ose who are called infidels, who disbelieve in the
incarnation and kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. Would to God it were
so! Everywhere we find Christians of all creeds and denominations alike,
holding the very same ruinous notion, and saying to themselves, God does
not govern this present world. God does not punish or reward in this
present life. This world is all wrong, and the devil's world, and
therefore I cannot prosper in the world unless I am a little wrong
likewise, and do a little of the devil's work. So one lies, another
cheats, another oppresses, another neglects his plainest social duties,
another defiles himself with base political or religious intrigues,
another breaks the seventh commandment, or, indeed, any and every one of
the commandments which he finds troublesome. And when one asks in
astonishment--You call yourselves Christians? You believe in God, and
the Bible, and Christianity? Do you not think that God will punish YOU
for all this? Do you not hear from the psalmists, and prophets, and
apostles, of a God who judges and punishes such generations as this? Of
a wrath of God which is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness
of men, who, like you, hold down the truth in unrighteousness, knowing
what is right and yet doing what is wrong? Then they answer, at least in
their hearts, Oh dear no! God does not govern men now, or judge men now.
He only did so, our preachers tell us, under the old Jewish dispensation;
and such words as you quote from our Lord, or St Paul, have only to do
with the day of judgment, and the next life, and we have made it all
right for the next life. I, says one, regularly perform my religious
duties; and I, says another, build churches and chapels, and give large
sums in charity; and I, says another, am converted, and a member of a
church; and I, says another, am elect, and predestined to everlasting
life--and so forth, and so forth. Each man turning the grace of God into
a cloak for licentiousness, and deluding himself into the notion that he
may break the eternal laws of God, and yet go to heaven, as he calls it,
when he dies: not knowing, poor foolish man, that as the noble
commination service well says, the dreadful judgments of God are not
waiting for certain people at the last day, thousands of years hence, but
hanging over all our heads already, and always ready to fall on us. Not
knowing that it is as true now as i