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).