'Have ye suffered so many things in vain?'--GAL.
iii 4.
Preached on the last Sunday of the year.
This vehement question is usually taken to be a reminder to the fickle
Galatians that their Christian faith had brought upon them much
suffering from the hands of their unbelieving brethren, and to imply an
exhortation to faithfulness to the Gospel lest they should stultify
their past brave endurance. Yielding to the Judaising teachers, and
thereby escaping the 'offence of the Cross,' they would make their past
sufferings vain. But it may be suggested that the word 'suffered' here
is rather used in what is its known sense elsewhere, namely, with the
general idea of _feeling_, the nature of the feeling being undefined. It
is a touching proof of the preponderance of pain and sorrow that by
degrees the significance of the word has become inextricably intertwined
with the thought of sadness; still, it is possible to take it in the
text as meaning _experienced_ or _felt_, and to regard the Apostle as
referring to the whole of the Galatians' past experience, and as
founding his appeal for their steadfastness on all the joys as well as
the sorrows, which their faith had brought them.
Taking the words in this more general sense they become a question which
it is well for us to ask ourselves at such a time as this, when the
calendar naturally invites us to look backwards and ask ourselves what
we have made of all our experiences in the past, or rather what, by the
help of them all, we have made of ourselves.