1 Corinthians 9:25

25. Every man that striveth Every agonistes, or champion.

Is temperate Is self-controlling. Then, as now, the candidate for the race put himself under a long and severe training, in diet, in potations, in exercise, in order to tone himself up to the highest vigour. Even the professional pugilist of our modern execrable prize-fights will, in order to obtain victory, put himself upon a regimen of strict temperance, making himself an example of physical virtue for better men. He is a practical proof that strict abstinence from intoxicating drinks is ordinarily, a requisite condition to the highest health and vigour. He shows too, that the most profligate of men are amply able to discover and recognise the severest truths, when they have even a sordid interest in knowing them. Would the pugilist be as wise, as keenly searching after the truth, as energetic and as self-denying in pursuing the eternal prize as he is the temporal, he could not fail to win. But Paul uses a Greek word that covers more than bodily temperance. It includes self-denial of every kind, and is used by him in reference to his own self-denials in eating idol sacrifices, (1 Corinthians 8:13,) in refusing Churchly maintenance, (1 Corinthians 9:15,) and in all the self-mortifying compliances of 1 Corinthians 9:19-22. And this reference runs through to the end of the chapter; nay, even to the end of the next chapter. It is a thread of which the reader should not for a moment lose hold who would completely understand St. Paul.

Crown From the pine groves contiguous to the stadium the Corinthians would gather the branches, and wreath a garland for the brow of the victor, amid the applauding crowds of spectators. It was an evergreen; a not unfitting emblem of that earthly immortality of renown which it indicated that the wearer had attained. But, alas! this emblem of imperishability was itself perishable. The lyrics of the poet Pindar are almost the sole mementos of the victors, but they, too, in time will perish.

The most eminent emblematic garland of victory was the laurel. It was said that Apollo, after having slain the dragon Python at Delphos, wreathed his brows with the laurel, and established his oracle at the Castalian spring issuing from the cave at Delphos. At the Olympic games they used the wild olive; at the Nemean, the parsley.

An incorruptible Our Christian life is the race, crowned with everlasting triumph at its close. St. Paul, as he drew near his martyrdom, beautifully styles it the crown of righteousness. 2 Timothy 4:8.