For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted-Heb. 2:18. This issue of our Lord's life He had to keep before Himself by a constant effort. He trod the same path which others have to tread. He, too, like Abraham and Moses, and the others of the host of the faithful, had to keep His conviction of an unseen good, bright and powerful, by an effort of will, while surrounded by the illusions of time and sense. His faith grasped the unseen, and in the strength of that conviction impelled Him to do and suffer. We have the same path to tread., We, too, if we are to do anything in this world befitting or like our Master, must rule our lives in the same fashion as our Master ruled His. That is to say, we must subordinate rigidly the present, and all its temptations, fascinations, cares, joys, and sorrows, to that far-off issue discerned by faith and by faith alone, but by faith clearly ascertained to be the one real substance, the one thing for which it is worthwhile to live and blessed to die. A life of faith, a life of effort to keep ever before us the unseen crown, will be a life noble and lofty. We are ever tempted to forget it. The "Man with the Muckrake," in John Bunyan's homely parable, was so occupied with the foul-smelling dung-heap that he thought a treasure, that he had no eyes for the crown hanging a hair's breadth over his head. A hair's breadth? Yes! And yet the distance was as great as if the universe had lain between. Every man's life is ennobled in the measure in which he lives for a future. Even if it be a shabby and near future, in so far as it is future, such a life is better than a life that is lived for the present. A man that gets his wages once in a year will generally be, in certain respects, a higher type of man than he who gets them once a week. To take far-off views is, pro tanto, as far as it goes-an elevation of humanity. To be absorbed in the present moment is to be degraded to the level of the beasts. The Christian "prize," which faith makes clear to us, has this great advantage over all other objects of pursuit-that it is too far off ever to be reached and left behind. Men in this world win their objects or lose them; but in either case they pass them and leave them in the rear. Whether it is better to creep, like the old mariners, from headland to headland, altering your course every day or two, or strike boldly out into the great deep, steering for an unseen port on the other side of the world that you never beheld, though you know it is there? Which will be the nobler voyage? If one looks at the lives of most professing Christians, it looks as if we had but a very dim vision of this glory. And surely, if there is one thing that needs to be rung into our ears, compassed about as we are by the fascinations, temptations, and occupations of this life, it is that old exhortation, never more needed than by the worldly-minded Christians of this day, "Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth" [Col. 3:2]. Take Christ for your example, and live, having "respect unto the recompense of the reward" [Heb. 11:26]. In Celebration of Life in Him, Dr. Jim DeBruhl, gembeaux@bellsouth.net Everything is wrong until God makes it right
