October 27

Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. - 2 Timothy 2:3.

ALL Christians are called to experience a warfare, a real, trying, and a very peculiar warfare; so that every believer can say with the Apostle: “So fight I not as one that beateth the air;” for “we wrestle,” says the Apostle,” we agonize, not merely with flesh and blood, but with a numerous, mighty, invisible, subtle, and malignant foe.” In other wars there are some exemptions, or substitutes may be provided; but no one can engage in this warfare for us.

No one can believe, or repent, or obey, or deny himself for us. And if he promises and vows all these things on our behalf, he promises and vows what he is unable ever to perform. In other wars there are dispensations allowed; for instance, as to the royal family, ministers of the gospel, the aged, the sick and infirm, and as to females and children. But there is no discharge in this war.” Ministers must even officer this army. Women must become Amazons, and children must resemble Hannibal- who, at the age of nine, laid his little hand upon the altar and swore eternal enmity to the Romans. And they who are “faint” must yet be “pursuing,” and “endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ.”

And then as to the endurance of these hardships of war, we find there is to be no cessation in this warfare. We are forbidden to conclude a peace with these enemies, or to enter into a truce with them, or even to make an armistice with them during the burial of the dead. The war is to go on night and day, summer and winter, in sickness and in health. There is to be no relaxation either of fighting or of watching; none until death proclaims the Christian’s deliverance and his triumph.

And then this warfare, this contention, is not for a trifle, as is often the case with wars amongst men, as the war between England and America was-for a pound of tea. No, but here the most awful consequences are depending. Here everything is for life-the life of the soul, the life of eternity. Eternity is to result from this struggle, an eternity of happiness or woe. If we do not overcome, we are vanquished and undone for ever.

“Fight on, my faithful band, he cries,

Nor fear the mortal blow,

Who first in such a warfare dies

Shall speediest victory know.”