" The fundamental grace," says Godet,^ " is that of the forgive- ness of sins, and it presupposes no other moral condition than faith only. But this immense act of grace is no sooner granted by God, and accepted by man, than there results from it a new task, with the responsibility which attaches to it. This is the work of sanctification ; the renewal of the life in the likeness of Christ. And this is the worJc, according to which the believer will one day be judged." Godet recalls by way of illustration the parable of the Unmerciful Servant.
And this is in accordance with reason and experience. In this world men are judged according to their works. " I believe it to be true," says Dr. Salmon, " that Nature never forgives : the iitmost indulgence she bestows is often to postpone the execution of her penalty. In this life the rewards for what is well done are duly paid, the punishment for what is done ill strictly exacted. And what the Bible says is that the same principle is followed in the future life."
11 When men cry out against the teaching of an everlasting hell to which they have long listened, nothing could be more mistaken than to try to win their faith by a mere sweeping aside of the whole truth of retribution ; nothing could be more futile than to try to make them believe in God by stripping the God we offer them of His Divine attributes of judgment and discrimina- tion. But if there comes, as there must come, out of the tumult' a deeper sense of the essential, the eternal connection between character and destiny ; if men looking deeper into spiritual life are taught to see that the wrath of God and the love of God are not contradictory, but the inseparable utterances of the one same nature ; if punishment be fastened close to sin as the shadow to the substance, able to go, certain to go, where sin can go and nowhere else — then the tumult will bring a peace of deeper and completer faith. But surely it will not be easier for a man to believe the new and deep than the old crude doctrine. It will lay ^ Studies on the New Testamenty 179.
28o THE OPENING OF THE BOOKS
an even deeper and more awful burden on his conscience. It will make life more and not less solemn, when men come to see and feel the punishment in the sin than when they listened for the threats of punishment as men at sea listen for the breakers on the shore while they are sailing in smooth waters, which give them no intimation of how far away or near the breakers are.^
2. At the same time, judgments in this life are not always unerring, or always .passed on good grounds; and St. John is probably making a contrast as well as a comparison. He knows that Caesar has a throne, and that men are made great or small by standing before that throne, but he objects to the ground upon which judgment is given. Men are given their places without reference to character; they are not judged according to their w^)rks. Their position is often determined by arbitrary circum- stances— family, name, wealth, influence. He sees men stand before a new throne, before a tribunal guided by other principles. Many of the first become last, and many of the last become first. Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, were at the top of the list in the old society ; in the new they are very near the end of it — saved from being quite at the end only by the imputation of insanity. And in the place of honour which was held by Tiberius and Caligula and Nero stands many a despised slave, many a deformed outcast, — outcast by reason of his deformity, — many a poor invalid who was considered unfit for survival, and whom the old world's chariot had passed, contemptuous, by.
^ A friend of mine who had travelled in America told me that he once heard Colonel Ingersoll lecture on the Last Judgment. That blasphemous atheist described with all the brilliant sarcasm which he possesses the last dread scene, and pictured different characters coming up to receive their sentence. First there came one who had ever helped his neighbour, who in life had done all that he could to make the world brighter and happier ; and Jesus, the Supreme Judge, asked him if he believed the story of Eve and the rib ; and on his replying in the negative, sentenced him to eternal damnation ; and so on with a number of characters. Then there came a defalcating bank director who had broken the heart of the widow and ruined the orphan by his dishonesty and hypocrisy ; but he believed this story, and so was rewarded with eternal happiness. Ingersoll's caricature is more than a caricature ; it is a wilful lie.^
^ Phillips Brooks, Essays and Addresses, 50. ^ H. S. Lunn.
REVELATION xx. 12 281
III.
The Evidencb.
The evidence is in the books. " The books were opened." Now the books that are opened may be taken as the records of man's works wherever they may be found, although Augustine is prob- ably right when he says that there is supposed to be a separate record for every man.