, and the palsied knees;
and make straight paths for your feet, that that which is lame be
not turned out of the way, but rather be healed. Follow after peace
with all men, and the sanctification without which no man shall see
the Lord: looking carefully lest _there be_ any man that falleth
short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up
trouble _you_, and thereby the many be defiled; lest _there be_ any
fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one mess of meat
sold his own birthright. For ye know that even when he afterward
desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected (for he found no
place of repentance), though he sought it diligently with
tears."--HEB. xii. 1-17 (R.V.).

The author has told his readers that they have need of endurance;[329]
but when he connects this endurance with faith, he describes faith, not
as an enduring of present evils, but as an assurance of things hoped for
in the future. His meaning undoubtedly is that assurance of the future
gives strength to endure the present. These are two distinct aspects of
faith. In the eleventh chapter both sides of faith are illustrated in
the long catalogue of believers under the Old Testament. Examples of men
waiting for the promise and having an assurance of things hoped for come
first. They are Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. In
some measure these witnesses of God suffered; but the more prominent
feature of their faith was expectation of a future blessing. Moses is
next mentioned. He marks a transition. In him the two qualities of faith
appear to strive for the pre-eminence. He chooses to be evil entreated
with the people of God, because he knows that the enjoyment of sin is
short-lived; he suffers the reproach of Christ, and looks away from it
to the recompense of reward. After him conflict and endurance are more
prominent in the history of believers than assurance of the future. Many
of these later heroes of faith had a more or less dim vision of the
unseen; and in the case of those of whose faith nothing is said in the
Old Testament except that they endured, the other phase of this
spiritual power is not wanting. For the Church is one through the ages,
and the clear eye of an earlier period cannot be disconnected from the
strong arm of a later time.

In the twelfth chapter the two aspects of faith exemplified in the
saints of the Old Testament are urged on th