h we are 'compassed about with a cloud of witnesses,' we look
to the Christ, the supreme Arbiter, and take acquittal or
condemnation, life or death, from Him.

That judgment, persistent all through each of our lives, is
preliminary to the future tribunal and sentence. The Apostle employs
in this context two distinct words, both of which are translated in
our version 'judge.' The one which is used in these three clauses, on
which I have been commenting, means a preliminary examination, and
the one which is used in the next verse means a final decisive trial
and sentence. So, dear brethren, Christ is gathering materials for
His final sentence; and you and I are writing the depositions which
will be adduced in evidence. Oh! how little all that the world may
have said about a man will matter then! Think of a man standing
before that great white throne, and saying, 'I held a very high place
in the estimation of my neighbours. The newspapers and the reviews
blew my trumpet assiduously. My name was carved upon the plinth of a
marble statue, that my fellow-citizens set up in honour of my
many virtues,'--and the name was illegible centuries before the
statue was burned in the last fire!

Brother! seek for the praise from Him, which is praise indeed. If He
says, 'Well done, good and faithful servant,' it matters little what
censures men may pass on us. If He says, 'I never knew you,' all
their praises will not avail. 'Wherefore we labour that, whether
present or absent, we may be well-pleasing to Him.'

THE FESTAL LIFE

'Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old
leaven ... but with the unleavened bread of
sincerity and truth.'--1 COR. v. 8.

There had been hideous immorality in the Corinthian Church. Paul had
struck at it with heat and force, sternly commanding the exclusion of
the sinner. He did so on the ground of the diabolical power of
infection possessed by evil, and illustrated that by the very obvious
metaphor of leaven, a morsel of which, as he says, 'will leaven the
whole lump,' or, as we say, 'batch.' But the word 'leaven' drew up
from the depths of his memory a host of sacred associations connected
with the Jewish Passover. He remembered the sedulous hunting in every
Jewish house for every scrap of leavened matter; the slaying of the
Paschal Lamb, and the following feast. Carried away by these
associations, he forgets the sin in the Corinthian Church for a
moment, and turns to set forth, in