Into this arena each generation has entered, one after another, to show their valor. Once the saints of whom we read in the Bible and the history of the Church were upon the earth, and it was their turn, and heaven and earth were watching them. They did their work well. {307} So penetrated were they with the great thought of eternity that some of them, like Abraham, left home and kindred, and went out not knowing whither they went; and others, like the martyrs, gave their hearts' blood for a sacrifice. And there were others who were not saints, for they were not called to deeds of heroism, but they were good men, who in simplicity of heart fulfilled each duty, and served God with clean hands and pure hearts. And penitents have come in their turn. Once they were unwise, and the world deceived them, and they followed their own will, but afterward they turned to God, and redeemed their former sins by a true penance, and died in the number of those who overcame the Wicked One. And now it is our turn. There are many adversaries. All things are ready. The herald has called our name. And as the primitive martyrs, condemned to the wild beasts in the amphitheatre, nerved themselves for the encounter by the thought of the thousand spectators ranged around, so to animate our courage let us give heed to the sympathizing witnesses who watch our strife, and who cry to us from heaven and from earth: Be valiant! Do battle for the right! Acquit you like men! Be strong! And again, as our Lord's words in the text remind us that we have an appointed work to do, they remind us also that we have an allotted time to do it in. All men acknowledge that religion is a thing to be attended to. But when? Some seem to think that it is enough to attend to religion at Easter and Christmas, and that at other times it may be left alone. Some at still more distant intervals, when the time has been too long, and the number of sins too great, and the burden on the conscience too heavy. Others propose to attend to it in the leisure of old age, or just before they leave this world. And very many imagine that, if a man actually makes his peace with God at any time before he dies, there is not much to be regretted. How different is God's intention in this matter! "_Man goeth forth, to his work and to his labor until the evening_." Think of a day-laborer. {308} He rises very early in the morning, in the winter, long before it is light, and goes off to his work. He works all day until the evening, pausing only at noon, when he seeks some hollow in the rock, or the shelter of some overhanging shrub, to protect him from the cold or the heat, while he eats his frugal dinner. Now, it is after this pattern that God wishes us to work out our salvation. The Christian should work from the morning till the evening, from the beginning of life to the end of it. There is not a day that God does not claim for his own. There is not an hour over which He has resigned His sovereignty. A man who