The Race and the Prize by Addie McWilliams

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 18, 1875

The Race and the Prize.

By Addie McWilliams

LIFE is a race. The prize at the end is a crown of endless life, an inheritance within the pearly gates of the jasper walls of a city of gold. This city whose streets are three hundred and seventy-five miles in length, all paved with purest gold, while on either side are mansions of surpassing beauty and grandeur, is to be the “everlasting habitation” of the finally faithful. In the “midst of the street of it” flows a river, pure and life-giving, upon whose banks the tree of life will ever yield its celestial fruit. Oh! could that beautiful home, overshadowed by the glory of God, be caused to pass in grand review before our mortal vision, we could not behold it. The sun itself would be a shade. We could only say, “Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”

There are many ways purporting to lead to the city above, but there is only one that reaches there. That way is a straight and narrow and rugged road. Its entrance is through the straight gate of repentance and confession.

We find in the race-course no resting place. We must ever be advancing, or we are losing ground; and though our feet may weary, and the heart grow faint, there are attendant angels to raise the falling, and give strength to the weak. There is help ever ready if the arm of faith only reaches to receive it. “Let us therefore lay aside every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus,” for the strength that we need, to “so run” that we “may obtain” the incorruptible crown.

Then onward and upward! Let this be our cry Till the journey of life shall be ended, Then the care and the toil and the earth-born sigh With the new song shall never be blended.

In that heavenly city no night shall be known, The light of the sun pales before it. For the glory of God and the Lamb’s dazzling throne, Shed their glory unceasingly o’er it.

ADDIE McWILLIAMS.

Soldier Valley, Iowa, Feb. 5, 1875.