The Good Fight

“I have fought a good fight.” — 2 TIM. iv. 7.

gods do so unto me, and more also, if the dust of Samaria shall suffice for handfuls for all the people that fellow me.” Such insolent message did Ben-hadad send to the king of Israel. Ahab’s reply was as spirited as it was wise, and one that, from such a man as the husband of Jezebel, and the cowardly murderer of Naboth, was like the fire that flashes, when it is struck, from a cold, black fiint; “Tell him,” said the king, roused by the insult, and perhaps inspired for the occasion, “Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.” Prophetic words! Ere four-and-twenty hours the Syrian host was scattered by the arms, or, rather, by the God of Israel, like autumn leaves before the wind; and this proud boaster, foremost of a band of horsemen, was galloping away for life.

When the apostle, the humblest as well as the holiest of men, used the words from which I intend to speak, he did not lie open to any such taunt as Ahab’s. He was no young disciple on his way to battle with armour unsoiled and arm unwearied. Nor, like many a Christian man, was he in the thick of it, now giving and now receiving blows; now with sword flashing and voice shouting, pressing forward, and now, alas! borne back; now brought to his knees, and again, rescued by his captain and revived by prayer, rising to his feet to rush on his foes and renew the combat. Paul was in none of these circumstances. He had reached the close of a long warfare. In him we behold a veteran great in fight and gray in years. On his arm a battered shield; his hand returning to its scabbard a sword that had been often buried in the body of his sins; on his head the helmet of salvation, dinted with the blows of many a hard-fought fight; he stands before us — covered, if I may say so, with the scars of a hundred battles, and crowned with the laurels of a hundred victories. His sufferings, toils, trials, travels, preachings, prayings over, with foot planted on the threshold of glory, he is about to enter on his reward. The battle fought, the victory won, nothing remains but to die — and that he accounted nothing. The dark valley, in fear of which so many are all their lifetime subject to bondage, dreading it as the hardest part of the course, he does not reckon as else than the goal by which the racer stands, panting, to receive the crown; he says, “I have finished my course.” Nor does he regard death as his enemy; not he. He has no quarrel with death; no fear of it; no battle to fight with it; “I have fought a good fight,” he says — fought it out. It is done and over; and never were silent night and soft couch more welcome at the close of a long day’s journey or of a hard day’s fighting, than death and the grave to him who exclaimed, “I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also who love his appearing.”

I. Look at the Christian life under the aspect of a fight.

In a sense, this aspect of life is not peculiar to that of the Christian’s. Look at the world! What a scene of disquiet and disorder! what a succession of struggles, which many begin at the cradle and leave not but at the grave! With poverty, or hard toil, or disease, or domestic trials, or unavoidable misfortunes, or, in some cases, all of these together, many have to battle their whole way through life — they rise up early, and lie down late, and eat the bread of sorrow. How does ambition, not confined to any class, spur on the eager competitors in the race for honours or riches! What a struggle there is amongst the different members of society to get uppermost! and while some are straining every nerve to improve their position, it needs the utmost endeavours of others to keep theirs.

How like this world often seems to a rock at sea, on which, eager to escape the jaws of death, more drowning men seek standing-room than it offers; and when they whose gain has been others’ loss, when the few that have risen on the shoulders of the many that sink, have possessed themselves in wealth, or power, or pleasure, of the objects of their ambition, they have only reached a bare, black, unsheltered rock, on which, at some future day, a giant wave rises roaring to sweep them from their slippery footing. Let no man deceive himself. Even this world is not to be got without fighting j and, compared with the nobler struggles and prizes of the faith, though its rewards be laurel or even golden crowns, it presents a scene of no more real dignity than a nursery quarrel — children fighting for some gilded toy — the street where ragged boys struggle, and tear, and roll over each other for a few copper coins. I admit that it has pleasures; but its sweetest enjoyments perish in the using. I admit that it has roses; but they are beset with thorns, and the hand that plucks them bleeds. Nor are any of these to be obtained without a struggle. The few prizes which, among many blanks, the world offers to a host of competitors are won only by the hard work, hard struggling, hard fighting, with out which you gain no topmost place in any profession, no heaps of money, no niche in the temple of fame. Its pearls are not to be picked up among the pebbles of the shore; he who would possess, must seek them in a sea where sharks are swimming and storms rage. Indeed, I dare to say that, so far from the followers of the world being exempt from toil and hardship, it would not take a man half the care and time and trouble to get to heaven, which it takes any man to get rich, and many a man to get to hell. The question, therefore, is not whether we shall fight, but what for, and on whose side 1 — on that of Jesus, whose award is life, or on that of sin, whose wages is death?

Now, with regard to the Christian’s fight, I remark,

i. He has to fight against the world.

It hated me, says our Lord, before it hated you. It had no crown for his brow but one of thorns; it found no way to exalt him but on a bloody cross; and when he, at whose approach happy angels threw open the gates of heaven, appeared at its door, it refused him a night’s lodging. The foxes have holes, was his complaint, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. And if there was a time when Jerusalem poured forth her exultant thousands to escort her king to his capital, this popularity was but such a fitful gleam as I have seen light up a cold and stormy day. The servant is no better than his master; and I do believe, were we more true to God, more faithful and honest in opposing the world for its good, we should get less smoothly along the path of life, and have less reason to read with apprehension these words of Jesus, Woe unto you, when all men shall i^2 The Good

speak well of you. Not less true than shrewd was the remark of a Scotchwoman respecting one who, just settled in the ministry, had been borne to his pulpit amid the plaudits of all the people, — If he is a faithful servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, he will have all the blackguards in the parish on his head before a month is gone.

I am not saying that the world is always wrong in its judgments, or that it is always right to go against its customs. Alas! the children of this world are sometimes wiser in their generation than the children of light. But, as a living fish is often found cleaving its way against the stream, and that fish is certainly dead which, floating on the top, is always moving with it, so he is no living Christian whom you ever find walking according to the course of this world. They who would wear a crown in heaven must be ready to oppose its maxims, to encounter its offence, to brave its opposition, to scorn its contempt, and to sacrifice to its friendships as well as to resist its allurements. “Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,” says this same apostle. Nor is that easy. Alas! how often do Christians follow a multitude to do evil; yield to the customs of the world because they are afraid of being thought singular; and fail in their duty because they are afraid of giving others offence! Few are bold for Christ, and dare avow themselves before the worldly, not ashamed of his cause, and cross, and crown. Bad men glory in their shame, and it would seem as if good men were ashamed of their glory. It ought not so to be. In the strength of God, then, stand up for the good, the holy, and the true; seeking men’s profit, not their praise; pitying the world, though your reward here should be none else than his, who, finding a serpent frozen, warmed it in his bosom, to have it sting him for his pains. Be not discouraged by this, as if some strange thing had happened unto you. The servant is no better than his master, nor the disciple than his Lord.

2. He has to fight against Satan.

When Napoleon Buonaparte, watching the fortunes of the battle, saw the charge of our Scots Greys at Waterloo, as, launched on his columns, they dashed like a thunderbolt into the thick of them, crushing and bearing down all before them, he exclaimed, How terrible are these Greys! But what mortal foe so terrible as him we have to fight? — so relentless, so malignant, ever walking about seeking whom he may devour. No serpent so cunning, no roaring lion so savage! From other enemies escape may be found, from him none. Neither the world, nor the Church itself, offers any asylum, nor the universe, other than the hollow of God’s hand, the shadow of his wings. Flying from the world, the hermit has courted solitude among the heights of the mountain, or in the depths of the gloomy forest; but, tracking his steps far from the haunts of men, in the desert region, where he was conquered by the Master, the Devil has often tempted and triumphed over the servant.

The Sabbath proclaims its weekly and welcome truce, a breathing time to such as have the temptations of the world’s gaiety and the cares of its business to contend with but Satan keeps no Sabbath, — he takes no rest, and gives none. More persuasive than the most eloquent preachers, and more wakeful than the most anxious hearers, if on holy Sabbaths, in sinners converted, in careless ones roused, in the perishing plucked from destruction, he sustains his greatest defeats, on those days he wins his most signal triumphs. Pardon is freely offered to the guilty, salvation to the lost, but, listening to him, they refuse to be saved; as never happened on the stormy ocean, they see the lifeboat leave them, straightway to resume their dance on the sinking wreck — Christ is rejected, warnings are despised. And, hardening the heart, not against the pleadings of a man, but the tears of divine pity and the very blood of Christ, Satan marches off thousands from the doors of the house of God, unconverted, unsaved, harder than they came in, to resume their way on the broad path that leadeth down to destruction.

Men have taken up arms against the greatest odds; and fighting on their own thresholds, with wives and children at their back, bleeding patriots have wrung victory from superior numbers. But, suppose a foe able to make themselves invisible; able to pass in a moment over leagues of country; able to live without sleep, to march without wearying, to work without food; who seldom fought but to conquer, and though repulsed often, were never destroyed; who pitied none, spared none; and regarding neither sex, nor innocence, nor age, dragged off their unhappy captives to horrible and nameless tortures — who would take the field against these? Such an enemy has no place in the pages and horrid annals of war; nor did man ever find such a foe in man. True, but he has such a foe in Satan. That you do not see him is nothing; you never saw the pestilence which it is death to breathe. That you do not see him makes him not the less, but all the more formidable. Victory over a foe like this I could neither expect nor dream of, but for such promises as these: “Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith the Lord, and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:” “How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thou sand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the Lord had shut them up?” “Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet:” “Fear thou not, for I am with thee: be not dismayed, for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.” Courage! A little child with God at his back, is mightier than the devil and all his angels. He that is with us is greater than all that be against us.

3. He has to fight against the flesh,

“The prince of this world cometh,” said our Lord, “and hath nothing in me.” Can we say so 1 Assuredly not Hence the disadvantages under which we carry on the combat. He hath much in us, having in our natural depravity a traitor inside the gates, an ally to open the door and admit the enemy. Called, with such a nature, to contend both against the influences of a world that lietji in wickedness and the temptations of the Evil One, we sail, as it were, in a poor, crazy, damaged, leaking bark which has both wind and tide against her; nor is it any wonder that in circumstances so untoward multitudes make shipwreck of the faith. The wonder is, not that many never reach the harbour, but that any do — entering heaven as once I saw a vessel gain yonder port, bows crushed, masts sprung, and bulwarks gone; saved, but almost lost. And if the righteous scarcely be saved, Tvhere shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?

The prince of this world cometh, says our Sav iour, and hath nothing in me; and so his temptations fell into Christ’s bosom like flaming darts into the sea — hissing, but instantly quenched. It is other wise, alas! with us. Our corrupt nature is food for temptation, as flax is food for flame; we are ready “to be set on fire of hell.” And with such natural dispositions, the marvel is, not that we sometimes fall into sin, but that we ever withstand. Satan had no corruption to work upon in his fellow-angels, yet he triumphed over their loyalty; and with one sweep of his dragon tail cast down perhaps a third part of the stars of heaven. He had no innate depravity to work upon in our first parents, yet again he triumphed, seducing the innocence of Eden. And to whom but God shall we ascribe the glory of this, that in yon Christian resisting the devil till he flee, earth stands fast, where heaven fell; and faith conquers, where innocence was defeated, — in the words of Scripture, and the spiritual history of many, “the lame take the prey.” Like Samson, who made a greater slaughter of the Philistines after his locks were shorn, than he had ever done when they fell flowing over his ample shoulders, man achieves a greater triumph after his fall than he did before it. Such is the power of imparted and omnipotent grace! He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength; and thus God makes all things work for his glory — the wrath of devils, as well as of men, to praise him.

II. The character of the Christian’s fight; it is “a good fight.”

i. Because it is in a good cause.

With the justice and reason of any war, our soldiers are supposed to have nothing to do; these are to be discussed in Parliament, but not in barrack -rooms. The theory of a standing army is such, that from the commander-in-chief down to the drummer-boy, the soldier is considered as much a mere machine as the musket in his hands. This presents to many, one of the most serious and difficult questions as to the lawfulness of his profession. While we may feel no such scruples, it ought to make us, as far as possible, live peaceably with all men, and never but as a last resort appeal to the arbitrament of arms. How often have good men been found fighting on the bad side! and how often has the trumpet summoned from their distant homes and peaceful occupations, those who had no quarrels to settle, nor wrongs to complain of, to the bloody work of slaughter; to destroy each other’s lives and to mangle each others bodies, till, in that poor, mutilated humanity, a mother would not know her own son! In war both sides cannot be right; and the death of every man, therefore, who falls on the side that stands up for the right against the wrong is a murder, on which the Almighty Judge will hold severe and solemn inquest — laying the guilt at the right door. But, however soldiers may come to regard themselves, or be regarded by others, as machines who are to obey orders without inquiring into the merits of the war, still a man is a man — he has what his arms have not, reason and conscience; nor can he, though he would, suppress their voice within him. I can fancy cases where he has little heart to fight. He is not sure that it is “a good fight.” Ordered to cut down one, who, though a naked savage, stands on the shore of his country to defend it from aggressors, or on the threshold of his door to protect his wife and daughters from the hands of a brutal soldiery, the sympathies of a generous man cannot be on the same side as his sword.

Now, if, soldiers of the Cross, you have formidable enemies to contend with, you have an immense advantage in this — that your cause is just, and noble, and holy, and good. It is “a good fight.” Your enemies are not your kindred, bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh; they are the enemies of God and Christ; of virtue and liberty: of light and peace; of your children and of your race; of your bodies and of your souls — tyrants that would bind you in chains worse than iron, and burn, not your house above your head, but your self in hell for ever. I am not saying that the sword lias not often flashed on the side of right and been bathed in tyrants’ blood; but men never drew sword in a cause like this; nor to any battle so much as that to which I summon you with the world, the devil, and the flesh, are the few pithy words of a brave old general so appropriate. His men were waiting to be addressed ere the fight began. Erect in his saddle, with his gray hairs streaming in the wind, he stretched out his arm, and pointing to the foe in front said, ere he rang out the word Fire! There are the enemy; if you do not kill them, they will kill you. So with us. We must destroy sin, or be destroyed by it. I3e assured that unless your prayers stop your sins, your sins will stop your prayers; and that by God’s help you must kill sin, or sin will kill you.

2. Because here victory is unmingled joy.

It is not so in other fights. The laurels that are won where groans of suffering mingle with the shouts of battle, are steeped in tears; and when cannon roar and bells ring out a victory, and shouting crowds throng the streets, and illuminations turn night into day, dark is many a home, where fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, widows and orphans, weep for the brave who shall never return. It is said of God, that, in sweet flowers, and singing birds, and painted shells, and shining stars, in all the beautiful and happy works of his hands, he takes delight; but the best and bravest soldiers have sickened at the sight of the work of their hands in that field of carnage where, locked like brothers in each other’s arms, friend and foe lio quietly together in one gory bed. There are thorns in victory’s proudest crown. He whom men called the Iron Duke, is reported to have said that there was nothing so dreadful as a battle won, but a battle lost.

Thank God, our joy over sins slain, bad passions subdued, Satan defeated, has to suffer no such abatements. Heaven, that I can fancy hiding its eyes from other battles, watches the fortunes of this with keennest, and kindest interest; angels rejoice in your success; nor are any tears shed here but such as poured from the father’s eye, when, kissing the returned prodigal and folding him in his happy em-The Good Fight. 141

braces, he cried, Let us eat, and be merry: for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.

I wish to enlist you as soldiers of the Cross. This is a good fight in other than these, in all its aspects: what a captain in Jesus; what arms in the whole armour of God — the very ring and sight of which, as they shine in the beams of the Sun of righteousness, make Satan tremble; what a helmet for the head in salvation; what a shield in faith; what a breastplate in the righteousness that protects the believer’s heart; what a sword in that of the Spirit, the word of God; what a girdle for the body in truth; in peace what shoes for the feet; and last of all, in a crown immortal, what a prize to reward your watchings and prayers, your tears and toils, the blows you strike and wounds you suffer! I can understand men in that terrible war which is now raging beyond the Atlantic, flying, as they are said to do, not through cowardice, but to escape military service. So long as the battle-cry is the Union with slavery, not without it, to me the ground of battle is not clear; I cannot feel, to use the words of my text, that it is “a good fight,” But who can doubt that here 1 It is a fight for your soul; it is a battle for heaven; it is bleeding slaves up in arms against their old masters; doomed prisoners fighting their way to the open door, and dashing themselves on those who would bar their escape to life and liberty. Break away from your sins; and, taking unto you the whole armour of God, throw yourselves into this battle. By that I cannot say you will win heaven, but you will win to it; and thus possess the prize which your Saviour purchased.

No doubt it is a hard fight; I do not conceal or disguise that. How can it be easy for a man to overcome the world and crucify his own flesh 1 But if that is hard, it is harder far to suffer the pains of a lost soul, to lie down in everlasting burnings. Oh! surely better lose a hand, than have the whole body burn; better part with some darling sin than part with Jesus. You have no choice; they only that carry swords on earth shall wave palms in heaven; nor shall any but they who walk here in armour, walk there in brightness. The crown is for saints, not for sinners; not for cowards, but for conquerors. And how can you conquer unless you fight 1 The promises are to him that conquers, to him that overcometh, — not, indeed, by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts, — “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God •” “He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death •” “He that over cometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels;” and still higher honour, “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne.”