im through eternal ages. This fact we know by the declaration and
testimony of God; in the same manner that we know that God will exercise
mercy at all, and upon any conditions whatever. We have seen that we
cannot establish the fact that the Deity will forgive sin, by any _a
priori_ reasoning, but know it only because He has spoken a word to this
effect, and given the world His promise to be gracious and merciful,
In like manner, we do not establish the fact that there will be no second
offer of forgiveness, in the future world, by any process of reasoning
from the nature of the case, or the necessity of things. We are willing
to concede to the objector, that for aught that we can see the Holy
Ghost is as able to take of the things of Christ, and show them to a
guilty soul, in the next world, as He is in this. So far as almighty
power is concerned, the Divine Spirit could convince men of sin, and
righteousness, and judgment, and incline them to repentance and faith, in
eternity as well as in time. And it is equally true, that the Divine
Spirit could have prevented the origin of sin itself, and the fall of
Adam, with the untold woes that proceed therefrom. But it is not a
question of power. It is a question of _intention_, of _determination_,
and of _testimony_ upon the part of God. And He has distinctly declared
in the written Revelation, that it is His intention to limit the
converting and saving influences of His Spirit to time and earth. He
tells the whole world unequivocally, that His spirit shall not always
strive with man, and that the day of judgment which occurs at the end of
this Dispensation of grace, is not a day of pardon but of doom. Christ's
description of the scenes that will close up this Redemptive
Economy,--the throne, the opened books, the sheep on the right hand and
the goats on the left hand, the words of the Judge: "Come ye blessed,
depart ye cursed,"--proves beyond controversy that "_now_ is the accepted
time, and _now_ is the day of salvation." The utterance of our Redeeming
God, by His servant David, is: "_To-day_ if ye will hear His voice harden
not your hearts." St. Paul, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, informs the
world, that as God sware that those Israelites who did not believe and
obey His servant Moses, during their wanderings in the desert, should not
enter the earthly Canaan, so those, in any age and generation of men, who
do not believe and obey His Son Jesus Christ, during their earthly