I dare say that he was thinking about the coming of the Lord, when all the fighting and struggle would be over, and that when he said ‘God shall bruise him under your feet shortly,’ there lay in the back of his mind the thought, ‘the Lord is at hand.’  But be that as it may, there is another way of looking at the words.  They are not in the least like our experience, are they?  ’Shortly!’—­and here am I, a Christian man for the last half century perhaps; and have I got much further on in my course?  Have I brought the sin that used to trouble me much down, and is my character much more noble, Christ-like, than it was long years ago?  Would other people say that it is?  Instead of ‘shortly’ we ought to put ‘slowly’ for the most of us.  But, dear friend, the ideal is swift conquest, and it is our fault and our loss, if the reality is sadly different.

There are a great many evils that, unless they are conquered suddenly, have very small chance of ever being conquered at all.  You never heard of a man being cured of his love of intoxicating drink, for instance, by a gradual process.  The serpent’s life is not crushed out of it by gradual pressure, but by one vigorous stamp of a nervous heel.

But if my experience as a Christian man does not enable me to set to my seal that this text is true, the text itself will tell me why.  It is ‘the God of peace’ that is going to ‘bruise Satan.’  Do you keep yourself in touch with Him, dear friend?  And do you let His powers come uninterruptedly and continuously into your spirit and life?  It is sheer folly and self-delusion to wonder that the medicine does not work as quickly as was promised, if you do not take the medicine.  The slow process by which, at the best, many Christian people ’bruise Satan under their feet,’ during which he hurts their heels more than they hurt his head, is mainly due to their breaking the closeness and the continuity of their communion with God in Jesus Christ.

But, after all, it is Heaven’s chronology that we have to do with here.  ‘Shortly,’ and it will be ‘shortly,’ if we reckon by heavenly scales of duration.  Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.  ‘The Lord will help her, and that right early.’  ’The Lord is at hand.’  When we get yonder, ah! how all the long years of fighting will have dwindled down, and we shall say ’the Lord did help me, and that right early,’ and though there may have been more than threescore years and ten of fighting, that, while we were in the thick of it, did not seem to come to much, we shall then look back and say:  ’Yes, Lord, it was but for a moment, and it has brought me to the undying day of Eternal Peace.’

TERTIUS

   ’I, Tertius, who write the epistle, salute you in the
   Lord.’—­ROMANS xvi. 22 (R.V.).