n the City of Refuge no avenger can
smite; in the banqueting-hall no thirst nor hunger but can be satisfied;
in the fold no enemy can come and no terror can live.

Brethren! are you amongst 'them that are without,' or are you within?

III. Lastly--why is anybody outside? Why? It is no one's fault but their
own. It is not God's. He can appeal with clean hands and ask us to judge
what more could have been done for His vineyard that He has not done for
it. The great parable which represents Him as sending out His summons to
the feast in His palace puts the wonderful words in the mouth of the
master of the house, after his call by his servants had been refused.
'Go out into the highways and hedges,' beneath which the beggars squat,
'and compel them to come in, that my house may be full.' 'Nature abhors
a vacuum,' the old natural philosophers used to say. So does grace; so
does God's love. It hates to have His house empty and His provisions
unconsumed. And so He has done all that He could do to bring you and me
inside. He has sent His Son, He beckons us, He draws us by countless
mercies day by day. He appeals to our hearts, and would have us gathered
into the fold. And if we are outside it is not because He has neglected
to do anything which He can do in order to bring us in.

But why is it that any of us resist such drawing, and make the wretched
choice of perishing without, rather than find safety within? The deepest
reason is an alienated heart, a rebellious will. But the reason for
alienation and rebellion lie among the inscrutable mysteries of our
awful being. All sin is irrational. The fact is plain, the temptations
are obvious; excuses there are in plenty, but reasons there are none.
Still we may touch for a moment on some of the causes which operate with
many hearers of God's merciful call to enter in, and keep them without.

Many remain outside because they do not really believe in the danger. No
doubt there was a great deal of brilliant sarcasm launched at Noah for
his folly in thinking that there was anything coming that needed an ark.
It seemed, no doubt, food for much laughter, and altogether impossible
to think of gravely, that this flood which he talked about should ever
come. So they had their laughter out as they saw him working away at his
ludicrous task 'until the day when the flood came and swept them all
away,' and the laughter ended in gurgling sobs of despair.

If a manslayer does not believe that t