My friends—­What if Christ should answer such people—­I do not say that He does always answer them so, for He is very pitiful, and of tender mercy;—­but what if He were to answer them, Save you?  Help you?  O presumptuous mortal, what have you done that Christ should save or help you?  You are afraid of being ruined.  Why should you not be ruined?  What good will it be to your fellow-men if you keep your money, instead of losing it?  You are making nothing but a bad use of your money.  Why should Christ help you to keep it, and misuse it still more?

You are afraid of death.  You do not wish to die.  But why should you not die?  Why should Christ save you from death?  Of what use is your life to Christ, or to any human being?  If you are living a bad life, your life is a bad thing, and does harm not only to yourself, but to your neighbours.  Why should Christ keep you alive to hurt and corrupt your neighbours, and to set a bad example to your children?  If you are not doing your duty where Christ has put you, you are of no use, a cumberer of the ground.  What reason can you shew why He should not take you away, and put some one in your place who will do his duty?  You are afraid of being lost—­why should you not be lost?  You are offensive, and an injury to the universe.  You are an actual nuisance on Christ’s earth and in Christ’s Kingdom.  Why should He not—­as He has sworn—­cast out of His Kingdom all things which offend, and you among the rest?  Why should He not get rid of you, as you get rid of vermin, as you get rid of weeds; and cast you into the fire, to be burned up with all evil things?  Answer that:  before you ask Christ to save you, and deliver you from danger, and from death, and from the hell which you so much—­and perhaps so justly—­fear.

And how that question is to be answered, I cannot see.

Certainly the selfish man cannot answer it.  The idle man cannot answer it.  The profligate man cannot answer it.  They are doing nothing for Christ; or for their neighbours, or for the human race; and they cannot expect Christ to do anything for them.

The only men who can answer it; the only men, it seems to me, who can have any hope of their prayers being heard, are those who, like the Psalmist, are trying to do something for Christ, and their neighbours, and the human race; who are, in a word, trying to be good.  Those, I mean, who have already prayed, earnestly and often, the first prayer, “Teach me, O Lord, Thy statutes, and I shall keep them to the end.”  They have—­not a right:  no one has a right against Christ, no, not the angels and archangels in heaven—­not a right, but a hope, through Christ’s most precious and undeserved promises, that their prayers will be heard; and that Christ will save them from destruction, because they are, at least, likely to become worth saving; because they are likely to be of use in Christ’s world, and to do some little work in Christ’s kingdom.