---

Who can tell how long that may be for any one of us? The sands run swiftly through life's hour glass. The shadow hastens to go down upon the dial. The waves eat away so quickly the dwindling shoal of land which crumbles beneath us. The Christian finds nothing in such thoughts to make him sad. Every milestone marks the growing nearness of his home. The waves cannot be crossed too swiftly by the eager traveller. Before us lie the ages of eternity, filled with a blessedness of personal enjoyment and rapturous ministry which defy tongue to tell or mind to picture. But the blessed future must not divert our thoughts from the duties to be discharged during the rest of the time which we are to spend in the flesh. We must not be dreamers, but warriors. To arms! Arm yourselves with the same mind; and when we ask, "What mind?" we are told to arm ourselves with the mind that took Jesus to His death. In a venerable old church at Innsbruck, famous for containing the tomb of the great Emperor Maximilian, there is a magnificent bronze statue of Godfrey of Boulogne, the illustrious crusader. His head is covered with a helmet, and on the helmet rests a crown of thorns. Of course, there was a meaning in the mind of the artist other than that with which we now invest the strange conjunction. He doubtless designed to represent the sacred cause for which that helmet was donned. But we may discover an apt symbol of the teaching of our apostle, who unites in these verses the armour of the Christian soldier, and the recollection of Christ's suffering in the flesh. This witness of the sufferings of Christ first takes us to the Cross; and after gazing reverently on that spectacle of love, we are brought to a point where two ways diverge. And the only way of discovering and maintaining the right path is to imbibe the spirit of that wondrous death; nay, to bind it around us as a talisman of victory. "In hoc signo vinces."

(F. B. Meyer, B. A.)

---

---

KJV: Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin;

WEB: Forasmuch then as Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind; for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin;