Why do the wicked live?  That some of them may be monuments of mercy.

So it was with John Newton, so it was with Augustine, perhaps so it was with you.  Chieftains of sin to become chieftains of grace.  Paul, the apostle, made out of Saul, the persecutor.  Baxter, the flaming evangel, made out of Baxter, the blasphemer.  Whole squadrons, with streamers of Emmanuel floating from the masthead, though once they were launched from the dry-docks of diabolism.  God lets these wicked men live that He may make jewels out of them for coronets, that He may make tongues of fire out of them for Pentecosts, that He may make warriors out of them for Armageddons, that he may make conquerors out of them for the day when they shall ride at the head of the white-horse host in the grand review of the resurrection.

Why do the wicked live?  To make it plain beyond all controversy that there is another place of adjustment.  So many of the bad up, so many of the good down.  It seems to me that no man can look abroad without saying—­no man of common sense, religious or irreligious, can look abroad without saying, “There must be some place where brilliant scoundrelism shall be arrested, where innocence shall get out from under the heel of despotism.”  Common fairness as well as eternal justice demands it.

We adjourn to the great assizes, the stupendous injustices of this life.  They are not righted here.  There must be some place where they will be righted.  God can not afford to omit the judgment day or the reconstruction of conditions.  For you can not make me believe that that man stuffed with all abomination, having devoured widows’ houses and digested them, looking with basilisk or tigerish eyes upon his fellows, no music so sweet to him as the sound of breaking hearts, is, at death, to get out of the landau at the front door of the sepulcher and pass right on through to the back door of the sepulcher, and find a celestial turnout waiting for him, so that he can drive tandem right up primrosed hills, one glory riding as lackey ahead, and another glory riding as postilion behind, while that poor woman who supported her invalid husband and her helpless children by taking in washing and ironing, often putting her hand to her side where the cancerous trouble had already begun, and dropping dead late on Saturday night while she was preparing the garments for the Sabbath day, coming afoot to the front door of the sepulcher, shall pass through to the back door of the sepulcher and find nothing waiting, no one to welcome, no one to tell her the way to the King’s gate.  I will not believe it.  Solomon was confounded in his day by what he represents as princes afoot and beggars a-horseback, but I tell you there must be a place and a time when the right foot will get into the stirrup.  To demonstrate beyond all controversy that there is another place for adjustment, God lets the wicked live.

Why do the wicked live?  For the same reason that He lets us live—­to have time for repentance.