No human effort (it is said) was both so short and so violent as the Greek footrace.   Around the stadium, or course, rose an amphitheatre of white marble, like the terraces of a palace, seated with 'a cloud of witnesses,' tier above tier; (Wembley accommodates 126,000 spectators; but a stadium in Rome, earlier than the Colosseum, is said to have held 400,000) he who 'acted as herald,' to use Paul's phrase (I Cor. ix, 27), marshalled the lists, explained the rules, and dismissed the runners by trumpet-blast; all starting 'scratch,' the athletes bent forward-- "stretching forward to the things that are before" (Phil. iii, 13)--to catch the fullest possible momentum:  then followed the rush, and (in the long race) weary lap after weary lap; until at last the 'mark,' or goal, was in sight, where the judges sat:  then, as the victor burst past the mark, the race was over, all other runners being 'disapproved'; and the winner, crowned with a wreath of pine and banqueted, received the homage of an entire nation. "Know ye not that they which run in a race all run, but ONE receiveth the prize?" (I Cor. ix, 24).

    Now the Holy Spirit, not once but many times, emphasizes this as the picture of the short, sharp struggle of the Christian race. "So run," says Paul (I Cor. ix, 24) to the whole Church of God; for runners do not march, they race:  "so run," run in such a way that, run as the few run, run as only the winner runs:  "in order that ye may attain"--have the prize deliberately in view:  "it is not enough merely to run--all run; but as there is only one who is victorious, so you must run, not with the slowness of the many, but with the energy of the one" (Dean Stanley).  We have no option but to seek the highest.

    Now the Holy Spirit reveals conditions for success in the race; and the first is a careful self-preparation.   "Every man that striveth in the games"--that enters the lists--"is TEMPERATE in all things" (I Cor. ix. 25).  It is obvious that an untrained runner has little or no chance against a disciplined athlete, hardened, schooled, fit.  Here are the actual directions from an old Greek book for the ten months' training:--"There must be orderly living, on spare food; abstain from confections; make a point of exercising at the appointed time, in heat and in cold; nor drink cold water, nor wine at random; give thyself to the training master as to a physician, and then enter the contests."  The athlete thus trains to prolong his wind, to harden his biceps, and to produce that which the Greek so loved--a perfect human:   we, to produce a perfect saint--as developed in spirit and character, as he in muscle and frame."  The abstinence of the athletes did not relate only to criminal enjoyments, but also to gratifications in themselves lawful; so the Christian's self-denial should bear, not only on guilty pleasures, but on every habit, on every enjoyment, which, without being vicious, may involve a loss of time or a diminution of moral force" (Godet).  Even the gossamer band of silk in the trousering above the knee (a runner in cross-country championships has told me) he had to discard: a 'weight ' (Heb. xii. i) can be fatal.

    Observance of the rules is a second vital condition of success.  "If a man contend in the games, he is not crowned, except he have contended LAWFULLY" (2 Tim. ii. 5)--that is, according to the rules of the running:  he may run magnificently; but if lawlessly, he is instantly disqualified." You may be making great strides, but you are running outside the track." (Augustine).  The New Testament is our racing manual:  it tells us exactly what to do, and exactly what to avoid:  we are not at liberty to invent our own rules, or construct our own holiness:  every rule is in the Book, and every rule is essential for the prize.  "Ye were running well:   who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?" (Gal. v, 7); that is, swift running is obeying the Holy Scriptures.  We seek the glory; but first, what secures the glory.  I press on toward the goal onto the prize" (Phil. iii, 14):  the mark, or goal, is perfect holiness; the prize is glory, the crown of holiness (Godet).  ( "If it could be proved, after the contest, that the victorious combatants had contended unlawfully, or unfairly, they were deprived of the prize and driven with disgrace from the game" --Dean Alford.)

   But self-mastery abides the supreme condition for success.  I therefore so run, as not uncertainly"; that is, if I fulfil the conditions, I shall not be supplanted (as I might be in a human footrace) by some fleeter runner; every believer is sure of the prize if only he fulfills the conditions:  "so fight I, as not beating the air"; my fisticuffs are no feints, but I land every blow; "but I buffet My BODY"--bruise it black and blue, make it livid, every blow striking home (Ellicott); "and bring it into bondage"--lead it as a slave (I Cor. ix, 27).  Here is disclosed our most dangerous enemy, "the flesh with its affections and lusts"; my blows, says Paul, are so aimed as to cover my adversary--and that adversary, my own body--with bruises, and so lead it captive.  He discovers, by self-examination, his besetting sins, and he lands his blows there: we must learn to know our weak points as well as Satan knows them.  I  fatigue my body, by the incessant and exhausting labours to which I condemn it (Dean Stanley). Paul was no ascetic, no monk; but, while a nourished body is the most effective instrument for God we shall ever have, a pampered body is a lost race.  For the race is no splendid spurt, it is a dogged drudgery; it is lost by either self-confidence or self-despair:  the real failures in life are those who surrender before the sun goes down. "The only way to keep pace with God is to run at full speed" (General W.Booth).

Paul now points out that, as the difficulties are incalculably greater and more subtle in the spiritual race, so the prizes are incomparably richer, and the losses more terrible.  Now they do it to receive a corruptible crown"--a garland of olive or bay or parsley or pine, that hardly faded sooner than the athlete's glory itself;" but we an incorruptible; a never-fading wreath, as Peter calls it (I Pet. v, 4).  So the extraordinarily potent lesson here revealed is that self-denial is only pleasure postponed.   "This," said King Edward to Canon Duckworth in the disrobing room after the Coronation," is one of the happiest days, if not the happiest, I ever spent."  Earthly crowns are not always even transient joys.  "The only crown I have ever worn," said the Austrian Emperor Charles II, who died since the Great War," was a crown of thorns."  No crown is ever applied to a believer in Scripture except for achievement, never for inheritance--stephanos never diadema; (diadem is applied only to Christ, (Rev. xix, 12, and Antichrist, Rev. xiii, 1);and it is curious that, exactly as five victor-wreaths were given in Greece for five totally distinct achievements--leaping, throwing, racing, boxing and wrestling--so five crowns, and five only, are held forth for spiritual athleticisms--the crown of joy for soul-winning (1 Thess. ii, 19), the crown of glory for church oversight (1 Pet. v, 4), the crown of incorruption for sanctity (1 Cor. ix, 25), the crown of righteousness for vigilance (2 Tim. iv, 8), and the crown of life for martyrdom (Rev. ii, 10).  These will blaze when the sun has gone out for ever.

   Paul closes with one of the supreme warnings of Scripture.  "Lest by any means after that I have acted the herald to others, I myself--not my works only, but myself-- "should be REJECTED [as unworthy of the crown and the prize (Ellicott)]."  As Bishop Ellicott says:--" Not reprobate:  the doctrinal deduction thus becomes, to some extent, modified; still the serious fact remains that the Apostle had before him the possibility of losing that which he was daily preaching to others:  as yet he counted not himself to have attained (Phil. iii, I2); that blessed assurance was for the closing period of a faithful life (2 Tim. iv, 7)."  The runner will never be disowned as a son, but he can be deeply disapproved as a servant:  a backslider may be in the race, but he is not in the running.  ("We cannot consider 'receiving the prize' to imply salvation generally, for this is even possible where wood, straw, and stubble have been built up; but that it intends the highest degree of brass, conditional upon faith and the advance in sanctiffcation"--Olshausen.)

    Full of years, and laden with victories, Paul--the Paul who never doubted his salvation after the Damascene vision, and who has couched the believer's eternal safety in the most Calvinistic language in the Bible--has not ceased to dread the flesh, and still trembles for his crown. The man who misses the approbation of Christ obtains no other, not even his own; and meanwhile, as we grow older, we find the flesh no less carnal, the world no less subtle, and the Devil no less Satanic than they always were.  "Hold fast that which thou hast, that no one take thy crown" (Rev. iii, 11):   yours already, hypothetically; yours certainly, if you run to a finish as you are running now; but forfeitable, if you slacken to a present inferior in the race.

    So we summarize some final points.  (1) No criminal, no slave, only the freeborn Greek could enter the lists:  so God's race is only for the re-born:  the race starts at the foot of the Cross, and conversion puts us in the lists. (2) The racer who fouls--or 'bores '--a fellow-runner is at once disqualified. Carpenter, an American at the Olympic Games, cut out the Englishman Hartell, and instantly lost the race.  (3) Unbelief is a strychnine which paralyzes:  if we imagine there is no race, it is certain we shall win no prize.  (4) We should never doubt our salvation:  we should never assume our prize. When in 1923 Sullivan swam the Channel on his seventh attempt, he said:--"Every beating I got made me the more determined to do it, and I have trained hard year after year for it."  (5) A trainer of prize-winners may himself lose the prize.  (6) The nearer we approach the goal, the lonelier the race.  (7) Let us remember the Cloud of Witnesses. The eyes of God are upon us; the eyes of Christ know our works, and rejoice in our running; the eyes of the holy angels are watching struggling jobs and budding Pauls; the eyes of the malignant Powers are always studying us; the eyes of the world are never off us; and, at the goal, the whole Church will know exactly how we ran. What an amphitheatre!

   So we cheer each other on as, to panting breast and trembling limbs, the goal rises on the horizon. Bishop Wordsworth beautifully suggests that from the Greek word here for prize, 'we get, through the Latin and Italian, our word Bravo':  so we love to cheer each drawn, white, dusty face, and together seek the Bravo of the returning Lord. The last lap used to be called 'the sob':  no cross-country winner ever breasts the tape without bleeding feet.

Carry me over the long, last mile,
Man of Nazareth, Christ for me!

"I have finished the stadium," Paul cries at last, when the two hundred yards had vanished under his victorious feet, henceforth there is laid up for me THE CROWN" (2 Tim. iv, 8); or, in the dying words of Payson,--"The battle is fought!  the battle is fought!  and the victory is won for ever!"