^ Perhaps nothing in the memory of this generation has touched the hearts of the English-speaking race, and indeed of the whole world, like the pathos and the courage of those last letters of Captain Scott's, written in the Antarctic solitudes, with Death at his very elbow. The world has been thrilled to see how nobly and splendidly an Englishman can die. "We did intend to finish ourselves when things proved like this, but we have decided to die naturally in the track." It is fine. But this is finer : " For I am already being offered, and the time of my departure is come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith." ^
^ St. Paul had looked too often into death's dark face to be afraid of it now. Yet, after all, that is but a little thing to say. There are many to whom death is no longer " the shadow feared of man," who have not St. Paul's high hope. Some there are, indeed, who welcome death ; it is for them the one door of escape from the unutterable pain and weariness of life. St, Paul welcomed death because he saw beyond death. " There is the Mainstream," writes James Payn, " the Backwater and the Weir, and there ends the River of Life." What is after that he does not know ; with him it is from death to dark. But with St. Paul it was from death to day. " Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day. . . . The Lord will deliver me from every evil work, and will save me unto his heavenly kingdom." What are Nero's judgment-seat and the executioner's flashing brand to the man who holds that faith ? ^
^ Archibald Alexander.
2 G. Jackson, TU TaUc-Talk of Jesus, 248.
2 TIMOTHY IV. 6-8 231
^ I had a friend very ill. For three days his life hung in doubt with his physician. When he began to recover, he said to me : " Death cama and looked me in the face ; but, thank God ! I could look him in the face without fear." Here stands a man face to face with the last enemy in a far more terrible form. To die as a public criminal at the hand of the executioner is very different from lying down to sleep one's self into another world — very different even from falling in the field fighting for all that is dearest to the patriotic heart. Yet the Apostle speaks of his fate as calmly as if he were only about to set out on a journey or embark for a voyage.^'
2. There is great beauty and force in the metaphors which St. Paul here uses for dtath.
(1) We have, first, thtxt of an offering or, more particularly, of a drink-offering or libation : " I am already being poured out." No doubt the special reason for the selection of this figure here is St. Paul's anticipation of a violent death. The shedding of his blood was to be an offering poured out like some costly wine upon the altar. But the power of the figure reaches far beyond that special application of it. We may all make our deaths a sacrifice, an offering to God, for we may yield up our will to God's will, and so turn that last struggle into an act of worship and self- surrender. When we recognize His hand, when we submit our wills to His purposes, when " we live unto the Lord," if we live, and " die unto Him," if we die, then death will lose all its terror and most of its pain, and will become for us what it was to St. Paul, a true offering up of self in thankful worship, j? We may even say that so we shall, in a certain subordinate sense, be "made conformable unto his death" who committed His spirit into His Father's hands, and laid down His life, of His own will. The essential character and far-reaching effects of this sacrifice we cannot imitate, but we can so yield up our wills to God and leave life so willingly and trustfully that death shall make our sacrifice complete.
(2) Another more familiar and equally striking figure is used when St. Paul speaks of the time of his " departure." The thought is found in most tongues. Death is a going away. But the well-worn image received new depth and sharpness of
* J. Cross, Old Wine and New, 142.
232 THE CROWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
outline in Christianity. To those who have learned the meaning of Christ's resurrection, and who feed their souls on the hopes which it warrants, death is merely a change of place or state, an accident affecting locality, and little more. We have had plenty of changes before. Life has been one long series of departures. This is different from the others, mainly in that it is the last, and that to go away from this visible and fleeting show, where we wander aliens among things which have no true kindred with us, is to go home, where there will be no more pulling up of the tent- pegs, and toiling across the deserts in monotonous change.