On the other side, he is always against the life of drift, the half-thought-out life.  There they were, he says, in the days of Noah, eating and drinking, marrying, dreaming—­and the floods came and destroyed them (Luke 17:27).  So ran the old familiar story, and, says Jesus, it is always true; men will drift and dream for ever, heedless of fact, heedless of God—­and then ruin, life gone, the soul lost, the Son of Man come, and “you yourselves thrust out” (Luke 13:28, with Matt. 25:10-13).  It is quite striking with what a variety of impressive pictures Jesus drives home his lesson.  There is the person who everlastingly says and does not do (Matt. 23:3)—­who promises to work and does not work (Matt. 21:28)—­who receives a new idea with enthusiasm, but has not depth enough of nature for it to root itself (Mark 4:6)—­who builds on sand, the “Mr. Anything” of Bunyan’s allegory; nor these alone, for Jesus is as plain on the unpunctual (Luke 13:25), the easy-going (Luke 12:47), the sort that compromises, that tries to serve God and Mammon (Matt. 6:24)—­all the practical half-and-half people that take their bills quickly and write fifty, that offer God and man about half what they owe them of thought and character and action, and bid others do the same, and count themselves men of the world for their acuteness (Luke 16:1-8).  And to do them justice, Jesus commends them; they have taken the exact measure of things “in their generation.”  Their mistake lies in their equation of the fugitive and the eternal; and it is the final and fatal mistake according to Jesus, and a very common one—­forgetfulness of God in fact (Luke 12:20), a mistake that comes from not thinking things out.  Jesus will have men think everything out to the very end.  “He never says:  Come unto me, all ye who are too lazy to think for yourselves” (H.  S. Coffin).  It is energy of mind that he calls for—­either with me or against me.  He does not recognize neutrals in his war—­“he that is not against us is for us” (Luke 9:50)—­“he that is not with me is against me” (Matt. 12:30).

Where does a man’s Will point him?  That is the question.  “Out of the abundance, the overflow, of the heart, the mouth speaketh” (Matt. 12:34).  What is it that a man wills, purity or impurity (Matt. 5:28)?  It is the inner energy that makes a man; what he says and does is an overflow from what is within—­an overflow, it is true, with a reaction.  It is what a man chooses, and what he wills, that Jesus always emphasizes; “God knoweth your hearts” (Luke 16:15).  Very well then; does a man choose God?  That is the vital issue.  Does he choose God without reserve, and in a way that God, knowing his heart, will call a whole-hearted choice?