finished the work of man's redemption. To this a wicked maw cannot come. Unbelief shuts him out. It is impossible in the nature of things that an unforgiven, unconverted, unbelieving man can go to heaven. The words in Greek are emphatic, — " Ye cannot come."
The notion of Augustine and others that " ye shall seek Me" only means " ye shall seek Me in order to kill Me, as ye are wishing to do now, but at last I shall be withdrawn from your reach," — seems to me quite untenable. The "seeking," to my mind, can only be the too late seeking of remorse. — The theory of some, that it refers exclusively to the time of the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans, seems to me equally untenable. My belief is that from the time that our Lord left the world down to this day, the expression has been peculiarly true of the Jew- ish nation. They have been perpetually, in a sense, " seeking" and hungering after a Messiah, and yet unable to find Him, be- cause they have not sought aright. — In saying this we must carefully remember that our Lord did not mean to say that any of His hearers were too sinful and bad to be forgiven. On the contrary, not a few of them that crucified Him found mercy on the clay of Pentecost, when Peter preached. (Acts ii. 22 — 40.) But our Lord did mean to say prophetically that the Jewish, na- tion, as a nation, would be specially hardened and unbelieving, and that many of them, though an elect remnant might be saved, would "die in their sins." In proof of this peculiar blindness and unbelief of the Jewish nation we should study Acts xxviii. 25 — 27 ; Romans xi. 7, and 1 Thess. ii. 15, 16. The Greek expres- sion for " sins" in this verse confirms the view. It is not, liter- ally rendered, "sins," but "sin," — your special sin of unbelief.
Let us note that it is possible to seek Christ too late, or from a wrong motive, and so to seek Him in vain. This is a very im- portant principle of Scripture. True repentance, doubtless, is never too late, but late repentance is seldom true. There is mercy to the uttermost in Christ ; but if men wilfully reject Him, turn away from Him, and put off seeking Him in earnest, there is such a thing as " seeking Christ " in vain. Such passages as Proverbs i. 24—32; Matt. xxv. 11—12; Luke xiii. 24; Heb. vi. 4 — 8, and x. 26 — 31, ought to be carefully studied.
Let us note that our Lord teaches plainly that it is possible for men to "die in their sins," and never come to the heaven where He has gone. This is flatly contrary to the doctrine taught by some in the present day, that there is no hell and no future punishment, and that all will finally go to heaven.
It is worthy of remark that our Lord's words, " Ye shall seefc Me," and " Whither I go ye cannot come," are used three times in this Gospel : — twice to the unbelieving Jews, here and vii. 34, and once to the disciples, xiii. 33. But the careful reader will observe that in the two first instances the expression is coupled