It is a source of much pleasure to see saints running well. To do this, they must run in the right road, straight forward, perseveringly, at the top of their pace, with their eye on Christ, etc.

The way is the truth, and the running is obedience. Men are hindered when they cease to obey the truth.

I. WE SHALL USE THE TEXT IN REFERENCE TO HINDERED BELIEVERS.

• You are not so loving and zealous as you were.


• You are quitting the old faith for new notions.


• You are losing your first joy and peace.


• You are not now leaving the world and self behind.


• You are not now abiding all the day with your Lord.

• Did I do it? Pray, then, for your minister.


• Did your fellow-members do it? You ought to have been proof against them. They could not have intended it. Pray for them.


• Did the world do it? Why so much in it?


• Did the devil do it? Resist him.


• Did you not do it yourself? This is highly probable.


• Did you not overload yourself with worldly care? Did you not indulge carnal ease?


• Did you not by pride become self-satisfied?


• Did you not neglect prayer, Bible reading, the public means of grace, the Lord's Table, etc.?


• Mend your ways, and do not hinder your own soul.


• Did not false teachers do it, as in the case of the Galatians?


• If so, quit them at once, and listen only to the gospel of Christ.

• Your natural tendency will be to slacken still more.


• Your danger is great of being overtaken by error and sin.


• Your death would come of ceasing to obey the truth.


• Your wisdom is to cry for help that you may run aright.

• God has blessed his word to your arousing.


• God has not yet given you up; this is evident.


• God's way of salvation still lies open before you.

• Self-righteousness and trust in yourself?


• Carelessness, procrastination, and neglect?


• Love of self-indulgence or the secret practice of pleasurable sins?


• Frivolous, skeptical, or wicked companions?


• Unbelief and mistrust of God's mercy?

• Those who will not obey truth will become the dupes of lies.


• Truth not obeyed is disobeyed, and so sin is multiplied.


• Truth disregarded becomes an accuser, and its witness secures our condemnation.

Cecil says that some adopt the Indian maxim that it is better to walk than to run, and better to stand than to walk, and better to sit than to stand, and better to lie than to sit. Such is not the teaching of the gospel. It is a good thing to be walking in the ways of God, but it is better to be running — making real and visible progress, day by day advancing in experience and attainments. David likens the sun to a strong man rejoicing to run a race; not dreading it and shrinking back from it, but delighting in the opportunity of putting forth all his powers. Who so runs, runs well. — The Christian

The Christian race is by no means easy. We are sore let and hindered in running "the race that is set before us," because of.' (1) Our sinful nature still remaining in the holiest saints. (2) Some easily besetting sin (Heb. 12:1). (3) The entanglements of the world, like heavy and close-fitting garments, impeding the racer's speed. (4) Our weakness and infirmity, soon tired and exhausted when the race is long or the road is rough. — "In Prospect of Sunday," by G. S. Bowes

Some are too busy. They run about too much to run well. Some run too fast at the outset; they run themselves out of breath. — T. T. Lynch

Henry Ward Beecher, in a sermon on this text, describes one of the hindrances to Christian progress thus: "We have fallen off immensely on the side of religious culture — earnest, prolonged, habitual, domestic, religious culture, conducted by the reading of God's Word and by prayer and its family influences. And this tendency is still further augmented by the increase of religious books, of tracts, of biographies and histories, of commentaries, which tend to envelop and hide the Word of God from our minds. In other words, these things which are called 'helps' have been increased to such a degree and have come to occupy so much of our attention, that when we have read our helps, we have no time left to read the things to be helped; and the Bible is covered down and lost under its 'helps.'"

It is possible that fellow-professors may hinder. We are often obliged to accommodate our pace to that of our fellow-travelers. If they are laggards, we are very likely to be so, too. We are apt to sleep as do others. We are stimulated or depressed, urged on or held back by those with whom we are associated in Christian fellowship. There is still greater reason to fear that in many cases worldly friends and companions are the hinderers. Indeed, they can be nothing else. None can help us in the race but those who are themselves running it; all others must hinder. Let a Christian form an intimate friendship with an ungodly person, and from that moment all progress is stayed. He must go back; for when his companion is going in the opposite direction, how can he walk with him except by turning his back upon the path which he has formerly trodden? — P.

A sailor remarks— "Sailing from Cuba, we thought we had gained sixty miles one day in our course; but at the next observation, we found we had lost more than thirty. It was an undercurrent. The ship had been going forward by the wind, but going back by the current." So a man's course in religion may often seem to be right and progressive, but the undercurrent of his besetting sins is delving him the very contrary way to what he thinks. — Cheerer

• With that which God ordains.


• With that which must win the day.


• With the only thing which can save them.


• With that which is full of wisdom and beauty.

The one hope of our hearts.
The great delight of our souls.
The joyful boast of our tongues.

• Is this because they bear no testimony to the cross?


• Is this because they are not crucified to the world?


• Is this because there is no real trust in the cross and no true knowledge of Christ?

There is a want in the human mind, which nothing but the Atonement can satisfy, though it may be a stumbling-block to the Jew and foolishness to the Greek. In the words of Henry Rogers, "It is adapted to human nature as a bitter medicine may be to a patient. Those who have taken it, tried its efficacy, and recovered spiritual health, gladly proclaim its value. But to those who have not and will not try it, it is an unpalatable potion still."

I open an ancient book written in opposition to Christianity by Arnobius, and I read: "Our gods are not displeased with you Christians for worshipping the Almighty God; but you maintain the deity of one who was put to death on the cross, you believe him to be yet alive, and you adore him with daily supplications." Men showed me at Rome in the Kircherian Museum a square foot of the plaster of a wall of a palace not many years ago uncovered on the Palatine hill. On the poor clay was traced a cross bearing a human figure with a brute's head. The figure was nailed to the cross, and before it a soldier was represented kneeling and extending his hands in the Greek posture of devotion. Underneath all was scratched in rude lettering in Greek, '"Alexamenos adores his God." That representation of the central thought of Christianity was made in a jeering moment by some rude soldier in the days of Caracalla; but it blazes there now in Rome, the most majestic monument of its age in the world. — Joseph Cook

If any part of the truth which I am bound to communicate be concealed, this is sinful artifice. The Jesuits in China, in order to remove the offense of the cross, declared that it was a falsehood invented by the Jews that Christ was crucified; but they were expelled from the empire. This was designed, perhaps, to be held up as a warning to all missionaries that no good end is to be answered by artifice. — Richard Cecil

The cross is the strength of a minister. I, for one, would not be without it for the world. I should feel like a soldier without weapons, like an artist without his pencil, like a pilot without his compass, like a laborer without his tools. Let others, if they will, preach the law and morality. Let others hold forth the terrors of hell and the joys of heaven. Let others drench their congregations with teachings about the sacraments and the church. Give me the cross of Christ. This is the only lever which has ever turned the world upside down hitherto and made men forsake their sins. And if this will not do it, nothing will. A man may begin preaching with a perfect knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; but he will do little or no good among his hearers unless he knows something of the cross. Never was there a minister who did much for the conversion of souls who did not dwell much on Christ crucified. Luther, Rutherford, Whitefield, M'Cheyne were all most eminent preachers of the cross. This is the preaching that the Holy Ghost delights to bless. He loves to honor those who honor the cross. — J. C. Ryle

• We are not to burden others. Some take a liberty to do so from this very text, as if it said, "Let others bear your burdens," which is just the reverse of what it urges.


• We are not to spy out others' burdens and report thereon.


• We are not to despise them for having such loads to bear.


• We are not to act as if all things existed for ourselves, and we were to bend all to our own purposes.


• We are not to go through the world oblivious of the sorrows of others. We may not shut our eyes to the woes of mankind.

• By compassion, bear with their former sins (verse 1).


• By patience, bear with their infirmities and even their conceit (verse 2).


• By sympathy, bear their sorrows (verses 2-3).


• By assistance, bear their wants (verses 6, 10).


• By communion, in love and comfort, bear their struggles.


• By prayer and practical help, bear the burden of their labors and, thus, lighten it (verse 6).

• The erring brother. Referred to in verse 1 as "overtaken in a fault?" We must tenderly restore him.


• The provoking brother, who thinks himself to be something (see verse 3). Bear with him; his mistake will bring him many a burden before he has done with it.


• The brother who is peculiarly trying is to be borne with to seventy times seven, even to the measure of the law of Christ.


• The greatly tried is to have our greatest sympathy.


• The minister of Christ should be released from temporal burdens, that he may give himself wholly to the burden of the Lord.

An old anecdote of the great Napoleon records that, while walking along a country road attended by some of his officers, he encountered a peasant heavily laden with faggots for fuel. The peasant was about to be jostled aside as a matter of course by his social superiors, when the Emperor, laying his hand on the arm of the foremost member of his escort, arrested the whole party, and gave the laboring man the use of the road, with the remark, "Messieurs, respect the burden."

Let him who expects one class in society to prosper to the highest degree while others are in distress try whether one side of his face can smile while the other is pinched. — Thomas Fuller

There is a proverb, but none of Solomon's, "Every man for himself, and God for us all." But where every man is for himself, the devil will have all. — William Secker

"Every man shall bear his own burden"; this is the law of necessity. "Bear ye one another's burdens"; this is the law of Christ. Let a man lighten his own load by sharing his neighbor's burden. — T. T. Lynch

There is a gateway at the entrance of a narrow passage in London over which is written, "No burdens allowed to pass through." "And yet we do pass constantly with ours," said one friend to another as they turned up this passage out of a more frequented and broader thoroughfare. They carried no visible burdens, but they were like many who, although they have no outward pack upon their shoulders, often stoop inwardly beneath the pressure of a heavy load upon the heart. The worst burdens are those which never meet the eye.

Bishop Burner, in his charges to the clergy of his diocese, used to be extremely vehement in his declamations against pluralities. In his first visitation to Salisbury, he urged the authority of St. Bernard, who being consulted by one of his followers, whether he might accept of two benefices, replied, "And how will you be able to serve them both?" "I intend;' answered the priest, "to officiate in one of them by a deputy." "Will your deputy suffer eternal punishment for you, too?" asked the saint. "Believe me, you may serve your cure by proxy, but you must suffer the penalty in person." This anecdote made such an impression on Mr. Kelsey, a pious and wealthy clergyman then present, that he immediately resigned the rectory of Bernerton, in Berkshire, worth two hundred a year, which he then held with another of great value. — Whitecross

With many, personal service in the cause of humanity is commuted for a money payment. But we are to be colliers in the campaign against evil and not merely to pay the war tax. — "Ecce Homo"