(2) The great Sender of the message makes the claim. We are bound to Him personally. He asks for our loyalty, our per- sonal loyalty to Him, and in that loyalty we shall conquer ; because the Christian life is sustained by faith in a personal life, a personal power, and a personal love. We are not supported by abstractions, by adherence to abstract principles of righteousness and truth. Man requires a living fount of power, something warm with life and love ; and such is the support of the Christian life. We are held in our course; we are sustained in all the darkness and the trial and persecution and apparent defeat by cleaving to a great heart that was large enough to sacrifice itself for us, and a great loving, throbbing hand that is strong enough to save us.
^ As in Westminster Abbey at the coronation of King George v. I saw the Prince of Wales kneeling before his father and uttering the old feudal covenant, I thought of how, in ancient times, the old Saxon retainers used to come to him whom they called their lord, whose lands they held, and used to kneel there before him, and put their hands in his, and to say to him, " Dear my Lord, I become liege-man of thine, for life and limb and earthly regard, and I will keep faith and loyalty to thee for life and death, so help me God." And I would to God that we might all in spirit be found kneeling before the Lord of all of us, putting hands of trust in His, and saying to Him with earnestness and sincerity of soul, " Dear my Lord, I become liege-man of Thine for life and limb and earthly regard, and I will keep faith and loyalty to Thee for life and death, so help me God." 2
1 A. J. Mason, Life of William Edtoard ColliiMt 185. ' 0. Silvester Home.
REVELATION ii. lo 87
3. Faithfulness is victory. When the world kills off the faithful man because it cannot bend his will and take him away from his loyalty, it is not the man that is defeated; it is the world. The world does its last cowardly act, and therein makes its last confession of impotency. The man has conquered it. It can do nothing with him, and when it puts him to death it admits that it has been defeated by him. The Christian conquered the world when he sang at the stake? The Christian conquered when he could fearlessly stand before the tribunal that condemned him, when he talked of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come until the judge quaked before him ? No, do not be misled by appearances : it is the loyal man that conquers, the man that is true to principle, that in a way compels the world to persecute and destroy him, because he is stronger than the world in which he lives. " I know that persecution and death are upon thee, but be thou loyal ; be thou faithful ; thou shalt be victorious, and thou art already victor, in being loyal." The truly strong life is the life that can defy circumstances, that can make every failure a stepping-stone to a nobler resolve, that can maintain its integrity when all the world is against it.
^ Faithfulness unto death is God's standard for human life. On this He bases His judgments. As we apply this standard, our views on many things undergo a radical change. We come to see that the thing of value is not speed but endurance. The real hero is not he who makes the fastest schedule but he who lasts the longest. There are those who go up like a rocket and come down like a stick. It is the power to hold on that wins. Great Britain's most famous general once said that the difference between the soldiers of his country and those of another was not that the English soldier was braver than other soldiers, but that he was brave five minutes longer. It is endurance that wins the crown.
The thing of value is not achievement but fidelity. It is not what we accomplish but the way we accomplish it. It is our ideals, our principles. It is not success that God looks at, but the struggle. Success is a cheap thing, it is merely relative ; but struggle is an affair of eternity, it is a spiritual asset. ^
4. The text does not mean merely, " Be faithful until death calls you away." The passage is very frequently quoted with a mistaken meaning, as if it simply meant, " Be faithful as long as
1 J. I. Vance, Tendemy, 229.
88 FIDELITY AND ITS REWARD
you live ; do not give up while life lasts." But it means far more than that ; it means, " Be faithful, even though it costs you your life. Be faithful unto prison, be faithful unto persecution, yea, though you be in the presence of the executioner — for faithfulness may entail death — be faithful up to that highest sacrifice of life itself if necessary on the altar of loyalty to Jesus Christ." " Unto death " is thus an intensive, not an extensive, term. Christ does not mean, merely, " to thy life's end," contemplating life under aspects of time, but " to the sharpest and worst which the enemy can inflict upon thee, even to death itself." " Dare and endure," the words would say, " the worst that evil men can threaten and inflict, even death itself." It is true that Christian fidelity must continue to the close of life. Our Lord's promise is to " those who endure to the end," that " they shall be saved." He also said that no one, putting his hand to the plough and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God. It is true, no soldier of the cross can win the fight, and wear the honour of victor, who turns from the foe in the day of battle. But, as has been said, the text points out not so much the duration as the intensity of our fidelity. It is, " Be faithful to the enduring of all trials, privations, sufferings, imprisonments, tortures, even to death itself. Endure everything for Christ, and the crown of life shall be yours."