travelling ahead of them both to grasp it, so if we
want to live with the one worthy aim for ours, and to put all our
effort and faith into what deserves it all--the Christian race--we
must bring clear before us continually, or at least with the utmost
frequency, the prize of our high calling, the crown of righteousness.
Then we shall run so that we may, at the last, be able to finish our
course with joy, and dying to hope with all humility that there is
laid up for us a crown of righteousness.

'CONCERNING THE CROWN'

'They do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but
we are incorruptible.'--1 COR. ix. 25.

One of the most famous of the Greek athletic festivals was held close
by Corinth. Its prize was a pine-wreath from the neighbouring sacred
grove. The painful abstinence and training of ten months, and the
fierce struggle of ten minutes, had for their result a twist of green
leaves, that withered in a week, and a little fading fame that was
worth scarcely more, and lasted scarcely longer. The struggle and the
discipline were noble; the end was contemptible. And so it is with
all lives whose aims are lower than the highest. They are greater in
the powers they put forth than in the objects they compass, and the
question, 'What is it for?' is like a douche of cold water from the
cart that lays the clouds of dust in the ways.

So, says Paul, praising the effort and contemning the prize, 'They do
it to obtain a corruptible crown.' And yet there was a soul of
goodness in this evil thing. Though these festivals were indissolubly
intertwined with idolatry, and besmirched with much sensuous evil,
yet he deals with them as he does with war and with slavery; points
to the disguised nobility that lay beneath the hideousness, and holds
up even these low things as a pattern for Christian men.

But I do not mean here to speak so much about the general bearing of
this text as rather to deal with its designation of the aim and
reward of Christian energy, that 'incorruptible crown' of which my
text speaks. And in doing so I desire to take into account likewise
other places in Scripture in which the same metaphor occurs.

I. The crown.

Let me recall the other places where the same metaphor is employed.
We find the Apostle, in the immediate prospect of death, rising into
a calm rapture in which imprisonment and martyrdom lose their
terrors, as he thinks of the 'crown of righteousness' which the Lord
will give to him