nothing.”  Do not misunderstand this awful silence!  You “marvel greatly” that He works no miracle to satisfy your doubts, or you deny His power of doing so, and therefore you imagine, that because He replies not to your accusations, He either hears them not, cares not for them, or cannot meet them.  But be assured, a day is appointed when the question between you and Him will be fairly tried.  Unbelievers of all ranks, and whatever be their ability, will have an opportunity of re-stating their case, and of proving the truth of their accusations—­if they can.  Let none suppose that Jesus will shrink from such an investigation.  Every utterance is reported for review at judgment; every book is kept for that day.  It is not the method of the divine government to put down its enemies by mere physical power, as if the question between God and man was indeed one of strength and weakness, and not rather of right and wrong.  The Lord will indeed answer his enemies; but He will do so by the irresistible power of truth, and the omnipotent force of righteousness.  He will crush and overwhelm them; but it will be in their own conscience, and in their own estimation.  He will expel them from whatever refuge of lies they may vainly attempt to seek for shelter, and expose them to the full blaze of principle, until their inmost souls echo the dread sentence of “GUILTY,” which must be pronounced upon them, while they stand “speechless” amidst the assembled universe, and before the omniscient and holy Judge of all the earth.  “He is coming with ten thousand of His saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to CONVINCE all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their HARD SPEECHES which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him!”

Do we address one who is a professed unbeliever in the truth, or rather, who “believes a lie,”—­that there is no Saviour?  We ask such a one to consider what the certain, or even probable consequences will be to him, if all we have said is nevertheless true?  What if you shall see Jesus Christ face to face, and have your whole outer and inner history, as it is known to God, minutely revealed to your own mind, and to the assembled jury of the universe?  Will your thinking, or saying, that the whole is a fiction, make it so?  Will your scoff at God’s revelation of the future prevent the dead from rising, or the Judge from appearing?  Will a foolish jest, or a proud callousness, or a subtle argument, or a brave indifference to what others fear, enable you, on the resurrection morning, to shut your ears against the sound of the last trump, or to disobey the summons of the Son of God to rise from the tomb, and to appear before Him?  And if no unbelief can change the will of God, or make that false which He proclaims to be true, nor alter His prescribed order in things to come, no more than it can do His present order in the starry heavens,—­what can you say to Jesus Christ in your own defence?