Weekly expositor. (Brockway Centre, Mich.) 1882-1894, 1894-06-22

there. Instead of amendment in the
other world, all the associations, now
that the good are evolved. will be de-
generating and down. You would not
want to send a man TO a cholera or
yellow fever hospital for his health;
and the great lazaretto of the next
world, containing the diseased and
plague struck, will be poor place for
moral recovery. If the surroundings
in this world were crowded of tempta-
tion. the surroundings of the next
world, after the righteous have passed
up and on. will be /, 600 per cent more
crowded of temptation.
Multitudes of men who are kept
within bounds would say, Go to,
nowl Let me get all out of this life
there is in it. Come, gluttony, and
inebriation, and uncleanness, and re-
venge, and all sensualities, and wait
upon me! My life may be somewhat
shortened in this world by dissolute-
ness, but that will only make heavenly
indulgence on a larger scale the sooner
possible. / will Overtake the saints at
last, and will enter the Heavenly
who behaved themselves here will
on my way TO heaven take little
wider excursion than those who were
on earth pious, and | shall go to
heaven via Gehenna and via Sheol
! Another chance in the next world
means free license and wild abandon
Inent in this.
Suppose you were party in an i'm
portant case at law, and you knew
from consultation with judges and at
torneys that it would be tried twice
and the first trial would be of little
importance, but that the second would
decide everything; for which trial
would you make the most preparation,
for which retain the ablest attorneys,
for which be most anxious about the
attendance of witnesses? You would
put all the stress upon the second trial,
all the anxiety, all the expenditure,
saving, "The first is nothing the last
is everything. Give the race assurance
of n second aud more important trial in
the subseq uent life, and all the prepare
ton for eternity would be post NOR
TEN" post funeral, post sepulchral and
the world with one jerk be pitched off
into impiety and godlessness
Furthermore, let me ask why
chance should be given in the next
world If we have refused innumerable
chances in this? Suppose you give n
banquet, and you invite a vast number
of friends, but one man declines to
come. or treats your invitation with
indifference. You in the course of
twenty years give twenty banquets,
and the same man is invited TO them
ALL and treats them all in the same
obnoxious way. After awhile you
remove to another house, larger and
better, and you again invite your
friends, but send no invitation to the
man who declined or neglected the
other invitations Are you to blame?
Has he right TO expect to be invited
after all the indignities he has done
you2 God in this world has invited us
all TO the banquet of his grace. lie
invited us by his Providence and his
Spirit 800 days of every year since we
knew our right hand from our left If
we declined it every time, or treated
the invitation with indifference,
and gave twenty or forty or fifty years
of indIgnity on our part toward the
banqueter, and at last he spreads the
banquet in a more luxurious and
kingly place, amid the heavenly
gardens, have we a right to expect
him to invite us again, and have we a
right to blame him if he does not in
vite us
If twelve gates of salvation stood
open twenty years or fifty years for
our admission, and at the end of that
time they are closed, can we complain
of it and say: "These gates ought to
be open again. Give us another
CHANGER" If the steamer is to sail FOR
Hamburg, and we want to get 70
Germany by that line, and we read in
every evening and every morning
newspaper that it will sail on a GER
tain day, for two weeks we have that
advertisement before our eyes, and
then we go down to the docks fifteen
minutes after it has showed off into the
stream and say: Come back Give
me another chance. 1t is not fair TO
treat me in this way. Swing up to the
dock again, and throw out planlts and
let me come on board" Such behavior
would invite arrest as mailman.
You see that this idea lifts this
world up from an important way sta.
ton to platform of stupendous issues,
and makes all eternity whirl around
this hour But one trial for which all
the preparation must be made in this
world, or never made at all. That
; piles up all the emphases all the eli.
makes and all the destinies into life
here. No other chance! o, how that
augments the value and the imopar.
lance of this chance!
: Alexander with his army used to
surround city, and then would lift a
great light in token TO the people that
: is they surrendered before that light
went out all would be well; but il
once the light went ont, then the bat
; tering-rams would swing against the
wall and demolition and disaster
,.,,,lI fo1lo.,. Wall al txra y,oaI IL