"Seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses."
1. The word " witness " has two meanings in our language, and out of that double meaning has come some confusion, and a misunderstanding of the text. The word means one who looks on and sees — a spectator ; it also means one who gives his evidence. It is easy to see how the word came to have the double meaning. He who gives evidence must have some personal knowledge of the matter, and that personal knowledge comes mostly by seeing. But the Greek word which is used here has but one meaning, and that is clear and unmistakable. The word itself has been adopted into our language — " martyr " : seeing we are compassed about by so great a cloud of martyrs — confessors, witnesses who have borne their testimony to the power of faith in their own lives. The word runs through the eleventh chapter, variously translated — witness, testimony, testifying, evidence. The author of the Epistle puts Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and Abraham, and Moses, and these other great saints into the witness-box, and they ^ W. G. Jordan, The Kingship of Sdf-Conlrol, 11.
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tell us what faith has done for them. Then he turns to us as the jury as if to say, " Sirs, you have heard what these have said, these, who have come as near to a true and worthy life as any that ever lived, I have a great many other witnesses who are all prepared to give similar testimony if time permitted. Wherefore, then, seeing that we are compassed about with so great a cloud of those who have shown us what faith has done for them, let us turn to ourselves and run the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of faith."
^ When immortal Bunyan makes his picture of the persecuting passions bringing in their verdict of guilty, who pities Faithful ? That is a rare and blessed lot which some greatest men have not attained, to know ourselves guiltless before a condemning crowd — to be sure that what we are denounced for is solely the good in us. The pitiable lot is that of the man who could not call him- self a martyr even though he were to persuade himself that the men who stoned him were but ugly passions incarnate — who knows that he is stoned, not for professing the Eight, but for not being the man he professed to be.*
2. To what do they witness ?
(1) They are witnesses to a Divine, invisible, eternal life; witnesses to something that many of us do not see at all, to something that most of us see only vaguely, dimly, occasionally. They are witnesses to a great truth in the faith of which they walk, by which they were inspired, which perhaps we fail to see, or see only at special times and on special occasions.
^ Walking along the street, you see a group of men standing, looking up into the heavens; and you are pretty sure they see something, and you wonder what it is, and stop and look where they are looking. So we see men gathered in monasteries, gathered in clos6ts, gathered in houses of worship, drawn together by a vision, looking up into the heavens at something invisible to most of us in the dust and darkness of life. And because these men are looking we are sure there is something they see. A man without any love of music may come into a concert-room, and the music which is sounding out from the platform may mean nothing to Tiim, but surely he cannot look upon this audience rapt in attention and not know that there is something in music, whether he appreciates it or not ? So it is impossible for any man to look . * George Eliot, Middlemaroh,
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out upon the great worshipping congregations of all ages and all times, seeing men stirred not only with a momentary passion, a temporary enthusiasm, but lifted up into a higher, nobler, and grander life, and not feel sure that there is a truth, a reality, in spiritual life.^
(2) They are by their very lives witnesses to the power that inspired them. They are witnesses to what God can make out of common men and women. In the sculptor's studio you see the form shaped by his skilful hands, and your heart is touched, your soul is lifted up ; you receive through the clay, but not from the clay, a new thought or a new emotion. You see what a great sculptor can make out of common clay. Put a violin in the hands of a poor player, and you will put your fingers in your ears to keep out the dissonance. Put the same instrument in the hands of a skilful player, and you will feel the soul breathing through the instrument. It is the player that makes the difference. Look all along the line of human history, and you may see what kind of figures God can make out of clay like yours ; you may hear what kind of music He can play on instruments such as you are. The great and good men of the world are witnesses to the power, not our- selves, but which is in ourselves — to the power that makes men great.