Hebrews 11

37. Waiting souls, remember this: assurance is yours, but the time of giving it is the Lord’s; the golden chain is yours, but he only knows the hour wherein he will put it around your necks. Well, wait patiently and quietly, wait expectingly and believingly, wait affectionately and wait diligently, and you shall find that Scripture made good with power upon your souls: “Yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry.” Brooks.—Christ came the first time in weakness; he is to come the second time in might; the first time in our littleness, the second time in his own majesty; the first time in mercy, the second in judgment; the first time to redeem, the second to recompense, and recompense all the more terribly because of the long-suffering and delay. Hildebert.

39. Believe to saving. The faith that saves is the faith that inspires—the faith of practice, working by love, proved by charity, triumphing in integrity, constant unto death, making the Christian ever more and more like the Master, more true to man, humbler before God. F. D. H.—It ought to be a joy to us all that a faith which is clouded with ignorance may yet be a faith which Christ accepts. He that knows and trusts him as brother, friend, Saviour, in whom he receives the pardon and cleansing which he needs and desires, may have very much misconception and error cleaving to him, but Christ accepts him. A. M.

1. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by 2 it the elders obtained a good report. Through faith we understand that the worlds were 3 framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.4 By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he ob- tained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead 5 yet speaketh. By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, 6 that he pleased God. But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. 7 By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir 8 of the righteousness which is by faith. By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not 9 knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same 10 promise: for he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. 11 Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a 12 child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised. Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in mul- titude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable.13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers

14 and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a 15 country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, 16 they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city

THE first of the gifts of the new covenant is faith. The property of faith is to attach itself before all and above all to what God has said, be it command, instruction, or promise. To believe is to repose entirely on the infallibility and faithfulness of God; it is to place his testimony above all kinds of certainty or guarantee; it is to regard every word proceeding from his mouth as more substantial and real than the reality itself; it is in practice to regard duty in the form in which God has enjoined it as the clearest and most imperative of all obligations; it is, consequently, to go forward with unflinching eye, and meet coming events as we would meet God himself; it is to renounce the tyrannical domination of the senses, and uniformly look to the foundation, the very essence of the truth, instead of looking to external accidents or signs; it is to prefer the invisible, which is eternal, to the visible, which passes away, and the possession of the sovereign good to the sensible signs of its presence. A. V.

Throw into one great sum total all that you have ever experienced or can conceive of wisdom and power—the most far-sighted discernment of results, with the most absolute control over them—the keenest intuition into character, with every conceivable influence for molding it—think of a providence not of this earth, which no opposition can surprise, and no device counterplot, calmly and serenely evolving its own designs from the perverse agencies of man, and turning the very arm which is raised to defeat it into a minister of its will—imagine a Being so wonderfully endowed that the whole keyboard of nature, providence, and the human heart lies under his hand, and, smitten by his mystic fingers, gives forth the harmony which pleases him; and then invest him in your conception with an intensity of love which is not discouraged by the deepest moral degradation in its objects, and which clings to the person of the sinner with unchilled devotion even while it condemns his sin with an abhorrence no less than infinite—imagine such a Being, and imagine him accessible to man, and you imagine one to whom in their hour of need all the world, unless indeed the spell of some deadly fascination were laid upon them, would be resorting continually for guidance, help, and comfort. But this is no imagination. It is a reality. God is such a being as we have labored to describe. He not only permits, but invites; not only invites, but commands the approach to him of every comer. E. M. G.

THE citation of the great Pauline watchword (10:38), “The just man shall live by faith,” leads to a grand digression on the triumphs of faith, as shown in the holy men and women of old. Thus this chapter constitutes the Hymn of Faith, as 1 Cor. 13 was the Hymn of Love; the two being the highest flights of impassioned rhetoric in the Apostolic Epistles. A.—This magnificent grouping of examples of faith was specially in point for his Hebrew readers. Those heroes and martyrs were the pride and the glory of every son and daughter of Abraham. To turn all this admiration to account, the writer had only to show that their heroism was the outcome of their faith—the very same faith essentially which he was exhorting them to cherish and hold fast. Yet this chapter is good, not for that age of stern trial only, but for all the ages to the end of time. Walking and working by faith are the staple of the Christian life, and are to be so long as earthly life is a pilgrimage and a warfare. Therefore let us open our souls to the grand inspirations of these heroic examples! H. C.

1. This is the only place in the Bible where we have what we can call a definition of faith. That faith which is the foundation of all other Christian graces—the title by which we keep our place as Christians, the inward working which has its fruit in good works, the hand by which we lay hold on God and on Christ—is here said to be the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen; and by substance is here meant firm confidence, and by evidence is meant conviction. Faith is the laying hold of the future in the midst of the present, of the unseen in the midst of the seen. F. T.—Faith is the substance of things hoped for, substantiating them to the apprehension, realizing them to the heart, making them operative motives, as much as the gain, the pleasure, and the fear of our daily walks. One of the most precious gifts which God ever vouchsafes us is a clear, unwavering insight of the soul into future and unseen things, which on God’s authority become so sure to us that they stand out palpable and real before us, and, though not by the same evidence, become as influential upon our affections and will as the material objects of our senses. Such faith is no fancy, but self-evidence. J. W. A.—Such was the apostle’s own faith. It pierced the veil which hides the other world from us, and took in, not merely this brief, precarious span that we call life, but the soul’s whole duration; not merely the shadows of the present scene, which we misname realities, but the realities of the spirit-world, which we mistake for shadows. And it interpreted both the pleasures and the crosses of our earthly pilgrimage by the light thrown back upon them from the resplendent walls and towers of the city of the Great King. H. A. B.

3. By revelation we understand that the worlds were brought into being by the word of God. So that the things which are seen (the worlds) were not made of things which did appear before they were made; that is, the worlds which we see were not made of matter which had existed from eternity, but of matter which God created and formed into the things which we see; and, having formed them, he placed them in the beautiful order which they now hold, and impressed on them the motions proper to each, which they have retained ever since. M.

4. The institution of sacrifices, immediately that man fell, had no object; they were of no efficacy, but as they showed forth the Mediator, through whom, as slain for us, we draw near to God. The rejection of Cain’s offering was owing to a want of acknowledgment in it of this great truth; it was one that man might have made in innocence; but it recognized not his guilt and need of mediation as a fallen being; it was not offered, as the “more excellent sacrifice” of Abel was, “by faith” in another for acceptance with God, and “the Lord had not respect unto it.” Goode.—God had said in effect, once for all, that he would never speak nor be spoken to in a way of friendship by any of the human race but through a Mediator. This was intimated, partly by man’s being debarred from all access to the tree of life, partly by the promise of the woman’s seed, and partly by the institution of sacrifices. Cain overlooked all this, and approached God without an expiatory sacrifice, as if there had been no breach between them and so no need of an atonement. This was daring unbelief. Abel took God at his word, perceived the evil of sin and the awful breach made by it—dared not to bring an offering without a victim for atonement—had respect to the promised Messiah—and thus, by faith in the unseen Lamb, offered a more excellent offering than Cain. A. Fuller.

Dead, yet speaketh. Then the man begins to speak and act through his influence alone. That has gone forth through example, opinions, words, and deeds, thenceforth disencumbered of all mortal hindrance to work directly on the minds and hearts of survivors. It shapes the plan, decides the wavering purpose, lures to the forbidden path, or utters the word of remonstrance—the timely warning. It lives in the hearts of all that it ever reached, and when they drop away and disappear, it still survives, transmitted to others from generation to generation. E. H. G.—A purely good man, a holy man, a man whose life and nature you saw always luminous with the presence of God in every thought and act and word—have you never been conscious of some power in his presence? or, if he were dead, of some power in the image of what he was that grew up in you as you read or heard about him, utterly unlike that which far greater men had over you. He was no hero and no teacher. You felt no wonder at his ability, and found no intellectual delight in what he told you, but he brought God close to you. P. B.

6. Faith is the identifying Christian principle, separate and apart from which, whatever excellence men may exhibit, is but mere morality. By faith we submit to the authority of God’s law; by faith we are united to Christ and “receive from his fullness and grace for grace”; by faith we contemplate the love of God in Christ; by faith our conduct becomes acceptable to God through Christ. J. A. J.

Whatever faith touches it turns into gold, that is, into our good. If faith looks upon God, it says, This God is my God for ever and ever, he shall be my guide even unto death. When it looks upon the crown of righteousness, it says, “This crown is laid up for me.” Faith is a sword to defend us, a guide to direct us, a staff to support us, a friend to comfort us, and a golden key to open heaven unto us. Faith, of all graces, is the most useful grace to the soul of man. Without faith it is impossible to please God. And there is something very stimulating and encouraging in the thought that we can do that which shall actually please God. It throws a light and glory upon all duty. Brooks.

What is left of prayer if these two things are abstracted from it—a sense of the personal presence and of the personal friendship of God? He that cometh unto God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder. To feel the reality of God’s spiritual presence, and then to speak the language of adoration, confession, petition, thanksgiving, with a continuous sense of its being an actual interchange between ourselves and God, a real conference of friends, this, surely, is not at all times, in all states of the body, in all moods of sensibility, under all varieties of circumstance, natural to fallen minds like ours. It is not a state of mind to which, without culture, without discipline in Christian life, we spring spontaneously, involuntarily, as we spring to conscious thinking when we wake from sleep. A process of intellect is involved in it which demands exertion. A. P.

Must believe that he is. This belief can not bring the soul in effectual approach to God, unless it be a penetrating conviction that, there being a God, we have to do with him every moment; that this faith must be the predominating authority over our course through the world, determining our volitions and actions. This actuating conviction must be decided and absolute in him that “cometh to God.” He must feel positively assured it will not be just the same to him in the event of things whether he diligently seek God or not. He must be assured that, if God be true, there is something to be granted to such seeking that will not be granted without it; that one thing is in God’s determination, namely, to fulfill his promises. By humble, faithful, persevering importunity of prayer in the name of Christ, I have an assured hold upon—or, by a neglect of it, I let loose from my grasp and hope—all those things which he has promised to such prayer. I am, then, assured he is the “rewarder,” inasmuch as I know it will not be all the same to me whether I seek him or not. And what is that in which it will be verified to them “that he is a rewarder”? For what will they have to adore and bless him as such? For the grandest benefits which even he can impart—can impart in doing full justice to the infinite merits of the appointed Redeemer. An inestimable privilege! that those greatest blessings may be asked for, positively and specifically; whereas the minor benefits are to be requested conditionally, and it is better that the applicants should not be certain of obtaining them. It is enough for their faith as to these that an infinitely wiser judgment than theirs will be exercised in selecting, giving, withholding, adjusting. But the important admonition is, that all this is for them “that diligently seek”; so habitually, importunately, perseveringly, that it shall really, and in good faith, be made the primary concern of our life; so that, while wishes and impulses to obtain are incessantly springing and darting from the busy soul in divers directions, there shall still be one predominant impulse directed toward heaven. J. F.

The divine rewards are rewards in kind. They are large just according to the spirituality of our lives, the zeal of our worship, the strength of our faith. They are interior, not visible. They are incidental, not sought. They are of nobleness rather than of happiness. Sometimes “the rewarder of them that diligently seek him” will reward the true Christian soul by giving him a strengthening and encouraging consciousness of harmony with the divine will; sometimes by taking him out from under the power of temptation, or a straitened self-accusation, and setting his feet in a large place; sometimes by redoubling his spiritual energy and quickening his Christian activity, breathing a prompter zeal into all the secret forces of his being, through the unseen agencies of the Holy Spirit; sometimes by giving him a blessed sense of renunciation, of having given up all to him to whom all of right belongs, together with an exalted sense of liberty from all limitations of appetite and ambition; sometimes by affording us greater satisfaction in our appointed struggles and our every-day drudgery, and sometimes, too, by granting us—provided we do not ask it too eagerly, as if it were better for us than toil—an inward peace, or rest from care and from strife and from fear, passing all understanding, such as the world never gave. F. D. H.

7. Noah’s obedience, having indeed so boisterous winds to encounter, had need of a well-fastened root that it might stand and hold out against them all, and so it had. The apostle tells us what the root of it was; by faith, being warned of God, he prepared an ark. And there is no living and lasting obedience but what springs from that root. He believed what the Lord spake of his determined judgment on the ungodly world; and from the belief of that arose that holy fear, which is expressly mentioned as exciting him to this work. And he believed the word of promise that the Lord spake concerning his preservation by the ark; and the belief of these two carried him strongly on to the work, and through it. L.

8. Abraham acted upon simple obedience to the divine word and unwavering confidence in the divine promises. He asked no vouchers from God for the fulfillment of his word. He grasped the word, he held it, and trusting to it left his home and went out, not knowing whither he went. Like him, we are to commit ourselves to a whole earthly life of faith in God, and then follow where our faith leads. The sublime height of faith is reached when we cherish a calm indifference, a holy heedlessness where it will carry us in the interim, if it carries us into the presence of God and the home of the good at last. J. D.

10. Heaven for stability is called “a city that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” The present world is like a tent or tabernacle set up for a time, while the Church is passing through the wilderness; but heaven is the “city of the living God,” the place of his happy residence, the seat of his eternal empire. The visible world shall shortly fall, this beautiful scene be abolished; but the supreme heaven is truly called “a kingdom that can not be shaken.” The wise maker has framed it correspondently to the end for which it was designed: it is the seat of his majesty, his sacred temple wherein he diffuses the richest beams of his goodness and glory, and his chosen servants see and praise his adorable excellences for ever. Bates.

13. Having received the promises. If the unseen is ever to rule in men’s lives, it must be through their thoughts. It must become intelligible, clear, real. Dreams and hopes and peradventures are too unsubstantial stuff to be a bulwark against the very real, undeniable present. And such certitude is given through faith which grasps the promises of God, and twines the soul round the risen Saviour so closely that it sits with him in heavenly places. Such certitude is given by faith alone. A. M.

Strangers and pilgrims. At the same time the saints of old declared themselves expectants of a land of promise hereafter, they also declared themselves strangers and pilgrims here. And, therefore, let not men mock and deceive themselves by thinking to compass heaven with one hand and earth with the other, and so to reign as princes in both. For the wisdom of God has decreed it otherwise, and judged one world enough for one man, though it gives him his choice of two. R. S.—We ought every moment to be at the disposal of the Lord, and guard against fixing our place here as if we were to be here for ever. Bear in mind that we are really and of necessity strangers and pilgrims; and yet let us not do anything slightly or negligently. Let us labor as diligently as if we and our labors were to endure always. Though we endure not, let us do enduring works. Let us employ all our faculties in everything we have to do; let us employ to the best advantage our leisure, our resources, the life which God gives us; let us not live by halves, live with regret, but let us be always impressed with the conditions of our existence. While staying, let us be ready to depart; let us be continually departing in spirit. A. V.

It is equally true that we are strangers and pilgrims in time, and that we are living the eternal life. The life of faith is the life which breathes the atmosphere of eternity, which looks on the things unseen and eternal, and beholds the glory of God. And as the heavenly citizenship is ours while we are still walking on earth, so the eternal life is ours though we are still in time. In the midst of cares and sorrows, toil and labor, conflict and struggle, we have a still deeper and more real possession, even that hidden life in which there is no pause and no change, but perennial sunshine and inexhaustible fullness, perfect rest, and the peace which passeth understanding. Part of the daily bread which our heavenly Father gives to his children on earth is to enter daily into the secret place of the Most High, and to be in eternity. Eternity is wrought into time. He who lives in eternity finds time and strength for every good work which God lays before him. A. S.

14. They seek a country.** None can use earth well that prefer not heaven; and none but infants can come to heaven that are not prepared for it by well using earth. Heaven must have our highest esteem, and our habitual love, desire, and joy; but earth must have more of our daily thoughts for present practice. A man that travels to the most desirable home has an habitual desire to it all the way; but his present business is his journey, and therefore his horse, inns, and company, his roads, fatigues, may employ more of his thoughts, and talk, and action, than his home. Baz.—The dissatisfaction of the godly man with this earthly life is a feeling which can exist in the highest prosperity, when the wishes are all gratified, when not a cloud is on the sky. It has no reference whatever to external fortunes; no height of prosperity can extinguish it, and the depths of sorrow only increase it. It has a divine source, and is aroused by a sense of absence from communion more precious than any on earth, by a sense of imperfection which no progress in godliness has repressed, by a sense of want of spiritual enjoyment for which no earthly enjoyment can compensate. With such a dissatisfaction the highest contentment is compatible. The man may be willing, yes, he may rejoice, to stay amid his trials and in a world of sin, in the hope of working for God and of fitting himself for everlasting life. T. D. W.

16. Life’s promise is, you shall have a Canaan; it turns out to be a baseless, airy dream—toil and warfare—nothing that we can call our own. There are two ways of considering this aspect of life. One is the way of sentiment; a way that is trite enough. Saint, sage, sophist, moralist, and preacher have repeated in every possible image, till there is nothing new to say, that life is a bubble, a dream, a delusion, a phantasm. The other is the way of faith: the ancient saints felt as keenly as any moralist could feel the brokenness of its promises; they confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims here; they said that they had here no continuing city, but they did not mournfully moralize on this—they said it cheerfully and rejoiced that it was so. They felt that all was right; they knew that the promise itself had a deeper meaning; they looked undauntedly for “a city which hath foundations.” F. W. R.—They recognized God as their portion, and in turn he was not ashamed to be called their God, that is, not their object of worship, but their protector and guardian. Well he might thus be called, for he had prepared for them a city. He would not suffer these longings of theirs, which were founded on faith and love to him, to be unsatisfied. He had built a city on purpose for their reception. They were to have, instead of tabernacles, in which they removed from one pasturage to another, a settled home; instead of a dwelling among strangers, a dwelling among the truest friends; instead of a lonely tent, a thronged city; instead of a residence without rights or security, a share in that safe commonwealth, that heavenly polity, over which God reigns. T. D. W.

17. By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the 18 promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed 19 be called: accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence 20 also he received him in a figure. By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things 21 to come. By faith Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph; and wor- 22 shipped, leaning upon the top of his staff. By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of 23 the departing of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones. By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he 24 was a proper child; and they were not afraid of the king’s commandment. By faith Moses, 25 when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a 26 season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he 27 had respect unto the recompence of the reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the 28 wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible. Through faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyed the firstborn should touch 29 them. By faith they passed through the Red sea as by dry land: which the Egyptians 30 assaying to do were drowned. By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were com- 31 passed about seven days. By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had received the spies with peace. 32 And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, 33 and of Sampson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the 34 mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weak- ness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. 35 Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting 36 deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: and others had trial of cruel 37 mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about 38 in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the 39 earth. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the 40 promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.

THERE came a faith wholly unknown before; a faith that counted no labor too great to be attempted, no possible sacrifice too great to be made; that believed without argument, endured without remonstrance, happiest under the heaviest cross; that expected success amid whatever disasters; and that no more feared death than did the Lord the waves which he trod on. Such a faith as this had no name for it, in either the Greek or the Roman world, till the gospel touched their very language, and charged it with meanings which they who had formed it had never conceived. No Being had appeared to call it forth. It was not known that the soul of man was capable of it. And well might the hardest and the most prac- ticed wonder, when delicate women, sustained by it, stood unshrinking before the onset of wild beasts; when men, inspired by it, sang praises as destroying fires curled round them at the stake. Such a faith had come to manifestation, and a heroism born of it, of which the world, with all its experience of a strenu- ous ambition and a passionate courage, had seen no instance. R. S. S.

But how did faith do all this? Why, in the strength of love; faith being properly the eye of the soul, to spy out and represent to it those excellent things, the love and desire of which should be hotter than fire and stronger than death; bearing a man through and above all the terrors of both, for the obtaining of so transcendent a good. In short, faith shows the soul its treasure; which, being once seen by it, naturally inflames the affections, and they as naturally engage all the faculties and powers of soul and body in a restless, indefatigable endeavor after it. And thus, in all those heroic instances of passive fortitude, faith wrought by love, and therefore it wrought wonders. R. S.

17. Abraham offered up Isaac. He was divided between believing the promise and obeying the command! God tried him in his faith: his faith was to carry on a conflict with his natural reason, as well as his obedience with his natural affection. But “he accounted that God was able to raise Isaac from the dead”; and he reconciles the command “with the promise.” T. M.

24-29. In all the elements of greatness “Moses the servant of the Lord” stands foremost among the heroes of antiquity. Among statesmen none ever wrought such barbarous materials into so perfect a commonwealth. No military leader ever conducted such a host through such a wilderness. But there is one comprehensive fact that blends all the traits of his character into symmetry and strength, explains all the signs and wonders that he wrought, epitomizes his whole career, and imparts an imperishable life to his name. He was the servant of the Lord; his servant in the face of allurements and oppositions, the like of which have seldom compassed the path of man; his servant to the very end of life, laying his gray hairs on the same altar where he had consecrated the dew of life’s morning a willing sacrifice. V. D.

29. How happy the hearts which in every situation place unbounded confidence in Jehovah’s word! Such may be hedged up on every side, and encompassed, like Israel at the Red Sea, with seemingly insurmountable difficulties; yet even here they will follow Israel’s example; they will cry unto God, and rely upon his mercy. If means can be used, they will use them; if not, they will “stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.” “Speak unto the children of Israel,” said the Lord, “that they go forward!” They went: a way was made in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters. Well may it be said, “By FAITH Israel passed through the Red Sea!” A. Fuller.

The Egyptians were drowned. It is difficult to see why the apostle should bestow this notice upon the buried Egyptians, while the people of God had gone triumphantly over, unless there were some additional illustrations of the nature of faith to be gained by such a contrast. Accordingly, as it is an instance of precisely the same act, performed by believers and unbelievers, with results precisely and to the uttermost extreme opposite, it shows in the strongest manner the comprehensive and decisive nature and operation of the principle of faith, as determining the character and destiny. The same things done in faith and done without faith are entirely different. In the one case they are righteousness and peace, in the other they are guilt and condemnation; in the one case they are life, in the other death. G. B. C.

36,37. The description which the writer to the Hebrews here gives of the saints and prophets of old may, with the strictest truth, be applied to the great multitude of Christian martyrs in the first ages of the gospel, under the various persecutions to which they were exposed. All these barbarities they endured with unshaken patience and firmness, and thereby bore the strongest possible testimony, not only to their own sincerity, but to the divine and miraculous influence of the religion which they taught. It is justly and forcibly observed by Mr. Addison, that the astonishing and unexampled fortitude which was shown by innumerable multitudes of martyrs, in those slow and painful torments that were inflicted on them, is nothing less than a standing miracle during the first three centuries. “I can not,” says he, “conceive a man placed in the burning iron chair of Lyons, amid the insults and mockeries of a crowded amphitheatre, and still keeping his seat, or stretched upon a grate of iron over an intense fire, and breathing out his soul amid the exquisite sufferings of such a tedious execution, rather than renounce his religion, or blaspheme his Saviour, without supposing something supernatural. Such trials seem to me above the strength of human nature, and able to overbear duty, reason, faith, conviction, nay, and the most absolute certainty of a future state. We can easily imagine that a few persons in so good a cause might have laid down their lives at the gibbet, the stake, or the block; but that multitudes of each sex, of every age, of different countries and conditions, should, for nearly three hundred years together, expire leisurely amid the most exquisite tortures, rather than apostatize from the truth, has something in it so far beyond the natural strength and force of mortals, that one can not but conclude there was some miraculous power to support the sufferers; and, if so, here is at once a proof, from history and from fact, of the divine origin of our religion.” P.

They consulted not with flesh and blood, but sacrificed personal ease, and submitted to hardships and trials of which we know comparatively, most of us, absolutely nothing. They were “men that hazarded their lives for the name of the Lord Jesus.” Yes, for their religion they were ready to die, and for it they did die by hecatombs, and by dying for it they often accomplished more than by living and laboring for it. Hence the triumphant remark of Tertullian had quite as much truth as poetry: “The more you mow us down, the thicker we rise; the Christian blood you spill is like the seed you sow: it springs from the earth and fructifies the more.” Slow.

Lives of heroic faith have stood, and still stand, like pillars of witness, to tell the world what can be built on the gospel corner-stone. Buried in an obscurity that no antiquarian disturbs, and which will

never be dispelled, unless God gives tongues to the stone walls of dungeons, or the rocks of the wilderness, or the scattered dust-atoms of heath, moor, and glen, there are, waiting a resurrection, biographies of unknown men, who in toil and hardship and self-denial, under the consciousness of God’s all-beholding eye, have accomplished their lifework, and left in the bosom of their unfrequented valleys the memories of holy faith and love and communion with heaven more precious and beautiful, if we should dig them out even in fragments by our careful research, than anything which buried cities like Nineveh have yielded to the museums of art. E. H. G.