All this may seem very arbitrary and impossible until we remember that the classification is not ours but God’s.  It is not we who have to divide men, setting one on the right hand and another on the left; that is God’s work; and it is well to remind ourselves that He invites none of us to share His judgment-throne with Him, or, by any verdict of ours, to anticipate the findings of the last great day.  And because to us such a division is impossible, it does not therefore follow that it should be so to Him before whom all hearts are open and all desires known. We cannot separate men thus because human character is so complex.  But complexity is a relative term; it depends on the eyes which behold it; and our naming a thing complex may be but another way of declaring our ignorance concerning it.  We all know how a character, a life, a course of events, which, on first view, seemed but a tangled, twisted skein, on closer acquaintance often smooths itself out into perfect simplicity.  And there is surely no difficulty in believing that it should be so with human life when it is judged by the perfect knowledge of God.  Life is like a great tree which casts forth on every side its far-spreading branches.  Yet all that moving, breathing mystery of twig and branch and foliage springs from a single root.  To us the mystery is baffling in its complexity:  we have looked at the branches.  To God it is simple, clear:  He sees the hidden root from which it springs.  So that, to go back to our former illustration, it is only our ignorance which compels us to speak of “alpacas” in the moral world.  To perfect knowledge they will prove to be, as Mr. Selby says, either slightly-disguised sheep or slightly-disguised goats.

There is a further fact also to be taken into account in considering Christ’s two-fold classification.  Since it is the work of infinite knowledge and justice it will have regard to all the facts of our life.  God looks not only at the narrow present, but back into the past, and forward into the future.  He marks the trend of the life, the bent and bias of the soul.  He chalks down no line saying, “Reach this or you are undone for ever.”  He sets up no absolute standard to which if a man attain he is a saint, or falling short of which he is a sinner.  And when He calls one man righteous and another wicked, He means very much more than that one has done so many good deeds, and another so many evil deeds; “righteous” and “wicked” describe what each is in himself, what each will decisively reveal himself to be, when present tendencies have fully worked themselves out.  There are two twilights, the twilight of evening and the twilight of morning; and therefore God’s question to us is not, how much light have we? but, which way do we face? to the night or to the day?  Not “What art thou?” but “What wilt thou?” is the supreme question; it is the answer to this which sets some on the right hand and some on the left.

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