y 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).

We dare not minimize what the love and pain of God may do, but we dare
not presume in the face of Scripture to lighten the awful
responsibility which this life brings.

Thus we reach larger thoughts of God's dealings with man and deeper
interest in the infinite variety that must be in the "many mansions" of
the boundless life hereafter. And this sets us wondering about another
thought as to ministry in that life.

[1] I have not quoted such texts as "Where the tree falleth there it
shall lie," which no sensible student now uses in this connection, nor
even the well-known text, "Behold now is the acceptable time, behold
now is the day of salvation," for the "acceptable time" and "the day of
salvation" mean here not the present life of each man but the present
Christian dispensation. St. Paul is quoting Isaiah's prophecy of
Christ of the acceptable time and the day of salvation, and he says
this time has come now in this Christian dispensation.

CHAPTER XI

MINISTRY IN THE UNSEEN LIFE

Section 1

Is it allowable here to make a venture of faith and speculate on a
matter of which we cannot give definite proof? There is a beautiful
old alleg