The McCook tribune. (McCook, Neb.) 1886-1936, 1894-06-22

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other world, all the associations. now
that the good are evolved. will be de.
generating and down. You would no,
want to sen a man to a cholera O,
yellow fever hospital for his health.
and the great lazaretto of the next
world, containing the diseased and
plague-struck, will be a poor place for
moral recovery. If the surroundings
in this world were crowded of tempta.
ton, the surroundings of the next
world, after the righteous have passed
up and on, will be 1000 per cent more
crowded of temptation.
Multitudes of men who are kept
within bounds would say, go to,
now! 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. l will overtake the saints at
last, and will enter the Heavenly
Temple only a little later than those
who behaved themselves here. l will
on my way to heaven take a little
wider excursion than those who were
on earth pious, and 1 shall go 20
heaven via Gehenna and via Sheol"
Another chance in the next world
means free license and wild abandon
ment in this.
suppose you were a party in an i'm
portant case at law, and you knew
from consultation with judges and at
torneys hat 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 retaip 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,
saying, The first is nothing, the last
is everything. Give the race assurance
OF a second and more important trial in
the subsequentlife, and all the prepara-
ton for eternity would be post nor
TEN" post funeral, post sepulchral and
the world with n jerk be pitched off
INTO lmpiety and godlessness.
Furthermore, let me ask why a
chance should be given in the next
world if we have refused innumerable
chances in this? Suppose you give a
banquet, and you invite a vast number
Of friends lint nna lnnlinnc 70
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 a right to expect to be invited
after all the indignities he has done
you? God in this world has invited US
all to the banquet of his grace. He
invited us by his Providence and his
Spirit 365 days Of every year since we
knew our right hand from our left. If
we declined it every TIM, or treated
the invitation with Indifference,
and gave twenty or forty or fifty years
Of indlgnity on our part toward the
banqueter, and at last he spreads the
banquet in d more luxurious and
kingly place, amid the heavenly
gardens, have we a right to eXpecs
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
chance?:" If the steamer is to sail for
Hamburg, and we want to get to
Germany by that line, and we read in
every evening and every morning
newspaper hat it will sail on a cer-
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
Stfean ana say. ZONE D2ch- UlVe
me another chance. 1t is not fair to
treat me in this way. Swing up to the
dock again, and throw out planks and
let me come on board" Such behavior
would invite arrest as a 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. 0, how that
augments the value and the imopar-
lance of this chance!
Alexander with his army used to
surround a 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 we'll; but if
once the light went out, then the bat
erino-ramS would swing AGAINST the