e real and painful enough. To take but
a single instance, what must it have been to a man of such sensitive
honour and engaged only in doing good to be so frequently in the hands
of the police and in the company of malefactors? In his epistles he
cannot conceal the irritation caused by his "chain." Although in
victorious moods he felt himself, as we have seen, borne onwards in
triumph, in other moods he felt himself at the opposite extreme: "I
think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were
appointed to death; for we are made a spectacle unto the world and to
angels and to men; we are made as the filth of the world and are the
offscourings of all things"; the reference being to the gladiators
whose cheap lives were sacrificed to embellish the conqueror's
triumph.

Yet it was never long before he could rally from such depression at
the thought of the cause in which he suffered all; and his habitual
mood, in the face of accumulating difficulties, was expressed in these
heart-stirring words, "None of these things move me, neither count I
my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy
and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify
the Gospel of the grace of God."

It is good to linger beside one who was so faithful to his charge, so
hard a worker and so patient a sufferer. We may learn from these
extraordinary labours and sufferings to do honest work and to endure
hardness ourselves.

Our sphere is, indeed, very different from his. His was so vast as to
be almost limitless; ours may be very circumscribed. He was
continually moving from place to place and encountering new people; we
may have to labour among the same handful of people for a lifetime. He
lived amidst daily novelty and excitement; we may have to fulfil an
existence of deep monotony. And all the disadvantages do not belong
to the large, difficult and dangerous lot. It may seem easy to be
faithful in a small sphere and to exhaust all its possibilities. But
the narrow lot has its trials as well as the wide one, and perhaps it
does not require less virtue to overcome them. A stronger sense of
duty may be needed to prepare an honest sermon week by week to a small
and comparatively ignorant congregation than to bear the brunt of
danger in an exposed post of the mission field.[55]

Nowhere can the ministry be easy if its responsibilities are realised
and its duties honestly discharged. Look forward, I woul