, how full of dreariness such thoughts are! The dreariness, and the difficulty of realization, bear testimony that death is not that for which we were made.

Yet we know this is the destiny of every one of us. Death ‘hath passed upon all men.’ An element of uncertainty mingles with every other calculation and expectation regarding our life, but with this expectation none. ‘ At midnight, or at cock-crow, or in the morning,’ it may be,—in old age, when ‘the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men bow themselves, and the grasshopper is a burden, and desire faileth ;’ or in the prime of our years, while full of work, and strength, and hope; or in the pleasant dawn of existence, for oh, how often with his keen sickle the stern reaper cuts down the green corn as well as the ripe ;—but certainly ‘the silver cord shall be loosed, and the golden bowl broken, the pitcher broken at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the cistern ;’ certainly ‘the dust shall return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.’ With impartial foot the king of terrors enters the halls of the great and the cottages _ of the poor, and, ‘changing their countenances, sendeth them _ away.’ There is no discharge in this war.

Think, too, of the solemn irrevocableness of death. Many of the steps we take in life may be retraced. Many of our efforts may be repeated. The failures of a man of wisdom and _ energy are rounds of the ladder by which he mounts to success. But there is no repetition of death. If our lives, considered as a preparation for death, have been a failure, then we can have no success for ever. We cannot return to live them over again more wisely. The gate of the invisible world opens only inward. ‘It is appointed to men once to die,’—‘ once,,-—no more.

It is certain, my brethren, that mere observation would lead us to say that ‘to die,’ instead of being ‘ gain’ to us, will be a very great and terrible loss.

And mere human speculation, even in the very wisest and best, has never even approached a conviction that in any way death can bring gain. Strong desire, groping out in the darkness after a peace and a satisfying wisdom which life had never given them, this is all that we find even in a Socrates, or a Plato, or a Cicero.? 1

The utterances of the wiser heathen on the subject of death are exceedingly touching. Euripides can ask—

Tis οἶδεν εἰ πὸ ζῆν μέν tors καπθανεῖν,

To κατθανεῖν δὲ ζῆν ;— ‘

Who knows if living be not death, and dying life?’ Yet this remains for him, in Dr. Lightfoot’s words, only a ‘sublime guess.’ The poet could give no answer to his ‘ Who knows?’ Socrates can say that, if a certain view of death be true, then death is κέρδος θαυμάσιον, ‘a wondrous gain ;’ yet, a very little after, all he can attain to is—“AAAw yap ἤδη ὥρα ἀπιέναι, ἐμοὶ μὲν ἀποθανουμένῳ, ὑμῖν δὲ βιωσομένοις” ὁπότεροι δὲ ἡμῶν ἔρχονται ἐπὶ ἄμεινον πρᾶγμα, ἄδηλον παντὶ πλὴν ἢ τῷ Oca,—‘ The hour of departure has come, for me to die, and you to live. Which is the better to go to, God alone knows!’ Cicero, after speaking of the grounds on which he deems a future life probable, has, after all, to come to the acknowledgment of a dreary uncertainty,—‘ Quod si in hoc erro, quod animos hominum immortales esse credam, lubenter erro, —‘ If I err in my belief that the soul of man is immortal, I err with pleasure.’ The love of Tacitus, following t . Agricola into the darkness, can but say,—‘ Si guts piorum manibus locus ; — si, ut sapientibus placet, non cum corpore extinguuntur magne anime ; placide quiescas,’—‘ If there is any place for the shades of the good,—if, as sages think, great souls perish not with the body,—rest in peace.’ Hadrian, passing away from the world he knew, sings—

* Animula vagula, blandula, Flospes comesque corporis, Que nunc abibis in loca, Pallidula, rigida, nudula ?’ ‘

Poor little fluttering, pleasing sprite, My bosom’s friend and guest, To what strange region wilt thou take thy flight, Pale, naked, and distressed ?’

SE

On this dark background, then, of human fear, and ignorance, and impotence, how brightly shines the glory of divine grace in the calm, firm, intelligent Christian conviction, *To me to die is gain

’

This brings me to observe that this conviction of Paul’s did rest on faith in Christ as the Conqueror of death. In all men, probably, even those who do not in any degree enjoy the light of Christianity, the causes of aversion to death, and to thinking of death, include not merely love of present friends, and occupations, and pleasures, but a certain ‘ dread of something after death.’ At all events, wherever any knowledge of divine revelation has come, this particular element is always present, I believe, in the fear of death, more or less definitely and prominently,—conscience assenting to the Bible statements regarding sin, its reality, and its deserts. The only adequate explanation of the existence of death in the world is afforded by the Bible doctrine, that death is ‘the wages of sin.’ The entrance of what is utterly monstrous and unnatural in the universe of God, rebellion against God’s will, has brought the frightful evil of death with it as its curse, its legitimate doom. Death is the wages of sin, wages which all of us have earned, and which are due to us therefore in justice, under the administration of the affairs of the world by a righteous God. And in the fact that physical death ushers into an eternity where lies the second death, is found its intense awfulness. The deep darkness of the death we see is caused mainly by the shadow of the death we cannot see.

Now the glorious tidings of the gospel are, that Christ has borne the curse, or, in the singularly forcible language of the apostle in Galatians, has been ‘made a curse,’ in our room. For the overthrow of death was not a matter for the simple exercise of divine power. With Job, we ‘ know that the Lord can do everything, —everything but contradict His own nature, deny Himself, bring dishonour on His character and government. But, according to the teaching of Scripture, the endur-

ance by the Son of God of the punishment of sin, in room of men, was needful, if, consistently with the honour of the Divine Ruler, man was to be saved. This overwhelmingly impressive evidence was given to the moral universe of God’s hatred of sin, and determination to maintain the majesty of His law. The Son of God humbled Himself to be a Man, a Man of sorrows, a dying Man. In infinite love the Divine Father gave His Son to death ; in infinite love the Divine Son gave Himself to death, for the life of the world. ‘All we, like sheep, have gone astray ; we have turned every one to his own way ;—and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us 411. ‘He bare our sins in His own body on the tree.’ As the Champion of the race whose nature He had assumed, Jesus entered the realm of the king of terrors, met him face to face on his own ground, grappled with him, vanquished him, stripped him of his spoils, and proved the completeness of His victory by rising from the grave, ascending into heaven, and sitting down at the right hand of God, to wield all power, ‘ quickening ’—giving life to —‘whom He will.’ ‘Our Saviour Jesus Christ hath abolished death,’ says the apostle to Timothy. The form of death indeed remains for the Christian, but only the form. All-who by faith have accepted the life which Jesus offers, find it imperishable ; and that the severance of soul from body is but a gloomy archway, leading from the sphere of partial enjoyment of this life to the sphere of its fulness. Where such faith exists, then, my brethren, in Christ the Conqueror of death,—in that soul evidently, in the measure of the intelligence and liveliness of the faith, the conviction will be present and sustaining, ‘To me to die is gain.’ With instinctive fear the saint may shrink back from dying, from the weakness and weariness and pain of dissolution ; but death he will not fear. ‘Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ !’

Let me observe yet again, with reference to the apostle’s conviction here stated, that ἐξ stood in the very closest relation to

the resolution in the other clause of the verse, ‘ To me to live is Christ.’

Death, as the Bible employs the term, is a very comprehensive evil, and life a correspondingly comprehensive blessing. Death includes all the consequences of sin, moral and spiritual debasement and wretchedness, as well as physical pain and dissolution. The unchristian man, even whilst he has physical life, and is doing the work and enjoying the pleasures of the world, is yet, in God’s sight, ‘dead in trespasses and sins,’ being ‘alienated from the life of God.’ Now the blessing which Christ offers to us is life in the fullest and grandest sense, in opposition to a// the elements and forms of death. And this blessing—this salvation—whilst it has various aspects, is yet one and indivisible. No element of it can by possibility be enjoyed by any one who is unwilling to accept it as a whole. The two main aspects or elements of this eternal life, whether as partially enjoyed here or fully hereafter, are holiness and happiness. Now in the resolution of the apostle, ‘To me to live is Christ,’ confirmed as it was by the whole tenor of his course, you see that there was a hearty welcoming of spiritual life, a longing and effort to do the will of Christ through the teaching and help of the Spirit of Christ. This man, then, was, in the full Bible sense, ‘ ave unto God,’ and could, on good grounds, expect that ‘to die would be gain’ to him, as ushering him into the glorious fulness of the eternal life in heaven. No one who is not resolved, ‘To me to live shall be Christ,’ can reasonably expect that to him ‘to die will be gain ;’ because he has no evidence at all that he has ‘passed from death unto life.’

Thus far of the conviction. We must now go on to look for a little at the fact itself, that to the Christian ‘to die is gain.

Any knowledge we have on this matter is, of necessity, derived simply from divine revelation. But God has graciously given us in His revelation abundant light. ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which, according to

His abundant mercy, hath begotten us again unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.’ ‘They which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by Jesus Christ.’ ‘I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us,’ when ‘the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion, with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads,’—when ‘they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing ~ shall flee away.’ The Scriptures teach that at death all that is burdensome, everything of dreariness and fear and bitterness, is taken away from the believer in Christ for ever. In the state of existence into which death introduces him there are no anxieties, no failures, no disappointments, no misunderstandings, no jealousies, nothing either within or without to sadden. In the better land, toil and fatigue are unknown. ‘ Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord, that they may rest from their labours.’ Yet is the rest not that of inactivity, but of a full activity made joyous by constant strength and buoyancy. ‘They serve God day and night in His temple,’ and in His presence ever ‘renew their strength,’ so as to ‘mount up with wings as eagles, to run and not be weary, to walk and not faint.’ Sin and sorrow and death have passed away, and God has ‘made all things new.’

There are few detailed descriptions of the heavenly life in Scripture ; and these are obviously, to a very large extent, figurative. ‘The language of earth could not reveal the wonders of heaven; neither could our minds and hearts, at the present, bear a full revelation of ‘the exceeding and eternal weight of glory.’ But all the powers of human language are brought into play,—all the most suggestive images of earth are employed,—to impress us with the conviction that beauty, and ,

sweetness, and love, and joy, which will perfectly satisfy all our capacities of happiness, capacities ever expanding through- - out eternity,—this is what ‘God hath prepared for them that love Him.’ Is not this ‘gain’?

Think of the change in relation to know/edge.. The spring of all true beauty and excellence in God’s moral creatures is knowledge of Him. The natural man regards Him as an austere Master, whose work is drudgery, and His wages unsatisfying,—one whom it is not desirable to know, because impossible to love or to please. From this wilful ignorance of God’s true character come, of necessity, sinful affections and a sinful life. But the Christian knows God as He has revealed Himself in Christ, merciful and gracious, possessed of every excellence in infinite perfection, and in the gospel displaying His perfections in a light of the most sublime and tender grace to man. In him who begins thus to know God, the heart becomes full of strong yearnings to know more. The believer prays for ‘the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God,’ ‘that he may be able to comprehend, with all saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth know- _ ledge.” He feels that the grand central pursuit of his life should be growth in the knowledge of God,—the attainment of clearer views and livelier impressions of His excellences,— wisdom to trace His goings more distinctly and rejoicingly in creation and providence and redemption. He feels that all study should, in its degree, be with him study of God. But we find, at the same time, Christian brethren, that as a matter _ of fact the energy of our spirits in this pursuit often flags. Remaining depravity weighs the spirit down; and bodily weakness, too, is felt as a heavy clog. Languor steals upon the senses, so that he who would search and soar, ‘mounting up with wings like the eagle,’ finds himself fettered to a load of _ clay. Now depravity, and all the encumbering influences of the mortal body, are left behind at death. Death rends the x

veil, and breaks the fetters, and ushers the spirit, so long confined to the gloomy twilight of an earthly prison, into glorious light and liberty. Then, dear friends, shall we have knowledge to a degree, and in modes, of which now we cannot even form any conception. Being then perfectly ‘pure in heart,’ we shall ‘see God’ no longer darkly, as by a mirror, but face to face. Our spirits will apprehend his excellences not slowly, indirectly, inferentially, as now, but by a direct intuition, far more certain, and distinct, and satisfying, than is now the action of the eye or any bodily sense. We shall no longer have to content ourselves with gathering pebbles on the shore of the great ocean of truth, but shall soar over its waters with bold untiring wing, or fearlessly plunge into their depths, and, with unfailing success, explore their wonders. We shall know then ‘even as we are known.’ Say, brethren, for those who, through grace, are enabled to cherish such hopes, is not ‘to die, gain’?

Again, think of the change in relation to holiness. ‘Throughout the believer’s life here it is sadly manifest that depravity, though dethroned and maimed, is not yet slain. Even in our pursuit of good aims, even in our holiest religious services, how much of sin enters to mar the good! Now the ‘law of sin’ which, in so many ways, ‘wars against the law of the mind,’ and lamentably often ‘ brings us into captivity,’ is ‘in the members.’ The appetites and distempers of the present mortal body give rise to many spiritual distempers and perversities. Around us, too, whilst we are here, lies the world, full of temptations ; and our great adversary, the devil, is ever striving, with his subtilty and malignity, to bring us under the power of these temptations. Yonder, ‘the spirits of just men? are ‘ made perfect.’ From the moment of death every desire is pure, every aim is noble ; and the noble aims are all attained ~ in fulness. Even in this world, the believer, contemplating his Saviour with affection and confidence, is changed by the Spirit into His image, ‘from glory to glory.’ Yonder, up to De ie

the fullest capabilities of our nature, ‘we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.’

Yet again, think of the change in relation to society. Our happiness here is, in large measure, dependent on pleasant companionship. To many of us God has granted the enjoyment of friendships both sweet and helpful. Many of us He has, in His kind providence, linked in such close relationships as involve frequent intercourse, with those who are at the same time kinsfolk in Christ Jesus, and cheer and aid us by holy fellowship. Yet great numbers of those with whom we have to associate have no sympathy with us in our deepest loves and longings ; and even in those who have such sympathy we find many incongruities and hardnesses, much which is calculated to mislead and enfeeble us, rather than to enlighten and invigorate. How apt, too, are jealousies and pettinesses to becloud all the friendships of earth, even friendships between wise Christians! Our Supreme Friend is known by us here only through faith ; our communication with Him is through the secret influences of His Spirit, enabling us to apprehend with mind and heart the manifestations He makes of His glory and grace in His Word and ordinances ; and our faith is so weak, even at the best, that we see Him but by passing glimpses. Death, dear brethren, will introduce us into a world where all are friends, true and wise, and full of unvarying, exulting, rejoicing sympathy in all our aspirations.

It has been often questioned whether any portion of the happiness of heaven comes from human friendship, or whether the absorption of the saints in the contemplation of the glory of Christ, and the enjoyment of His love, will not be such as to prevent even the recognition of the friends of earth. ‘This latter supposition could only be adopted in consequence of imperfect views of the nature of the mind, and the working of its affections. The love of Christ does not cast out, but enhances and purifies, love to our fellow-creatures. It will be true in heaven, as on earth, that “ Every one who loveth Him

that begat, loveth him also that is begotten of Him.”’? The deep instincts of our hearts, my brethren, are sounder guides in matters of this kind than any mystic speculation. I cannot but believe that our ardent longings to see and know again beloved ones taken away from us by death, are not the fruit of depravity, or folly, or weakness, but implanted in us by God, and are thus, with regard to all who have fallen asleep in Christ, a kind of prophecy of joyous recognitions, and friendships resumed, never again to be broken, in that happy land where, to the full, God ‘satisfieth the longing soul.’ What sweeter assurance, too, is found in the Word of God than that, while the glorified ‘rest from their labours, their works do follow them’? They ‘follow them,’ to minister to their joy,— and how otherwise than through recognition? ‘The Christian friend in glory rejoices to welcome him with whom on earth he had affectionately pleaded to seek the Saviour. The minister with delight sees this and that church member whom he had taught the way of life, and for whom he had wrestled with God in prayer, enter in by the gates of pearl. The mother feels as if a new blessedness were added even to heaven, when, beholding in the New Jerusalem the child whom it had been her chief anxiety to train for Christ, she knows that her ‘ works have followed’ her.

Along with those thus bound to us by ties formed on earth, holy angels also will be our companions in heaven, and all the good of all generations of the world’s history, all who have ‘washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’ And our association with all this ‘ goodly company’ will be eternal.

But, amid the enjoyments of the society of heaven, He whom faith makes to the believer here his Supreme Friend, beyond all comparison the dearest, the most trusted, the most influential, will there also be supreme in his affections and interest, ay, loved and delighted in far more intensely than ! Dr, Henderson, of Galashiels.

here, because far better known, ‘seen as He is.’ With Him we shall have intercourse direct and personal, so close and satisfying, that even the most intimate communion with Him, with which we are privileged on earth, shall seem then, in _ memory, to have been absence,—for, ‘whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord.’ Knowing, then, Christian brethren, as we do, how ravishing is the view which, in hours of spiritual elevation, the children of God have of their Lord even here,—knowing, as we do, that the joy of fellowship with Him even here is ‘unspeakable and full of glory,’—‘ how shall we conceive of that flood of unimaginable ecstasy which shall fill and overflow all our dilated spirits, when faith shall be exchanged for vision, and distant love for present and personal communion! What pleasure beyond description shall it not inspire in souls like those of the just made perfect,—souls divinely sensitive to the impressions of whatever is truly great, and good, -and fair,—to contemplate directly, without a mirror, distinctly, without a veil, the vivid revelation which shall then be made of the excellence and loveliness of the glorified Immanuel,—to gaze upon His sacred Person, now refulgent with unearthly splendours, yet bearing the traces, conspicuous still, of the tremendous conflict He once endured for His redeemed, nor therefore, in their esteem, the less majestic or less lovely for these illustrious scars,—to dwell upon the nearer and more impressive exhibitions which, through that sacred Person, He shall make before the glorified immortals, of His transcendent character, uniting all that is august and lovely in the attributes of Deity with all that is great and fair in those of a perfect humanity !’?

If thus then, my friends, death be for the believer the gate by which he passes from ignorance and sin and trouble into perfect purity and blessedness, this is certainly ‘gain’ to him, incalculable gain.

The connection in which the apostle makes the present ! John Brown Patterson, of Falkirk. ——— — – τὰ σὺ

statement implies, you will remember, that by a Christian’s death Christ is glorified. ‘My earnest expectation and my hope,’ Paul says, ‘is that Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life or by death; by life, if that be granted to me, for to me to live is Christ; by death, for to me to die is gain.’ ‘When I, who once blasphemed the name of Jesus, and slew His servants, am by His grace introduced into the ineffable joys of heaven, and this through the very instrumentality of death, which sin brought on man as a curse, but which the Saviour’s love and power have made the gate of life,— angels and the members of the church triumphant, and Christian friends left behind, will see one proof more that ‘‘ Worthy. is the Lamb that was slain to receive riches, and honour, and strength, and glory, and blessing.” ’

It is easier, very.much easier, to believe the general proposition that to the Christian death is gain, or to believe that to the Apostle Paul death was gain, than to have, with regard to ourselves, the same calm, restful conviction that it will be so, which, with regard to himself, the apostle had and expresses here. Lack of such a conviction is a grave defect in a believer ; not merely because, through subjection in this matter to ‘the spirit of bondage,’ he falls far short of attaining the fulness of peace which the religion of Jesus is fitted to give, but because a most potent means of ‘ magnifying Christ’ is wanting to him, In a world like this, where nature so fears death, few things testify more impressively of the power of divine grace, than composure of spirit in view of meeting the last enemy, where — this composure is manifestly intelligent and associated with humility. Let us then strive, dear friends, to ‘lift up the hands — which hang down.’ In the mode of our departure from the world, indeed, we can never rejoice. If it might be so, we would rather ‘not be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.’ We shudder instinctively — at the thought of the gloomy passage. Yet it is true that for all believers divine grace has discrowned the king of terrors, has Ν’ ᾿ ; we ged the curse into a ‘gain,’—yea, ‘hath abolished death.’ ‘What shall we then say to these things,’ dear friends,— o these ‘exceeding great and precious’ assurances, and to our frequent lapses, notwithstanding, under the ‘spirit of bondage, again to fear’? ‘Lord, we believe ; help Thou our unbelief.’ Progress in superiority to the fear of death will be made by Christians, partly by direct effort with that aim in view, through meditation on the promises on this subject given in Scripture, and prayer for lively faith in these pro- _ mises; but mainly by steady, prayerful endeavour to advance in general Christian wisdom, and beauty, and energy. A life of growing faith and usefulness will, by God’s blessing, yield ever growth of hope. Asa Christian is able to see more and

more distinctly that ‘through Christ, who strengtheneth him,’ he is, like Paul, ‘fighting a good fight,’ the clearer ever will grow the joyous conviction that for him, as for Paul, ‘there is laid up a crown of righteousness,’—that for him, as for Paul, ‘to die will be gain.’