PROBATION IN THIS LIFE
Up to this we have been ignoring a large proportion of the inhabitants
of the Unseen Land. To avoid misunderstanding we have kept in view
those only of whom we had hope that they died in the fear and love of
God. But there is no evading the thought that between these and the
utterly reprobate, there are multitudes of Christian and heathen in
that Unseen Life today who belong to neither class, mixed characters in
all varying degrees of good or evil. Of many of them it could be said
that those who knew them best saw much that was good and lovable in
them. But it could not be said that they had consciously and
definitely chosen for Christ.
They must form the majority of those to-day in the Unseen Land.
Therefore one cannot help wondering about them. One day death overtook
them. The thought of them comes forcibly when some morning the
newspapers startle us with the story of a terrible battle or railway
smash or shipwreck or conflagration in which hundreds have passed out
of life in a moment and the horror of the catastrophe is deepened by
the thought that they have been called away suddenly unprepared.
What of their position in the Intermediate Life? Our Christian charity
prompts us to hope the best for them. But are we justified in hoping?
It is impossible for thoughtful, sympathetic men to evade that
question. It is cowardly to evade it. At any rate a treatise on the
Intermediate Life can hardly pass over altogether the thought of the
majority of its inhabitants and it cannot be wrong for us humbly and
reverently to think about them.
§ 2
I have already pointed out the solemn responsibility of this earth life
in which acts make habits and habits make character and character makes
destiny. I am about to point out the grave probability, to say the
least of it, that in a very real sense this life may be the sole
probation time for man. But this does not shut out the question of the
poor bereaved mother by the side of her dead son. "If any soul has not
in penitence and faith definitely accepted Jesus Christ in this life is
it forever impossible that he may do so in any other life?"
I answer unhesitatingly, God forbid! Else what of all the dead
children down through the ages and all the dead idiots and all the
millions of dead heathen and all the poor stragglers in Christian lands
who in their dreary, dingy lives had never any fair chance of knowing
their Lord in a way that would lead them to love Him, and who have
never even thought about accepting or rejecting Him? "Shall not the
Judge of all the earth do right?" Shall not the loving Father do His
best for all? Our Lord knew "that if the mighty works done in
Capernaum had been done in Tyre and Sidon they would have repented."
Does He not there suggest that He would take thought for those men of
Tyre and Sidon in the Unseen Land? Does He not know the same of many
gone unto that Unseen from heathen lands and Christian lands, who would
have loved Him if they knew Him as He really is and who have but begun
to know Him truly in the world of the dead--of many who in their
ignorance have tried to respond to the dim light of Conscience within
and only learned within the veil really to know Him the Lord of the
Conscience, "the light which lighteth every man coming into the world"
(St. John i. 9).
Here is no question of encouraging careless, godless men with the hope
of a new probation. Here is no question of men wilfully rejecting
Christ. The merry, thoughtless child--the imbecile--the heathen--had
no thought of rejecting Christ. The poor struggler in Christian lands,
brought up in evil surroundings, who though he had heard of Christ yet
saw no trace of Christ's love in his dreary life--he cannot be said to
have rejected Christ. The honest sceptic who in the last generation
had been taught as a prominent truth of Christianity that God decrees
certain men to eternal Heaven and certain men to eternal Hell not for
any good or evil they had done but to show His power and glory, and who
has therefore in obedience to conscience frankly rejected
Christianity--can he be said to have rejected Christ?
The possibility in this life of putting oneself outside the pale of
salvation is quite awful enough without our making it worse. It is not
for us to judge who is outside the pale of salvation nor to limit the
love of God by our little shibboleths. It is on a man's WILL, not on
his knowledge or ignorance that destiny depends. God only can judge
that. All the subtle influences which go to make character are known
to Him alone. He alone can weigh the responsibility of the will in any
particular case. And surely we know Him well enough humbly to trust
His love to the uttermost for every poor soul whom He has created.
II
But this hope must not ignore the solemn thought that in a very real
sense the probation of this life seems the determining factor in human
destiny--even for the unthinking--even for the ignorant--nay even for
the heathen who could never have heard of Christ here. Rightly
understood all that we have said does not conflict with this. It may
seem strange at first sight to think of the heathen as having any real
probation here. Yet, mark it well, it is of this heathen man who could
not consciously have accepted Christ in this life that St. Paul implies
that his attitude in the Unseen Life towards Him who is the Light of
the World is determined by his attitude in this life towards the
imperfect light of Conscience that he has. "If the Gentiles who have
not the Law do by nature the things contained in the Law, these having
not the Law are a law unto themselves, which show the works of the Law
written in their hearts, their Conscience bearing witness" (Rom. ii.
14).
We may assume that St. Paul means that the heathen man who in this life
followed the dim light of his conscience is the man who will rejoice in
the full light when it comes and that the man who has been wilfully
shutting out that dim light of conscience here is thereby rendering
himself less capable of accepting the fuller light when he meets it
hereafter. In other words this life is his probation, he is forming on
earth the moral bent of his future life.
We may assume the same of men in similar conditions in Christian lands,
men brought up amid ignorance and crime, men brought up in infidel
homes, men to whom Christ has been so unattractively presented that
they saw no beauty in Him or even instinctively turned away from Him
impelled by their conscience. They all have the light of God in some
degree and by their attitude towards the right that they know are
determining on earth their attitude towards God in the Hereafter. They
are forming character and _character tends to permanence_.
The "outer darkness" it would seem comes not from absence of light but
from blindness of sight. The joy of Heaven is impossible to the unholy
just as the joy of beautiful scenery to the blind or the joy of
exquisite music to the deaf. Probation in this life--simply means that
in this first stage of his being a man either is or is not blinding his
eyes and dulling his ears and hardening his heart so as to make himself
incapable of higher things in the life to come.
If then it be possible even for a heathen to have in this life
sufficient probation to determine his attitude towards God for ever,
how much more for a man in the full light of Christianity. In view of
this the great law of life that CHARACTER TENDS TO PERMANENCE may it
not be awfully true that a man who with full knowledge of Christ
wilfully and deliberately turns from Him all through this life, should
thus render himself incapable of turning to Him in any other life?
With _full knowledge of Christ_ I say, not with knowledge of some
repulsive misrepresentation of Christ.
For think what it means to reject Christ wilfully with full knowledge
of Him.
His voice still comes as we tramp on,
With a sorrowful fall in its pleading tone:
"Thou wilt tire in the dreary ways of sin;
I left My home to bring thee in.
In its golden street are no weary feet,
Its rest is pleasant, its songs are sweet."
And we shout back angrily hurrying on
To a terrible home where rest is none:
"We want not your city's golden street,
Nor to hear its constant song!"
_And still Christ keeps on loving us, loving all along_.
Rejected still He pursues each one:
"My child, what more could thy God have done?
Thy sin hid the light of heaven from Me,
When alone in the darkness I died for thee.
Thy sin of to-day in its shadow lay
Between My face and One turned away."
And we stop and turn for a moment's space
To fling back that love in the Saviour's face,
To give His heart yet another grief,
And glory in the wrong.
_And still Christ keeps on loving us, loving all along_.
Is it hard to believe that a man thus knowing Christ and wilfully
rejecting Him should thereby risk the ruin of his soul? Can we not
recognize this awful law of life that wilful sin against light tends to
darkening of the light--that every rejection of God and good draws
blood as it were on the spiritual retina, that a life of such
rejections of the light tends to make one incapable of receiving the
light for ever.
If this be so it is not at all fair to misrepresent it by saying that
God cruelly stereotypes a man's soul at death and will refuse him
permission to repent after death however much he may want to. The
voice of the Holy Ghost within tells us that this could never be true
of the Father. We must believe that through all Eternity, if the worst
sinner felt touched by the love of God and wanted to turn to Him, that
man would be saved. What we dread is that the man may not want to do
so, may have rendered himself incapable of doing so. We dread not
God's will, but the man's own will.
Character tends to permanence. Free will is a glorious but a dangerous
prerogative. All experience leads towards the belief that a human will
may so distort itself as to grow incapable of good. Even a character
not hardened into permanent evil may grow incapable of the highest
good. A soul even forgiven through the mercy of God may "enter into
life halt and maimed" like a consumptive patient cured of his disease
but going through life with only one lung.
Though the Bible does not give an absolutely definite pronouncement on
this question, yet the general trend of its teaching leads to the
belief that this life is our probation time. It everywhere calls for
immediate repentance. And St. Paul says that the Judgment is for deeds
"done _in the body_," and there are such hints as "the door was shut"
and "there is a sin unto death," and "it were better for a man not to
have known the way of righteousness than after he has known it to turn
from it."[1] And this has been the general belief of the Church in all
ages. Even in all the hopeful words of the ancient Fathers about
Christ preaching to the spirits in prison who in the dark old world
days "had sometime been disobedient," we have seen that they add some
such significant phrase as "that He might convert those _who were
capable_ of turning to Him." (See Chapter IV, p. 60.) And human
experience of character tending to permanence makes this fact of human
probation awfully probable. There is nothing in Scripture nor in its
interpretation by the Church, nor in human experience, to conflict with
the statement that in this life Acts make habits and Habits make
Character and character makes Destiny.
What new discoveries of God's power and mercy may await us in eternity
we cannot know, but from all we do know we are justified in thinking
that (in the sense which I have stated) a man's life in this world
determines his destiny--at any rate that a man who presumes recklessly
on chances in the future is taking terrible risks. The Bible gives no
encouragement to hope that one who with full knowledge of Christ keeps
on wilfully rejecting Him all through this life will be able to turn to
Him in any other life.
The only comfort we dare offer to anxious mourners grieving over sinful
friends departed is that God only is the judge of what constitutes
irrevocable rejection of good, that we cannot tell who has irrevocably
"done despite to the Spirit of grace," and that the deep love and pain
of Christ for sinful men remains for ever and ever. We may tell the
poor mother that her deep love and pain for her dead son is but a faint
shadow of the deep love and pain of God--that no one will be surprised
or trapped in his ignorance--that no one will be lost whom it is
possible for God to save--that no one will be lost until "the Heavenly
Father has as it were thrown His arms around him and looked him full in
the face with the bright eyes of His love, and that of his own
deliberate will he would not have Him" (Faber).
We dare not minimize what the love and pain of God may do, but we dare
not presume in the face of Scripture to lighten the awful
responsibility which this life brings.
Thus we reach larger thoughts of God's dealings with man and deeper
interest in the infinite variety that must be in the "many mansions" of
the boundless life hereafter. And this sets us wondering about another
thought as to ministry in that life.
[1] I have not quoted such texts as "Where the tree falleth there it
shall lie," which no sensible student now uses in this connection, nor
even the well-known text, "Behold now is the acceptable time, behold
now is the day of salvation," for the "acceptable time" and "the day of
salvation" mean here not the present life of each man but the present
Christian dispensation. St. Paul is quoting Isaiah's prophecy of
Christ of the acceptable time and the day of salvation, and he says
this time has come now in this Christian dispensation.