CHAPTER X
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.