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It can never be something which we only need at last, when we come to die, and having exhausted the gifts of the natural life we are warned to prepare for another. No; it must be ours now if we would enjoy it then. It must be the pith of our common labour, and the inspiration of our daily happiness, if we should have its joy at last, and finally enter into its fulness in the presence of God-at whose right hand there are pleasures for evermore.

"Now the Lord of Peace Himself give you peace always by all means. The Lord be with you all." Amen.

hating the evil and punishing it, as He loves the good and rewards it, would be no God at all. The absolute justice of the Divine, so far from being, as with much popular religion it is apt to be, a thought of alarm, is the supreme thought of comfort to every rational mind, as it is the root of all rational religion. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" Where could righteousness be found if not at the heart of all life? And obscured as its manifestations may sometimes be, and perplexing its developments, it is never at fault. Appearances may belie the eternal order. Vice may enjoy prosperity, injustice flourish, and the wicked be exalted. But beneath all this apparent disorder, Divine righteousness is working out its due ends. The moral evolution, like the natural, may be marked by many imperfections; but the "survival of the fittest" is the law of both alike. That which is right and suitable remains in the end. Through all complications and chances of evil, righteousness at last is brought forth as the light, and judgment as the noon-day.*

For the Divine order, we are to remember, is not merely a temporary manifestation now and here, but a continuous development. The lines

*Psalm xxxvii. 6,

of our higher life run onwards, and "it doth not yet appear what we shall be." Even if the kingdom of divine righteousness were less clearly apparent now, there is a future kingdom and glory where the evil shall be redressed and the good rewarded. To many religious people the idea of retribution is mainly associated with the future. They delight to dwell on the assurance that all will come right at last, whatever wrongs may remain here. In the final reckoning there will be no mistake. The imagery of the Gospels is for them not a parable but a reality. And on that great harvest-day, when the angels shall go forth, sickle in hand, to gather in the wheat and the tares, they rejoice to think that there will be no confusion. God knoweth them that are His, and He will separate betwixt the righteous and the wicked with unfailing hand. However the wheat and the tares may have been mingled here, a clear partition will then be made; and while the wheat is brought into the garner of God, the tares shall be burned with unquenchable fire. Every man shall bear his own burden in the light of that awful judgment.

Let us be sure that this great imagination mirrors an eternal truth. The good and the evil, if not here, yet hereafter, run on to their consum

"Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." His argument in the passage is, that every man must answer for himself and his own doings to God. The shadow of responsibility is never away from us-not even in the clearest sunshine of the Divine love. The fact that every thing we do bears its natural consequence is not at all touched by the higher evangelical fact, so often elsewhere expressed by him, that it is "not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us."* Give all force to this higher fact. If it were not for the Divine mercy, we should not only be, but remain, miserable sinners, "without God and without hope in the world." But the other fact is not the less true-not the less universal; and for the present we will do well to follow his line of thought in this respect.

The spiritual or evangelical tone of mind is. apt at times to overlook the sterner side of human life. It delights itself with the great possibilities of Divine grace, and the immense changes from evil to good which are not beyond its scope. But the Divine order is nevertheless a fact, and it is highly important that we should not de

* Titus, iii. 5.

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Two practical reflections occur to us at the close:

(1.) Let us never trifle with conscience. Conscience is the revelation of the Divine order and law of our lives. We may be mistaken or in doubt about many things. But when conscience clearly says of any temptation, No; it is not right so to think or do,—then we may be sure that our duty is plain. And misled or uninformed as we may sometimes be, the great lines of conduct are always clear. We know at all times that it is better to be good than to be bad -to think truly, to act purely and generously, "to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly." If we yield to falsehood or impurity; if we commit injustice; if we are envious of our brother's good, and would wrong him if we could; if we give way to sinful passion, and instead of bringing under obedience the body, pamper and indulge it, there is a voice within us tells us we are wrong, even when we stifle it. Wrong assuredly we are whenever we trifle with duty or sink below our own sense of what is good and right; when the law in our members, warring against the law of the mind, brings us into captivity to the law of sin which is in our members.* Moral deterioration and punishment * Romans, vii. 23.

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