run well your race. Keep your eyes upon the goal, fight
the good fight of faith, be in earnest, live every moment for God, and
you can have a dying testimony like the above.

CRUCIFIXION OF SELF.

It requires no little courage, coupled with the grace of God, to go to
Calvary. There are many Christians who will follow Jesus so long as it
is "Hosanna to the King of David," who fail to follow him to Calvary.
Most persons love the sweets of grace, and thus many follow the Lord for
the loaves and fishes; but when it comes to following him for his own
sake, even unto judgment, where our earthliness is revealed, then too
often we follow "afar off." Many will serve for reward, who refuse to
serve for righteousness' sake. Satan understood this in the case of
Job; so he said to the Lord, "Doth Job serve God for naught?" Job
endured even unto the end, and proved by actual test his devotion to God
and not to His gifts.

Saints are like soldiers--many there be who enlist, but few who
fearlessly face death. All like life, though it be a life out of harmony
with God. Satan said of Job, "All that a man hath will he give for his
life." So Christians' last surrender is their own earthly life. They
love the earthly, the dust; and to die to all that is not divine is a
price that few will pay.

Many talk of crucifixion, yea, claim to be crucified, who know hardly
the first step away from self. To let self, the flesh, and all evil
within perish; to draw the last drop of earthliness from our veins,--is
a price but few will pay for all the life of God. God through Moses gave
to the children of Israel a heritage; but never in their greatest
conquest did they attain all of that heritage. So with Christians: how
few ever attain all of that God-life offered them through our Lord Jesus
Christ. The Israelites made a league with certain of the inhabitants of
the land whom they should have destroyed. How many Christians spare
those enemies within which should die. They may force the death of many,
perhaps most of their earthliness; but somewhere there is that with
which they will not part. Of course, the earthliness may not be manifest
as before; "hewers of wood and drawers of water" they become, yet they
are there and live there. "I will be found of them when they seek me
with their whole heart." Wholehearted devotion to God is a rare quality,
and only the fewest of the few ever attain it. An idol somewhere, a
desire, a wish, a preference