The promise of an incorruptible crown is not only for this life but also for the life to come. Here we have the promise of life, that fuller life which men want, " the life of which our veins are scant," even in the fullest tide and heyday of earthly existence. But the promise sets that future over against the present, as if then first should men know what it means to live : so buoyant, elastic, unwearied shall be their energies, so manifold the new outlets for activity, and the new inlets for the surrounding glory and beauty ; so incorruptible and glorious shall be their new being. Here we live a living death ; there we shall live indeed ; and that will be the crown, not only in regard to physical, but also in regard to spiritual, powers and consciousness.
But remember that all this full tide of life is Christ's gift. There is no such thing as natural immortality ; there is no such thing as independent life. All Being, from the lowest creature up to the loftiest created spirit, exists by one law, the continual impartation to it of life from the fountain of life, according to its capacities. And unless Jesus Christ, all through the eternal ages of the future, imparted to the happy souls that sit garlanded at His board the life by which they live, the wreaths would wither on their brows, and the brows would melt away, and dis- solve from beneath the wreaths. " I will give him a crown of life."
1 G. T. S. Farquhar.
i CORINTHIANS ix. 25 277
U There is a pathetic and beautiful story related of Jenny Lind — Madame Goldschmidt. Her innate religious feeling caused her to leave the stage at the height of her extraordinary triumph. Some time after, an English friend found her at a seaside retreat. The famous artiste was "sitting on the steps of a bathing- machine, on the sands, with a Lutheran Bible open on her knee, and looking out into the glory of a sunset that was shining over the waters." The friends talked " and the talk drew near to the inevitable question, ' Oh, Madame Goldschmidt, how was it that you ever came to abandon the stage at the very height of your success ? ' ' When, every day,' was the quiet answer, ' it made me think less of this (laying a finger on the Bible), and nothing at all of that (pointing out to the sunset), what could I do ? ' " x
(3) A crown of righteotcsriess. — It is a crown of righteousness. Though that phrase may mean the wreath that rewards righteous- ness, it seems more in accordance with the other similar expres- sions to regard it, too, as the material of which the crown is composed. It is not enough that there should be festal gladness, not enough that there should be calm repose, not enough that there should be flashing glory, not enough that there should be fulness of life. To accord with the intense moral earnestness of the Christian system there must be, emphatically, in the Christian hope, cessation of all sin and investiture with all purity. The word means the same thing as the ancient promise, " Thy people shall be all righteous." It means the same thing as the latest promise of the ascended Christ, "They shall walk with me in white." And it sets the very climax and culmination on the other hopes, declaring that absolute, stainless, infallible righteous- ness which one day shall belong to our weak and sinful spirits.
U I love Dinah next to my own children. An' she makes one feel safer when she's i' the house ; for she's like the driven snow : anybody might sin for two as had her at their elbow.2
U Since the beginning of history thoughtful men have been asking what is man's summum bonum, his highest good, his heart's true ideal. " Power," " wealth," " pleasure," " wisdom," " culture," are some of the answers. The true answer is " God." "I have no good beyond Thee," said one who had learned the secret. " Lord, give me Thyself," was Augustine's constant prayer ; and he adds the exquisite reason, " Habet omnia qui habet habentem omnia" — "he has all who has Him that has all." 1 "W. J. Lacoy, Masters of To-morrow, 210. 2 Mrs. Poyser, in Adam Bede.
278 FOR THE CROWN
Slowly or suddenly we rise from delight in God's gifts to delight in Himself. " Unless," says Hooker, " the last good, which is desired for itself, be infinite, we do evil making it our end. No good is infinite but God ; therefore He is our felicity and bliss." Every soul has capacities greater than the infinite sea, and only He who filleth heaven and earth, whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain, can satisfy one little human heart.1
Mysterious Death! who in a single hour
Life's gold can so refine;
And by thy art divine Change mortal weakness to immortal power!
Bending beneath the weight of eighty years,
Spent with the noble strife
Of a victorious life, We watched her fading heavenward, through our tears.
But, ere the sense of loss our hearts had wrung,
A miracle was wrought,
And swift as happy thought She lived again, brave, beautiful, and young.