"If you believe that Christ is very God of very God, as you say every Sunday of your lives, you cannot escape the obligation which those words put upon you except at the peril of your immortal souls. Remember that it is not by your faiths and beliefs, or by the doctrines you have held that you will be judged when you stand before the Last Tribunal. These are but instruments to be used well or ill, but the final appeal will come to your works. The last question that will be asked of you will not be 'What creed have you believed?' or 'What Church have you belonged to?' but 'What have you done?' and on the answer to that, as recorded in the books of God, will depend your fate for all eternity.
"Remember the words, 'Not everyone that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in Heaven.'
"Remember, too, that when you join in the services of the Church, and when you partake of her Sacraments, you are simply saying 'Lord, Lord'—a very good and righteous thing to say; but of no more use or benefit to your souls than an echo from a blank wall, unless you also do the will of Him who is in Heaven.
"I know that there are many specious sayings invented by those who have reasons of their own for trying to prove that when the Son of God spoke these words He didn't mean what He said; and those who have invented these things are amongst the worst enemies of God and His Church on earth, no matter whether they say these lying words in the drawing-room or from the pulpit. They seek to comfort their consciences and the consciences of such as you by saying that times have changed since these words were uttered; that it would be quite impossible to put a literal interpretation upon them now.
"Now the man who tells his fellow men that, no matter what his position in the world, is a liar and a hypocrite, and, what is worse, he is a maker of hypocrites, for it is my duty to tell you that every man and woman who professes Christianity before the world on Sunday and during the week disobeys the command of Christ as set forth here in His own words, is, consciously or unconsciously, a liar and a hypocrite also.
"Let us see what these sayings look like when tested by ordinary logic, by that faculty of distinguishing the right from the wrong, the true from the false, which is perhaps the greatest of all God's gifts to men.
"'Times have changed since the Son of God delivered the Sermon on the Mount.' That is one of those half-truths which are infinitely worse than a lie. Times have changed. That is to say mortal men and mortal manners have changed; but does that warrant us in believing that the mind and will of the Immutable God have changed too; that what Christ himself declared to be fatal to salvation two thousand years ago, is compatible with salvation now? That what was unlawful then is lawful now—in short, that the Omniscient God, in whose eyes a thousand years are as one day and one day as a thousand years, who read the minds of men then as He reads them now, has altered the decrees of Eternal Justice and changed Eternal Truth into a lie?
"If you believe these people, then you must believe that too. That Christ himself foresaw, as He must have done, that such false teachers as these would arise both in His Church and outside it is clearly proved by His own words:
"'Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name and in Thy name have cast out devils, and in Thy name done many wonderful works?
"'And then I will profess unto them: I never knew you, depart from me ye that work iniquity.'