3. This race is appointed for the follower of Jesus, He also finds that he cannot choose his own way to the goal ; the race is set before him, marked out for him, measured and staked in by a power not his own. His birth, his natural condition, tempera- ment, and talents, his opportunities, the vicissitudes of fortune he encounters are all arranged for him — that is the course set before him, and he must win the prize by running in it. He may not leap the ropes, and try a short cut ; he may not demand some softer course, some more elastic turf ; he may not ask that the
^ H. R. Haweis, Music and Morals, 314.
HEBREWS xiT. I, 2 463
sand be lifted and a hard beaten surface prepared for him ; he may not require that the ascents be levelled and the rough places made smooth ; he must take the course as he finds it. In other words, he must not wait till things are made easier for him ; he must not refuse to run because the course is not all he could wish ; he must recognize that the difficulties of his position in life are the race set before him. The Christian must open his eyes to the fact that it is in the familiar surroundings of the life we now actually lead that God calls us to run ; in the callings we have chosen, amid the annoyances we daily experience, where we are, and as we are, from the very position we this day occupy, our race is set before us.
^ Stewart closely resembled his hero Livingstone in his un- failing reliance upon God and prayer and the Bible in his hours of need. Converse with God in African solitudes had fostered his piety, his self-knowledge, and self-reliance. Under the depression of fever he used to calm his mind by prayer, and so restore it to a quiet confidence in God. In one of his journeys he was de- serted by many of his carriers who took with them some articles which he needed, and which he could not replace. He thought that he must turn back at once. But on that day he was reading Hebrews xii. 1 : " Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses ... let us run with patience (endurance, holding on and holding out) the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus." The words came to him as on angels' wings : he marched right on and reached his goal. From the very first he bore himself as a hero of the Dark Continent. In the originality of his career, in tenacity of purpose, in his habit of never quailing before difficulties, in splendid audacity of programme, in energy, in sanctified common sense, and in liis inexhaustible faith in the elevation of the African, Stewart set an inspiring example to missionary pioneers.^
4. We must not suppose that the race is a very distinguished and splendid career of Christian enterprise, which only some apostle or missionary or reformer might be thought able to under- take. The people to whom the author writes were ordinary Christians, poor Jewish converts, most probably people of less than average means and pretensions. They had no resources at their command. Their names are unknown. They were mere
* J. Wells, Stewart of Lovedale, 92.
464 THE RACE SET BEFORE US
Hebrews. Their career and influence, whatever it was, must have been confined to the narrowest limits. And though the writer speaks somewhat grandly of what was set before them, and brings them into connexion with Jesus, and the great forefathers of their race who subdued kingdoms and wrought righteousness, they were probably very pitiable persons, so far as the world's judg- ment would go ; and some of us might have been rather shy of associating much with them. Therefore the race set before them cannot have had anything very extraordinary in it.
Nevertheless, it was the same race as that run by the Lord Himself — the race of faith. In His case it was faith in God, the God of salvation ; the faith of One conscious of being the Messiah, the Eedeemer, entering with the Father into the great and merciful purpose of salvation, which He could accomplish in no other way than by coming down into the family of men, and running this race of faith as their forerunner and the leader of their salvation. In the case of the Hebrews it was faith in God the Saviour, and in His Son the Eedeemer, as the leader of salvation, and the author and finisher of the faith. Even the faith of Jesus, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, was not the isolated faith of a mere individual out of connexion with other men. It was the faith of the Messiah, one with men, the leader of their salvation conscious of His relations to men, their forerunner, the author and finisher of the faith. And thus the course of the Hebrews, though nothing but the ordinary believing life of very mean persons, becomes to the writer's mind something great, and even one with the life of the Lord Himself.
^ It is not because, like many others, Jesus is a moral example to us, but because He represents something more — the impassioned struggle of humanity after the impossible, after that which the moral law only tells us of, but does not show us how to attain — the spiritual, imaginative, and fine perfection we shall become when the bitter struggle of life for righteousness and joy is closed in victory. In realizing that ideal for us, in giving inspiration to our souls, in His inward support of the battle by which we press forward towards the mark as men to a city encompassed with a host of foes, He is dearer to us than He is as our moral example.^