Now, I need not spend or waste your time in mere verbal criticism,
but I wish to point out that that word 'soul' in one of our two
texts means both the soul and the life of which it is the seat; and
also to remark that the being saved and the winning of the life or
the soul has distinct application, in our Lord's words, primarily to
corporeal safety and preservation in the midst of dangers; and,
still further, to note the emphatic '_in_ your patience,' as
suggesting not only a future but a present acquisition of one's own
soul, or life, as the result of such persevering endurance and
enduring perseverance. All which things being kept in view, I may
expand the great promise that lies in my text, as follows:--
First, by such persevering persistence in the Christian path, we gain
ourselves. Self-surrender is self-possession. We never own ourselves
till we have given up owning ourselves, and yielded ourselves to that
Lord who gives us back saints to ourselves. Self-control is
self-possession. We do not own ourselves as long as it is possible
for any weakness in flesh, sense, or spirit to gain dominion over us
and hinder us from doing what we know to be right. We are not our own
masters then. 'Whilst they promise them liberty, they themselves are
the bond-slaves of corruption.' It is only when we have the bit well
into the jaws of the brutes, and the reins tight in our hands, so
that a finger-touch can check or divert the course, that we are truly
lords of the chariot in which we ride and of the animals that impel it.
And such self-control which is the winning of ourselves is, as I
believe, thoroughly realised only when, by self-surrender of
ourselves to Jesus Christ, we get His help to govern ourselves and
so become lords of ourselves. Some little petty Rajah, up in the
hills, in a quasi-independent State in India, is troubled by
mutineers whom he cannot subdue; what does he do? He sends a message
down to Lahore or Calcutta, and up come English troops that
consolidate his dominion, and he rules securely, when he has
consented to become a feudatory, and recognise his overlord. And so
you and I, by continual repetition, in the face of self and sin, of
our acts of self-surrender, bring Christ into the field; and then,
when we have said, 'Lord, take me; I live, yet not I, but Christ
liveth in me'; and when we daily, in spite of hindrances, stand to
the surrender and repeat the consecration, then 'in our perseverance
we acquire our souls.'
Again, such persistence wins even the bodily life, whether it
preserves it or loses it. I have said that the words of our texts
have an application to bodily preservation in the midst of the
dreadful dangers of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem. But so
regarded they are a paradox. For hear how the Master introduces
them: 'Some of you shall they cause to be put to death, but there
shall not a hair of your heads perish. In your perseverance ye shall
win your lives.' 'Some of you they will put to death,' but ye 'shall
win your lives,'--a paradox which can only be solved by experience.
Whether this bodily life be preserved or lost, it is gained when it
is used as a means of attaining the higher life of union with God.
Many a martyr had the promise, 'Not a hair of your head shall
perish,' fulfilled at the very moment when the falling axe shore his
locks in twain, and severed his head from his body.
Finally, full salvation, the true possession of himself, and the
acquisition of the life which really is life, comes to a man who
perseveres to the end, and thus passes to the land where he will
receive the recompense of the reward. The one moment the runner,
with flushed cheek and forward swaying body, hot, with panting
breath, and every muscle strained, is straining to the winning-post;
and the next moment, in utter calm, he is wearing the crown.
'To the end,' and what a contrast the next moment will be! Brethren,
may it be true of you and of me that 'we are not of them that draw
back unto perdition, but of them that believe to the winning of
their souls!'