ttle know how much
God prizes it, if our life, which is nothing, is valued by us more
highly. When it is so, we manifest a marvelous degree of stupidity. We
can not save our life at the expense of our confession with out
acknowledging that we hold it in higher estimation than the honor of
God and the salvation of our souls.

A heathen could say that "It was a miserable thing to save life by
giving up the only things which made life desirable!" And yet he and
others like him never knew for what end men are placed in the world, and
why they live in it. It is true they knew enough to say that men ought
to follow virtue, to conduct themselves honestly and without reproach;
but all their virtues were mere paint and smoke. We know far better what
the chief aim of life should be, namely, to glorify God, in order that
He may be our glory. When this is not done, wo to us! And we can not
continue to live for a single moment upon the earth without heaping
additional curses on our heads. Still we are not ashamed to purchase
some few days to languish here below, renouncing eternal kingdom by
separating ourselves from Him by whose energy we are sustained in life.

Were we to ask the most ignorant, not to say the most brutish, persons
in the world why they live, they would not venture to answer simply that
it is to eat, and drink, and sleep; for all know that they have been
created for a higher and holier end. And what end can we find if it be
not to honor God, and allow ourselves to be governed by Him, like
children by good parents; so that after we have finished the journey of
this corruptible life, we may be received into His eternal inheritance?
Such is the principal, indeed the sole end. When we do not take it into
account, and are intent on a brutish life, which is worse than a
thousand deaths, what can we allege for our excuse? To live and not know
why is unnatural. To reject the causes for which we live, under the
influence of a foolish longing for a respite of some few days, during
which we are to live in the world, while separated from God--I know not
how to name such infatuation and madness!

But as persecution is always harsh and bitter, let us consider how and
by what means Christians may be able to fortify themselves with
patience, so as unflinchingly to expose their life for the truth of God.
The text which we have read out, when it is properly understood, is
sufficient to induce us to do so. The apostle says, Let us