me if I tell of Gideon. Barak, Samson, Jephthah; of David and Samuel
and the prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought
righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions,
quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from
weakness were made strong, waxed mighty in war, turned to flight
armies of aliens. Women received their dead by a resurrection: and
others were tortured, not accepting their deliverance; that they
might obtain a better resurrection: and others had trial of mockings
and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: they were
stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were tempted, they were slain
with the sword: they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins; being
destitute, afflicted, evil-entreated (of whom the world was not
worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves, and the holes
of the earth. And these all, having had witness borne to them
through their faith, received not the promise, God having provided
some better thing concerning us, that apart from us they should not
be made perfect. Therefore let us also, seeing we are compassed
about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight,
and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with
patience the race that is set before us."--HEB. xi. 20-xii. 1
(R.V.).

Time fails us to dilate on the faith of the other saints of the old
covenant. But they must not be passed over in silence. The impression
produced by our author's splendid roll of the heroes of faith in the
eleventh chapter is the result quite as much of an accumulation of
examples as of the special greatness of a few among them. At the close
they appear like an overhanging "cloud" of witnesses for God.

By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau; and Jacob, dying in a strange
land, blessed the sons of Joseph, distinguishing wittingly, and
bestowing on _each_[289] his own peculiar blessing. His faith became a
prophetic inspiration, and even distinguished between the future of
Ephraim and the future of Manasseh. He did not create the blessing. He
was only a steward of God's mysteries. Faith well understood its own
limitations. But it drew its inspiration to foretell what was to come
from a remembrance of God's faithfulness in the past. For, before[290]
he gave his blessing, he had bowed his head in worship, leaning upon the
top of his staff. In his