A Sermon

BY THE LEARNED AND PIOUS MR. SAMUEL RUTHERFORD,
Sometime Professor of Divinity at St. Andrews.*

“Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”—HEB. xii. 1, 2.

BELOVED in Christ, there is here a conclusion drawn from the doctrine of the former chapter. 1. Let us run our race. 2. A reason. Many have gone before us; a whole cloud. It is a fair market-gate, a high street to heaven. 3. The way how we may come good speed in our race—get the gold and win the bell—is set down in two things. (1) What we must quit for the gold. First, all weights and clogs of this clay world that retard us in our journey and make our race toilsome. Second, sin that hangs fast upon us and beguiles us. (2) What shall we do? What rule shall we follow? What airth shall we look to?

The Apostle says, Know ye not how they look who run a race? They look not over their shoulder, but ever straight before them, towards the end of their race. Look ye to Jesus in the end of your way. Now, the Apostle seems to go a little off the text. He sees a friend, even Jesus, and he cannot pass by Him, but must speak a word of Him. In your race I shall let you see two things in Jesus.

1. Efficacy and power. He is the Captain and Leader of your souls in the course of faith, and He will not tire. When He begins He will also crown and perfect your faith.

2. I will let you see another thing in Jesus: a good example. How was He? His heart longed to be at the gold, as yours should do. He saw the glory in the end of His way. He suffered both pain and shame, and so was seen on it; and He is now set down on the throne of God. Now, then, the Apostle, still dwelling on Christ (for he cannot win off Him), gives them a new exhortation to hold on, in which there are included the following things:—

3. (1) Consider what that lovely Person suffered of all men; how they gave Him the lie and spake against Him.

4. (2) Consider how little ye have suffered. Ye have not yet resisted and striven unto blood, as Christ did.
5. (3) He gives a reason why they should do so: for fear they give over, faint, and fall a swoon. Having, in chapter xi., spoken

* Preached at a Preparation for the Communion at Kirkcudbright in the year 1634.

of the fathers who won to heaven through patient suffering, he compares them to the cloud that led the Israelites by day through the wilderness. He sets the example of those before them to encourage them.

We see the way to heaven is now a high market gate, and paved by hundreds and thousands who have gone before us, and we should follow after. Are ye wanting a settled house and dwelling in the world? Then set forward; look for a city above. “Indeed,” says Abraham, “I shall be witness of that, that ye shall receive the recompence of reward.” Will ye rather suffer affliction with the people of God than enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season? Moses says: “I shall be witness then that ye shall win home safe and sound.”

In the way we may see a whole cloud of them as witnesses, to lead you through the wilderness. Where away can ye go, or what can befall you in your journey to glory, but in which the Lord’s saints have gone before you? Are ye yours alone, and seeking God amongst many, who live as they lived? So was Noah a walker with God when all flesh had corrupted their ways. Let it be true ye have all taken from you, both goods, children, and health. So was Job handled! So the saints have set up steps and way-marks at every turn in your way, and cry, Ride about. And howbeit now, many fools think to win through at the nearest, yet they win not, but stick there. The saints going before in the way is a great benefit to us. Their falls, and the ill steps that cumbered them, ye must beware of. Ye must hold off adultery; for David stuck in that mire. Hold off drunkenness; for Noah and Lot wet their feet in that dub. Beware of mocking and persecuting the saints; for Paul’s ship had almost sunk in that quicksand. See these dead carcasses lying on the road: Judas, Demas, Hymeneus, and Philetus broke their necks by attempting to go to Canaan, and falling off again. Make this use of holy men’s lives, here condemned, who followed the devil, but were recovered again: beware of those temptations and sins which so easily beset them. Here a cloud of witnesses, the world and the fashions thereof they did not follow: Romans xii. 2, “Be not conformed to this world,” and the guises thereof; and yet ye can justify yourselves in the daily transgression of this divine prohibition. Wherefore is vanity in marriages and banquets? It is the fashion, say they. Proud Scotland, poor Scotland, near cut out to thy skin; it is worm-eaten. Wherefore is such vanity in apparel, so that women are become indecent and men like monsters? Men are taking whole baronies of land on their backs! It is the fashion, say they. O! proud and poor Scotland; men are cut out to their skin, and women want not vanity enough, but are not cut to the bone. And wherefore comes swearing and drinking, see ye not? No otherwise than from the fashion. It is the fashion, say they: but if ye will follow such a cloud of fashionable witnesses, let me conclude ye will go

to hell also, for I can assure you that is the fashion. Ye may keep that excuse till the day of judgment, and when God asks what ye have done, and wherefore ye did so, say ye: “Lord, for nothing but the fashion,” and see how ye will win off.

Let us run the race. But how shall we run? So run that ye may obtain. Many run upon hope of heaven and get hell in the end. But hear what the Spirit of God says: “Lay aside every weight,” every clog. What is the weight? The world, the love of riches, honour, and lusts. He speaks to us as to men having their backs burden of clay, or clogged with heavy lumps of earth and great tatters and bunches of the world’s glory. Nay, a number of devils of pride, lust, and covetousness hang upon us. Give them a shake, says He, down with them; let the ground bear all.

How hardly do cunning men enter into the kingdom of heaven! Methinks I see three sorts of men beguiled in their race to glory.

1. Some go not a step at all in the way to heaven, for, going too near the hedge, they get a thorn in their foot, which swells it so that they must sit down and lay it on their knee; and they sit there, and never make any further attempt towards heaven till night come, and there they lie. One of those says (Job xxi. 15), “What is the Almighty that we should serve him? and what profit shall we have if we pray unto him?” They say in plain terms, God is but a poor master to follow; it’s long ere he be rich who follows Him; therefore we will have none of Him. Luke xiv. 19, “One said, I have bought a yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them; I pray thee have me excused,” &c. “And the Pharisees who heard these things mocked at him.”

2. Another sort run a start after Christ for a time as Judas, who, in men’s eyes, followed Him till the devil met him in the race, cast down a purse, and breaks his leg, and syne went he over the brae. In John vi. ye see a number following Christ for the loaves. And Demas galloped a while after Paul and the Gospel, but he found it a hungry trade; and the world crossed his road, and after it he went. I say, the world, like a fair strumpet in her silks and velvets, came in his way and gave him a kiss, and he ran to the gate, saying, Sorrow have my part of the Gospel and Paul any more. So Paul says (2 Tim. iv. 10), “Demas hath forsaken me,” and has embraced this present world. But

3. Another sort are those who have some more love to the race, and yet they cannot want the world, like the young man (Matt. xix. 21, 22) who came to Christ and said he had kept the Commandments from his youth. When Christ bade him sell all that he had and give his goods to the poor, and come and follow Him, he went away with his heart in his hose, looking as if his nose were bleeding, for he had great possessions. So there are a number who would climb up the mountain to heaven, with thousands by the year and with baronies and a great bunch of clay bound hard

and fast upon the neck of their souls. And they think to hold foot with Christ, ride as hard as He pleases, and twenty stone weight of clay upon their soul! But they will be all mistaken; they will burst and die by the way; and shall never win to the top of the hill. Ask at them how they will win up to heaven with their lusts upon their backs. They will say, God will draw us; He will help and bear us. Indeed, God makes His own people ride in chariots with Himself, and draws them (Cant. i. 2). But will ye make Christ a pack-horse to carry your clay and your lusts? How long is it since He has carried our pack-mantle? Believe me, He is no cadger-horse. Demas and Judas and the like would have ridden after Christ with all their bags of clay; but ken ye what Christ did with them? He threw them and their clay off at the broadside, and left them lying there, and posted away.

Question.—What then shall we do to be quit of these weights?

Answer.—The world is a foul way, like deep watery new tilled ground, where pound weights hang to every heel of the traveller and retard him; and as he shakes off one, another comes on, so that he cannot go fast on his way. Now the affections are the feet of the soul; take heed to your feet, and come off the deep wet land. Use the world as if you used it not. There is a dry way to heaven; hold ye off the deep way, and be content with food and raiment. Go ye the way that Christ and the saints went before you, who scarce ever wet their feet. Indeed, Jesus was never wet-shod in the world; He had so good mind of His errand and his home that the world got no room in His heart. They who will not keep this clean dry causeway, it is no marvel to see them stick in the miry world, be drowned and never win home. It is with many, as was said (Hos. ii. 2), Their adulteries lie between their breasts; the world in a great bunch lies betwixt their breasts all night. Is it any wonder to see such heavy-headed mardels get the mell in this race, like stiff horses unmeet for a journey? And how can they once give a trot? Nay, they but walk in a circle. The

1. Direction.—Satan and the world will play you foul play, and cast their feet before you and give you a fall. But care not for that; rise again. But I pray you beware of sore falls, or sins against the conscience, light, and love. For the conscience is like an earthen vessel; if ye break it ye will not mend it again. Some in their race gave their conscience such a back-stroke that they break their legs, and are never meet for the race again. But whatever ye do, keep the conscience whole.

2. Direction.—Cast off all things that make you heavy. Make yourself light, that ye may be nimble; skip and spur away. Run, run; look not behind you—remember Lot’s wife. Although ye should be like to burst, tarry not; ye will mend of a sweat and a heat. God has a napkin to rub the sweat off you, and He has a chair and a cushion for you against the race be ended, and He will lay your head in His bosom. Take a little pains in the day, for I promise you ye shall get rest at even.

“Cast off the sin that doth so easily beset us,” or goes round about us. This is the body of sin that remains in our nature. He speaks of it as if one had us clasped in his arms ; for original sin has us in fetters as captives. It is a thing we cannot win from, go where we please. It is like a ghost—ever in our eye ; behind us, pulling us back ; before us, standing in our way ; at our right hand, hindering us to hear, pray, believe, repent, hope, &c. It is like the wind in our face, or in the face of a weak traveller, that blows him some steps back where he goes one forward. It is as a man going round about us. It is in the mind, darkening the judgment ; in the will, throwing it the contrary way. God bids us walk in the lowest room, down in the affections ; but we do the contrary. And this sin, as woodbind goes about a tree, wraps about us in every good way. It is a serpent biting our heel, and cries, “A lion in the way.” When God draws, sin holds under at meat, drink, and sleep. It is a joker—it promises us much, but gives us the wind, and yet we believe it.

But here a question may be asked : How does the Apostle bid us shake off this sin which dwells in us so long as we live ; it is death and the kirkyard that make us quit of this sin. How is it then that we can shake it off ?

Answer (1). The dominion of it we break by grace. Woe every heart we have, for this indwelling sin breaks a bone of old Adam, gives his back a crack and makes him cry. As we repent and advance in holiness, we break a leg or an arm of this sin ; but for the root of it, God only, in death, can pluck it out. Yet we must be hacking and cutting the branches and roots of it, else we cannot make progress in our race. We must not take this defiling sin forward with us in our race. We must leave it where we start, and deliver it over to Christ that He may put it on His cross and nail it to His gallows.

Answer (2). He speaks of sin as of a thing going about us like a stone wall in our very way to heaven. Till by regeneration, Christ make a gap in the wall that we may pass over, there is no possibility of going one foot. And even when the wall is broken we shall see this sin hanging on our legs and arms. This sin keeps a lodge by the gate for Satan, and is a common robber, who slays many by the way.

1. Some it tricks out of the way, and lays asleep in security, like a drunken traveller who sleeps in a moor till the sun be down, then he wakes from his sleep and cries.

2. It blinds some, as Paul while a Pharisee, and Papists, and chases them a wrong way—to hell instead of heaven—when they make a fashion of repentance, to slay their sins, and go again to their old pass. Such are those who, with willingness, walk softly, and go to sin again.

Now he sets down the exhortation, “Let us run the race.” This is more than to walk and step at our own leisure. Running shows there is a set time, which will go away, a short day, and

that the way is long, and we have much to do to get sin slain. And, therefore, we must to the way with speed, and run fast. In Matthew xi., the kingdom of heaven is said to be taken with violence. Luke xiii. 24, “Strive to enter in.” The word is, “Fight, and throng in by force.” When God, by faith, lets a man see heaven, he resolves, and in he must be, come what will. Phil. iii. 13, 14, “Reaching forth unto those things that are before, I press forward toward the mark.” The word is, I follow after; I reach out my hand. The Apostle means he ran so that his head and breast pressed forward before his feet, and his two arms reached out to catch hold of Christ. So to speak, he chases Christ and heaven, and they seem to flee from him, and he follows. So should we do. Then chase on. The prize seems to flee from us, but it cannot flee further than to heaven’s gates; there we will get a hold of it.

But how will they do who say, “Hoily and fair comes home against even. And what needs all this din, all these prayers, and all these flockings to Communions? I hope to be in heaven as soon as the best of you?”

Answer. Beguile not yourselves, loiterers and drowsy persons, who go not one mile of twenty in a year; such as walk in a circle round about, from pride to lust; from lust to drunkenness; from that to covetousness; and from that to pride again; like as if they were in a fairies’ dance, and run not at all. Can men come to heaven lying on their back? The good, lucky old religion made a sonsy world, say they. Yet they use religion as a post-horse; as one wears out of fashion they take another.

Heaven must be taken by violence. He speaks of heaven as of a fortified place, that must be forced by fire and sword ere they render it up.

We are like drunken travellers, cast twenty miles behind, sometimes with lust and sometimes with pride, and such companions cannot be put to the gate; they have a friend to Satan’s messengers within, and when they knock, he cries, “Coming, master.” Men have gotten a gate of their own, like neighbour another, the good old use and wont, to walk as they please, and they are no gluttons of religion, neither of the Word nor Communions. Religion to them is a good custom of going to the kirk.

(To be Continued.)

The Scholar’s Comfort.—”I have taken much pains,” says the learned Selden, “to know everything that was esteemed worth knowing amongst men; but with all my disquisitions and reading, nothing now remains with me to comfort me, at the close of life, but this passage of St. Paul, ‘It is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners:’ to this I cleave, and herein I find rest.”