III.  Now, still further, let me ask you to consider, lastly, the alternative which these texts open for us.

I believe that the order in which they stand in Scripture is the order in which men generally come to believe them, and to feel them.  I am old-fashioned enough and narrow enough to believe in conversion; and to believe further that, as a rule, the course through which the soul passes from darkness into light is the course which divine revelation took:  first, the unveiling of sin and its issues, and then the glad leaping up of the trustful heart to the conception of redeeming grace.

But what I seek briefly to suggest now is, not only the order of manifestation as brought out in these words, but also the alternative which they present to us, one branch or other of which every soul of you will have to experience.  You must have either the destruction or the grace.  And, more wonderful still, the same coming of the same Lord will be to one man the destruction, and to another the manifestation and reception of His perfect grace.  As it was in the Lord’s first coming, ‘He is set for the rise and the fall of many in Israel.’  The same heat softens some substances and bakes others into hardness.  A bit of wax and a bit of clay put into the same fire—­one becomes liquefied and the other solidified.  The same light is joy to one eye and torture to another.  The same pillar of cloud was light to the hosts of Israel, and darkness and dismay to the armies of Egypt.  The same Gospel is ’a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death,’ by the giving forth of the same influences killing the one and reviving the other; the same Christ is a Stone to build upon or a Stone of stumbling; and when He cometh at the last, Prince, King, Judge, to you and me, His coming shall be prepared as the morning; and ye ’shall have a song as when one cometh with a pipe to the mountain of the Lord’; or else it shall be a day of darkness and not of light.  He comes to me, to you; He comes to smite or He comes to glorify.

Oh, brethren! do not believe that God’s threatenings are wind and words; do not let teachings that sap the very foundations of morality and eat all the power out of the Gospel persuade you that the solemn words, ’The soul that sinneth it shall die,’ are not simple verity.

And then, my brethren, oh! then, do you turn yourselves to that dear Lord whose grace is magnified in this most chiefly, that ’He hath borne our sins and carried our sorrows’; and taking Him for your Saviour, your King, your Shield, your All, when He cometh it will be life to you; and the grace that He imparts will be heaven for ever more.

* * * * *

ST. MATTHEW

Chaps.  I to VIII

CONTENTS