We now understand why they take so deep an interest in the running of the Christian athletes on earth. They surround their course, like a great cloud. They know that they will enter into the holiest if we win the race. For every new victory of faith on earth, there is a new revelation of God in heaven. Even the angels, the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, learn, says St. Paul, through the Church the manifold wisdom of God.[325] How much more will the saints, members of the Church, brethren of Christ, be better able to apprehend the love and power of God, Who makes weak, sinful men conquerors over death and its fear. The word “witnesses”[326] does not itself refer to their looking on, as spectators of the race. Another word would almost certainly have been used to express this notion, which is moreover contained in the phrase “having so great a cloud surrounding[327] us.” The thought seems to be that the men to whose faith the Spirit of Christ in Scripture bare witness were themselves witnesses for God in a godless world, in the same sense in which Christ tells His disciples that they were His witnesses, and Ananias tells Saul that he would be a witness for Christ.[328] Every one who confessed Christ before men, him did Christ also confess before His Church which is on earth, and does now confess before His Father in heaven, by leading him into God’s immediate presence. FOOTNOTES: [289] ἕκαστον (xi. 21). [290] Gen. xlvii. 31. [291] Chap. xi. 30. [292] Chap. xi. 31. [293] Ruth i. 16. [294] Matt. i. 5. [295] Judges iv. and v. [296] Judges vii. 18. [297] Judges xi. 35. [298] Judges xiii. 7; xvi. 28. [299] Robertson, _History of the Christian Church_, book ii., chap. vii. [300] Chap. xi. 33. [301] Judges vii. [302] Judges xi. 33. [303] 2 Sam. v. 25. [304] 2 Sam. viii. 2, 6. [305] 1 Sam. xii. 23. [306] 2 Sam. vii. 28, 29. [307] Dan. vi. 22. [308] Dan. iii. 27, 28. [309] 1 Kings xix. 1–3. [310] 2 Kings vi. 17. [311] 2 Kings xx. 5. [312] 1 Macc. v. [313] 1 Kings xvii. 22. [314] 2 Kings iv. 35. [315] ἐξ (chap. xi. 35). [316] Luke xx. 35. [317] 2 Macc. vi. 19. [318] 2 Chron. xxiv. 21. [319] Reading ἐπρήσθησαν. [320] _Ad Martyras_, 2. [321] Chap. ix. 8. [322] Chap. ii. 15. [323] Chap. xi. 40. [324] περί. [325] Eph. iii. 10. [326] mart/yrôn (xii. 1). [327] perike/imenon. [328] Acts i. 8; xxii. 14. CHAPTER XIV. _CONFLICT._