"If the tree fall toward the south or toward the north, in the
place where the tree falleth there it shall be."--ECCLES. xi: 3.
There is a hovering hope in the minds of a vast multitude that there
will be an opportunity in the next world to correct the mistakes of
this; that, if we do make complete shipwreck of our earthly life, it
will be on a shore up which we may walk to a palace; that, as a
defendant may lose his case in the Circuit Court, and carry it up to
the Supreme Court or Court of Chancery and get a reversal of judgment
in his behalf, all the costs being thrown over on the other party, so,
if we fail in the earthly trial, we may in the higher jurisdiction of
eternity have the judgment of the lower court set aside, all the costs
remitted, and we may be victorious defendants forever.
My object in this sermon is to show that common sense, as well as my
text, declares that such an expectation is chimerical. You say that
the impenitent man, having got into the next world and seeing the
disaster, will, as a result of that disaster, turn, the pain the cause
of his reformation. But you can find ten thousand instances in this
world of men who have done wrong and distress overtook them suddenly.
Did the distress heal them? No; they went right on.
That man was flung of dissipations. "You must stop drinking," said
the doctor, "and quit the fast life you are leading, or it will
destroy you.". The patient suffers paroxysm after paroxysm; but, under
skillful medical treatment, he begins to sit up, begins to walk about
the room, begins to go to business. And, lo! he goes back to the same
grog-shops for his morning dram, and his even dram, and the drams
between. Flat down again! Same doctor. Same physical anguish. Same
medical warning.
Now, the illness is more protracted; the liver is more stubborn, the
stomach more irritable, and the digestive organs are more rebellious.
But after awhile he is out again, goes back to the same dram-shops,
and goes the same round of sacrilege against his physical health.
He sees that his downward course is ruining his household, that his
life is a perpetual perjury against his marriage vow, that that
broken-hearted woman is so unlike the roseate young wife that he
married, that her old schoolmates do not recognize her; that his sons
are to be taunted for a life-time by the father's drunkenness, that
the daughters are to pass into life under the scarification of a
disreputable ancestor. He is drinking up their happiness, their
prospects for this life, and, perhaps, for the life to come. Sometimes
an appreciation of what he is doing comes upon him. His nervous system
is all a tangle. From crown of head to sole of foot he is one aching,
rasping, crucifying, damning torture. Where is he? In hell on earth.
Does it reform him?
After awhile he has delirium tremens, with a whole jungle of hissing
reptiles let out on his pillow, and his screams horrify the neighbors
as he dashes out of his bed, crying: "Take these things off me!" As he
sits, pale and convalescent, the doctor says: "Now I want to have a
plain talk with you, my dear fellow. The next attack of this kind you
will have you will be beyond all medical skill, and you will die." He
gets better and goes forth into the same round again. This time
medicine takes no effect. Consultation of physicians agree in saying
there is no hope. Death ends the scene.
That process of inebriation, warning, and dissolution is going on
within stone's throw of this church, going on in all the neighborhoods
of Christendom. Pain does not correct. Suffering does not reform. What
is true in one sense is true in all senses, and will forever be so,
and yet men are expecting in the next world purgatorial rejuvenation.
Take up the printed reports of the prisons of the United States, and
you will find that the vast majority of the incarcerated have been
there before, some of them four, five, six times. With a million
illustrations all working the other way in this world, people are
expecting that distress in the next state will be salvatory. You can
not imagine any worse torture in any other world than that which some
men have suffered here, and without any salutary consequence.
Furthermore, the prospect of a reformation in the next world is more
improbable than a reformation here. In this world the life started
with innocence of infancy. In the case supposed the other life will
open with all the accumulated bad habits of many years upon him.
Surely, it is easier to build a strong ship out of new timber than out
of an old hulk that has been ground up in the breakers. If with
innocence to start with in this life a man does not become godly, what
prospect is there that in the next world, starting with sin, there
would be a seraph evoluted? Surely the sculptor has more prospect of
making a fine statue out of a block of pure white Parian marble than
out of an old black rock seamed and cracked with the storms of a half
century. Surely upon a clean, white sheet of paper it is easier to
write a deed or a will than upon a sheet of paper all scribbled and
blotted and torn from top to bottom. Yet men seem to think that,
though the life that began here comparatively perfect turned out
badly, the next life will succeed, though it starts with a dead
failure.
"But," says some one, "I think we ought to have a chance in the next
life, because this life is so short it allows only small opportunity.
We hardly have time to turn around between cradle and tomb, the wood
of the one almost touching the marble of the other." But do you know
what made the ancient deluge a necessity? It was the longevity of the
antediluvians. They were worse in the second century of their
life-time than in the first hundred years, and still worse in the
third century, and still worse all the way on to seven, eight, and
nine hundred years, and the earth had to be washed, and scrubbed, and
soaked, and anchored, clear out of sight for more than a month before
it could be made fit for decent people to live in. Longevity never
cures impenitency. All the pictures of Time represent him with a
scythe to cut, but I never saw any picture of Time with a case of
medicines to heal. Seneca says that Nero for the first five years of
his public life was set up for an example of clemency and kindness,
but his path all the way descended until at sixty-eight he became a
suicide. If eight hundred years did not make antediluvians any better,
but only made them worse, the ages of eternity could have no effect
except prolongation of depravity.
"But," says some one, "in the future state evil surroundings will be
withdrawn and elevated influences substituted, and hence expurgation,
and sublimation, and glorification." But the righteous, all their sins
forgiven, have passed on into a beatific state, and consequently the
unsaved will be left alone. It can not be expected that Doctor Duff,
who exhausted himself in teaching Hindoos the way to heaven, and
Doctor Abeel, who gave his life in the evangelization of China, and
Adoniram Judson, who toiled for the redemption of Borneo, should be
sent down by some celestial missionary society to educate those who
wasted all their earthly existence. Evangelistic and missionary
efforts are ended. The entire kingdom of the morally bankrupt by
themselves, where are the salvatory influences to come from? Can one
speckled and bad apple in a barrel of diseased apples turn the other
apples good? Can those who are themselves down help others up? Can
those who have themselves failed in the business of the soul pay the
debts of their spiritual insolvents? Can a million wrongs make one
right?
Poneropolis was a city where King Philip of Thracia put all the bad
people of his kingdom. If any man had opened a primary school at
Poneropolis I do not think the parents from other cities would have
sent their children there. Instead of amendment in the other world,
all the associations, now that the good are evolved, will be
degenerating 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 a
poor place for moral recovery. If the surroundings in this world were
crowded of temptation, the surroundings of the next world, after the
righteous have passed up and on, will be a thousand per cent. more
crowded of temptation.
The Count of Chateaubriand made his little son sleep at night at the
top of a castle turret, where the winds howled and where specters were
said to haunt the place; and while the mother and sisters almost died
with fright, the son tells us that the process gave him nerves that
could not tremble and a courage that never faltered. But I don't think
that towers of darkness and the spectral world swept by Sirocco and
Euroclydon will ever fit one for the land of eternal sunshine. I
wonder what is the curriculum of that college of Inferno, where, after
proper preparation by the sins of this life, the candidate enters,
passing on from freshman class of depravity to sophomore of
abandonment, and from sophomore to junior, and from junior to senior,
and day of graduation comes, and with diploma signed by Satan, the
president, and other professorial demoniacs, attesting that the
candidate has been long enough under their drill, he passes up to
enter heaven! Pandemonium a preparative course for heavenly admission!
Ah, my friends, Satan and his cohorts have fitted uncounted
multitudes for ruin, but never fitted one soul for happiness.
Furthermore, it would not be safe for this world if men had another
chance in the next. If it had been announced that, however wickedly a
man might act in this world, he could fix it up all right in the next,
society would be terribly demoralized, and the human race demolished
in a few years. The fear that, if we are bad and unforgiven here, it
will not be well for us in the next existence, is the chief influence
that keeps civilization from rushing back to semi-barbarism, and
semi-barbarism from rushing into midnight savagery, and midnight
savagery from extinction; for it is the astringent impression of all
nations, Christian and heathen, that there is no future chance for
those who have wasted this.
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 revenge, and all sensualities, and
wait upon me! My life may be somewhat shortened in this world by
dissoluteness, but that will only make heavenly indulgence on a larger
scale the sooner possible. I will overtake the saints at last, and
will enter the Heavenly Temple only a little later than those who
behaved themselves here. I will on my way to heaven take a little
wider excursion than those who were on earth pious, and I shall go to
heaven _via_ Gehenna and _via_ Sheol." Another chance in the next
world means free license and wild abandonment in this.
Suppose you were a party in an important case at law, and you knew
from consultation with judges and attorneys 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,
saying, "The first is nothing, the last is everything." Give the race
assurance of a second and more important trial in the subsequent life,
and all the preparation for eternity would be _post-mortem_,
post-funeral, post-sepulchral, and the world with one jerk be pitched
off into impiety 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, 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
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 three hundred and
sixty-five 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 invite 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 that it will sail on a certain day, for two weeks we
have that advertisement before our eyes, and then we go down to the
docks fifteen minutes after it has shoved off into the stream and say:
"Come back. Give me another chance. It 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 madman.
And if, after the Gospel ship has lain at anchor before our eyes for
years and years, and all the benign voices of earth and heaven have
urged us to get on board, as she might sail away at any moment, and
after awhile she sails without us, is it common sense to expect her to
come back? You might as well go out on the Highlands at Neversink and
call to the "Aurania" after she has been three days out, and expect
her to return, as to call back an opportunity for heaven when it once
has sped away. All heaven offered us as a gratuity, and for a
life-time we refuse to take it, and then rush on the bosses of
Jehovah's buckler demanding another chance. There ought to be, there
can be, there will be no such thing as posthumous opportunity. Thus,
our common sense agrees with my text--"If the tree fall toward the
south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there
it shall be."
You see that this idea lifts this world up from an unimportant
way-station to a 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 and all the climaxes and all the destinies into life
here. No other chance! Oh, how that augments the value and the
importance 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, if they surrendered before
that light went out, all would be well; but if once the light went
out, then the battering-rams would swing against the wall, and
demolition and disaster would follow. Well, all we need do for our
present and everlasting safety is to make surrender to Christ, the
King and Conqueror--surrender of our hearts, surrender of our lives,
surrender of everything. And He keeps a great light burning, light of
Gospel invitation, light kindled with the wood of the cross and
flaming up against the dark night of our sin and sorrow. Surrender
while that great light continues to burn, for after it goes out there
will be no other opportunity of making peace with God through our Lord
Jesus Christ. Talk of another chance! Why, this is a supernal chance!
In the time of Edward the Sixth, at the battle of Musselburgh, a
private soldier, seeing that the Earl of Huntley had lost his helmet,
took off his own helmet and put it upon the head of the earl; and the
head of the private soldier uncovered, he was soon slain, while his
commander rode safely out of the battle. But in our case, instead of a
private soldier offering helmet to an earl, it is a King putting His
crown upon an unworthy subject, the King dying that we might live.
Tell it to all points of the compass. Tell it to night and day. Tell
it to all earth and heaven. Tell it to all centuries, all ages, all
millenniums, that we have such a magnificent chance in this world that
we need no other chance in the next.
I am in the burnished Judgment Hall of the Last Day. A great white
throne is lifted, but the Judge has not yet taken it. While we are
waiting for His arrival I hear immortal spirits in conversation. "What
are you waiting here for?" says a soul that went up from Madagascar to
a soul that ascended from America. The latter says: "I came from
America, where forty years I heard the Gospel preached, and Bible
read, and from the prayer that I learned in infancy at my mother's
knee until my last hour I had Gospel advantage, but, for some reason,
I did not make the Christian choice, and I am here waiting for the
Judge to give me a new trial and another chance." "Strange!" says the
other; "I had but one Gospel call in Madagascar, and I accepted it,
and I do not need another chance."
"Why are you here?" says one who on earth had feeblest intellect to
one who had great brain, and silvery tongue, and scepters of
influence. The latter responds: "Oh, I knew more than my fellows. I
mastered libraries, and had learned titles from colleges, and my name
was a synonym for eloquence and power. And yet I neglected my soul,
and I am here waiting for a new trial." "Strange," says the one of the
feeble earthly capacity; "I knew but little of worldly knowledge, but
I knew Christ, and made Him my partner, and I have no need of another
chance."
Now the ground trembles with the approaching chariot. The great
folding-doors of the Hall swing open. "Stand back!" cry the celestial
ushers. "Stand back, and let the Judge of quick and dead pass
through!" He takes the throne, and, looking over the throng of
nations, He says: "Come to judgment, the last judgment, the only
judgment!" By one flash from the throne all the history of each one
flames forth to the vision of himself and all others. "Divide!" says
the Judge to the assembly. "Divide!" echo the walls. "Divide!" cry the
guards angelic.
And now the immortals separate, rushing this way and that, and after
awhile there is a great aisle between them, and a great vacuum
widening and widening, and the Judge, turning to the throng on one
side, says: "He that is righteous, let him be righteous still, and he
that is holy, let him be holy still;" and then, turning toward the
throng on the opposite side, He says: "He that is unjust, let him be
unjust still, and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still;" and
then, lifting one hand toward each group, He declares: "If the tree
fall toward the south or toward the north, in the place where the
tree falleth, there it shall be." And then I hear something jar with a
great sound. It is the closing of the Book of Judgment. The Judge
ascends the stairs behind the throne. The hall of the last assize is
cleared and shut. The high court of eternity is adjourned forever.