'He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved.'
--Matt. xxiv. 13, R.V.
'In your patience possess ye your souls.'--Luke xxi. 19.
These two sayings, different as they sound in our Version, are
probably divergent representations of one original. The reasons for
so supposing are manifold and obvious on a little consideration. In
the first place, the two sayings occur in the Evangelists' reports
of the same prophecy and at the same point therein. In the second
place, the verbal resemblance is much greater than appears in our
Authorised Version, because the word rendered 'patience' in Luke is
derived from that translated 'endureth' in Matthew; and the true
connection between the two versions of the saying would have been
more obvious if we had had a similar word in both, reading in the
one 'he that endureth,' and in the other 'in your endurance.' In the
third place, the difference between these two sayings presented in
our Version, in that the one is a promise and the other a command,
is due to an incorrect reading of St. Luke's words. The Revised
Version substitutes for the imperative 'possess' the promise 'ye
shall possess,' and with that variation the two sayings are brought
a good deal nearer each other. In both endurance is laid down as the
condition, which in both is followed by a promise. Then, finally,
there need be no difficulty in seeing that 'possessing,' or, more
literally, 'gaining your souls,' is an exact equivalent of the other
expression, 'ye shall be saved.' One cannot but remember our Lord's
solemn antithetical phrase about a man 'losing his own soul.' To
'win one's soul' is to be saved; to be saved is to win one's soul.
So I think I have made out my thesis that the two sayings are
substantially one. They carry a great weight of warning, of
exhortation, and of encouragement to us all. Let us try now to reap
some of that harvest.
I. First, then, notice the view of our condition which underlies
these sayings.
It is a sad and a somewhat stern one, but it is one to which, I
think, most men's hearts will respond, if they give themselves
leisure to think; and if they 'see life steadily, and see it whole.'
For howsoever many days are bright, and howsoever all days are good,
yet, on the whole, 'man is a soldier, and life is a fight.' For some
of us it is simple endurance; for all of us it has sometimes been
agony; for all of us, always, it presents resistance to every kind of
high and noble career, and especially to the Christian one. Easy-going
optimists try to skim over these facts, but they are not to be so
lightly set aside. You have only to look at the faces that you
meet in the street to be very sure that it is always a grave and
sometimes a bitter thing to live. And so our two texts presuppose
that life on the whole demands endurance, whatever may be included
in that great word.
Think of the inward resistance and outward hindrances to every lofty
life. The scholar, the man of culture, the philanthropist--all who
would live for anything else than the present, the low, and the
sensual--find that there is a banded conspiracy, as it were, against
them, and that they have to fight their way by continual antagonism,
by continual persistence, as well as by continual endurance. Within,
weakness, torpor, weariness, levity, inconstant wills, bright
purposes clouding over, and all the cowardice and animalism of our
nature war continually against the better, higher self. And without,
there is a down-dragging, as persistent as the force of gravity,
coming from the whole assemblage of external things that solicit,
and would fain seduce us. The old legends used to tell us how,
whensoever a knight set out upon any great and lofty quest, his path
was beset on either side by voices, sometimes whispering seductions,
and sometimes shrieking maledictions, but always seeking to withdraw
him from his resolute march onwards to his goal. And every one of
us, if we have taken on us the orders of any lofty chivalry, and
especially if we have sworn ourselves knights of the Cross, have to
meet the same antagonism. Then, too, there are golden apples rolled
upon our path, seeking to draw us away from our steadfast endurance.
Besides the hindrances in every noble path, the hindrances within
and the hindrances without, the weight of self and the drawing of
earth, there come to us all--in various degrees no doubt, and in
various shapes--but to all of us there come the burdens of sorrows
and cares, and anxieties and trials. Wherever two or three are
gathered together, even if they gather for a feast, there will be
some of them who carry a sorrow which they know well will never be
lifted off their shoulders and their hearts, until they lay down all
their burdens at the grave's mouth; and it is weary work to plod on
the path of life with a weight that cannot be shifted, with a wound
that can never be stanched.
Oh, brethren, rosy-coloured optimism is all a dream. The recognition
of the good that is in the evil is the devout man's talisman, but
there is always need for the resistance and endurance which my texts
prescribe. And the youngest of us, the gladdest of us, the least
experienced of us, the most frivolous of us, if we will question our
own hearts, will hear their Amen to the stern, sad view of the facts
of earthly life which underlies this text.
Though it has many other aspects, the world seems to me sometimes to
be like that pool at Jerusalem in the five porches of which lay,
groaning under various diseases, but none of them without an ache, a
great multitude of impotent folk, halt and blind. Astronomers tell
us that one, at any rate, of the planets rolls on its orbit swathed
in clouds and moisture. The world moves wrapped in a mist of tears.
God only knows them all, but each heart knows its own bitterness and
responds to the words, 'Ye have need of patience.'