My friends, when the battle of life is over, and the resurrection has come, and our bodies rise from the dead, will we have on us any scars showing our bravery for God? Christ will be there all covered with scars. Scars on the brow, scars on the hand, scars on the feet, scars all over the heart, won in the battle of redemption. And all heaven will sob aloud with emotion as they look at those scars. Ignatius will be there, and he will point out the place where the tooth and paw of the lion seized him in the Coliseum, and John Huss will be there, and he will show where the coal first scorched the foot on that day when his spirit took wing of flame from Constance. M'Millan, and Campbell, and Freeman, American missionaries in India, will be there -- the men who with their wives and children went down in the awful massacre at Cawnpore, and they will show where the daggers of the Sepoys struck them. The Waldenses will be there, and they will show where their bones were broken on that day when the Piedmontese soldiery pitched them over the rocks. And there will be those there who took care of the sick and who looked after the poor, and they will have evidences of earthly exhaustion. And Christ, with His scarred hand waving over the scarred multitude, will say, "You suffered with Me on earth; now be glorified with Me in heaven." And then the great organs of eternity will take up the chant, and St. John will play: "These are they who came out of greaf tribulation and had their robes washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb,"
But what will your chagrin and mine be if it shall be told that day on the streets of heaven that on earth we shrank back from all toil and sacrifice and hardship. No scars to show the heavenly soldiery. Not so much as one ridge on the palm of the hand to show that just once in all this battle for God and the truth, we just once grasped the sword so firmly, and struck so hard that the sword and the hand struck together and the hand clave to the sword. O my Lord Jesus, rouse us to Thy service. by Rev. Dr. Talmage.
