'So that I might finish my course....'--ACTS xx. 24.
'I have finished my course....'--2 TIM. iv. 7.
I do not suppose that Paul in prison, and within sight of martyrdom,
remembered his words at Ephesus. But the fact that what was aspiration
whilst he was in the very thick of his difficulties came to be calm
retrospect at the close is to me very beautiful and significant. 'So
that I may finish my course,' said he wistfully; whilst before him
there lay dangers clearly discerned and others that had all the more
power over the imagination because they were but dimly discerned--'Not
knowing the things that shall befall me there,' said he, but knowing
this, that 'bonds and afflictions abide me.' When a man knows exactly
what he has to be afraid of he can face it. When he knows a little
corner of it, and also knows that there is a great stretch behind that
is unknown, that is a state of things that tries his mettle. Many a man
will march up to a battery without a tremor who would not face a hole
where a snake lay. And so Paul's ignorance, as well as Paul's
knowledge, made it very hard for him to say 'None of these things move
me' if only 'I might finish my course.'
Now there are in these two passages, thus put together, three points
that I touch for a moment. These are, What Paul thought that life
chiefly was; what Paul aimed at; and what Paul won thereby.