a contest of the kind which the word naturally suggests. Here the effort
is not to be first at the goal. We run the race "through endurance."
Mental suffering is of the essence of the conflict. Our success in
winning the prize does not mean the failure of others. The failure of
our rivals does not imply that we attain the mark. In fact, the
Christian life is not the competition of rivals, but the enduring of
shame at the hands of evil men, which endurance is a discipline. Maybe
we do not sufficiently lay to heart that the discipline of life consists
mainly in overcoming rightly and well the antagonism of men. The one
bitterness in the life of our Lord Himself was the malice of the wicked.
Apart from that unrelenting hatred we may regard His short life as
serenely happy. The warning which He addressed to His disciples was that
they should beware of men. But, though wisdom is necessary, the
conflict must not be shunned. When it is over, nothing will more
astonish the man of faith than that he should have been afraid, so weak
did malice prove to be.

To run our course successfully, we must keep our eyes steadily fixed on
Jesus.[338] It is true we are compassed about with a cloud of God's
faithful witnesses. But they are a cloud. The word signifies not merely
that they are a large multitude, but also that we cannot distinguish
individuals in the immense gathering of those who have gone before. The
Church has always cherished a hope that the saints of heaven are near
us, perhaps seeing our efforts to follow their glorious example. Beyond
this we dare not go. Personal communion is possible to the believer on
earth with One only of the inhabitants of the spiritual world. That One
is Jesus Christ. Even faith cannot discern the individual saints that
compose the cloud. But it can look away from all of them to Jesus. It
looks unto Jesus as He is and as He was: as He is for help; as He was
for a perfect example.

1. Faith regards Jesus as He is,--the "Leader and Perfecter." The words
are an allusion to what the writer has already told us in the Epistle
concerning Jesus. He is "the Captain or Leader of our salvation,"[339]
and "by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are
sanctified."[340] He leads onward our faith till we attain the goal, and
for every advance we make in the course He strengthens, sustains, and in
the end completes our faith. The runner, when he seizes the crown, will
not be found to have been exhaust