God forbid, that, in that sense, any of us should deem that we were chosen, until the grave has put us beyond temptation.  But how happy were it to think of you as Christ’s chosen, in that sense which should be a constant encouragement to us all:  to think of you as going on towards God; to think of you as living to him daily; to think of you as on his side against all his enemies; to think of you as led by his Spirit, as living members of his holy and glorious Church,—­militant now, in heaven triumphant!

LECTURE XV.

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LUKE xi. 25.

When he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished.

JOHN v. 42.

I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you.

These passages, of which the first is taken from the gospel of this morning’s service, the other from the second lesson, differ in words, but their meaning is very nearly the same.  The house which was empty, swept and garnished, was especially one empty of the love of God.  Whatever evil there may not have been in it; whatever good there may have been in those of whom Christ spoke in the second passage:  yet it and they agreed in this; one thing they had not, which alone was worth, all the rest besides; they had not the love of God.

And so it is still; many are the faults which we have not; many are the good qualities which we have; but the life is wanting.  What is so rare as to find one who is not indifferent to God?  What so rare, even rarer than the other, as to find one who actually loves him?

Therefore it is that those who go in at the broad gate of destruction are many, and those who go in at the narrow gate of life are few.  For destruction and life are but other terms for indifference to God on the one hand, and love to him on the other.  All who are indifferent to him, die; a painless death of mere extinction, if, like the brute creation, they have never been made capable of loving him; or a living death of perpetual misery, if, like evil spirits and evil men, they might have loved him and would not.  And so all who love him, live a life, from first to last, without sin and sorrow, if, like the holy angels, they have loved him always; a life partaking at first of death, but brightening more and more unto the perfect day, if, like Christians, they were born in sin, but had been redeemed and sanctified to righteousness.

Whoever has watched human character, whether in the young or the old, must be well aware of the truth of this:  he will know that the value of any character is in proportion to the existence or to the absence of this feeling, or rather, I should say, this principle.  An exception may, perhaps, be made for a small, a very small number of fanatics; an apparent exception likewise exists in the case of many who seem to be religious, but who really are not so.  The few exceptions of the former case are so very few, that