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should fall to their lot. The Christian of whom everybody speaks well, can hardly be a faithful man.
It is no reply to this to point to the honours paid to eminent Christians aner their deaths, and the reject with which worldly men have attended their funerals and spoken of their memories. The world has always liked dead saints better than living ones. The Pharisees could build the tombs of the prophets, when they were dead.
29. — In patience.,, possess... souls.] We must not suppose that these words mean, " Keep your souls in a state of patience." This is a common interpretation, but not a correct one. The meaning appears rather to be, " Win, or procure, or keep in pos- session the salvation of your souls, through* or by patience." Alford paraphrases it, " This endurance is God's appointed way in and by which your salvation is to be put in your possession." The expression " Work out your own salvation," (Phil. ii. 12.) will naturally occur to a Bible reader as somewhat similar.
Pearce takes the word " souls " to mean nothing more than " your lives," and thinks the verse may be paraphrased, " Your perseverance shall be rewarded with the preservation of your lives in the general ruin." Yet the expression of the verse pre- ceding is so clearly a spiritual promise, that the verse before us seems to mean something more than the saving of mere bodily life.