ersistence of character, the continuity of personal
being, the continuity of memory, the _unobliterable_--if I may coin a
word--results upon ourselves of our actions, all these things make it
certain that what looks to us a cleft, deep and broad, between the
present life and the next, is to those that have passed it, and see it
from the other side, but a little crack in the soil scarcely observable,
and that we carry on into another world the selves that we have made
here. Whatever death does--and it does a great deal that we do not know
of--it does not alter, it only brings out, and, as I suppose,
intensifies, the main drift and set of a character. And so they who
'have not defiled their garments shall walk with Me in white, for they
are worthy.'

Ah, brethren! how solemn that makes life; the fleeting moment carries
Eternity in its bosom. It passes, and the works pass, but nothing human
ever dies, and we bear with us the net results of all the yesterdays
into that eternal to-day. You write upon a thin film of paper and there
is a black leaf below it. Yes, and below the black leaf there is another
sheet, and all that you write on the top one goes through the dark
interposed page, and is recorded on the third, and one day that will be
taken out of the book, and you will have to read it and say, 'What I
have written I have written.'

So, dear friends, whilst we begin with that unmerited love, and that
same unmerited love is the sole ground on which the gates of the kingdom
of heaven are by the Death and Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus
Christ opened to believers, their place there depends not only on faith
but on the work which is the fruit of faith. There is such a thing as
being 'saved yet so as by fire,' and there is such a thing as 'having an
entrance ministered abundantly unto us'; we have to make the choice.
There is such a thing as the sore punishment of which they are thought
worthy who have rejected the Son of God, and counted the blood of the
Covenant an unholy thing; and there is such a thing as a man saying, 'I
am not worthy that Thou shouldest come unto me,' and Christ answering,
'He shall walk with Me in white, for he is worthy' and we have to make
that choice also.

THE THREEFOLD UNITY

'One Lord, one faith, one baptism.'--Eph. iv. 5.

The thought of the unity of the Church is very prominent in this
epistle. It is difficult for us, amidst our present divisions, to
realise how strange a