The life that we live upon earth is short at the very best, and soon gone. "We spend our days as a tale that is told."--"What is our life? It is a vapour: so soon passeth it away, and we are gone." (Psalm xc. 9; James iv. 14.) The life that is before us when we leave this world is an endless eternity, a sea without a bottom, and an ocean without a shore. "One day in Thy sight," eternal God, "is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." (2 Pet. iii. 8.) In that world time shall be no more.--But short as our life is here, and endless as it will be hereafter, it is a tremendous thought that eternity hinges upon time. Our lot after death depends, humanly speaking, on what we are while we are alive. It is written, God "will render to every man according to his deeds: to them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life: but to them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath." (Rom. ii. 6, 7.)
We ought never to forget, that we are all, while we live, in a state of probation. We are constantly sowing seeds which will spring up and bear fruit, every day and hour in our lives. There are eternal consequences resulting from all our thoughts and words and actions, of which we take far too little account. "For every idle word that men speak they shall give account in the day of judgment." (Matt. xii. 36.) Our thoughts are all numbered, our actions are weighed. No wonder that St. Paul says, "He that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." (Gal. vi. 8.) In a word, what we sow in life we shall reap after death, and reap to all eternity.
There is no greater delusion than the common idea that it is possible to live wickedly, and yet rise again gloriously; to be without religion in this world, and yet to be a saint in the next. When the famous Whitefield revived the doctrine of conversion last century, it is reported that one of his hearers came to him after a sermon and said,--"It is all quite true, sir. I hope I shall be converted and born again one day, but not till after I am dead." I fear there are many like him. I fear the false doctrine of the Romish _purgatory_ has many secret friends even within the pale of the Church of England! However carelessly men may go on while they live, they secretly cling to the hope that they shall be found among the saints when they die. They seem to hug the idea that there is some cleansing, purifying effect produced by death, and that, whatever they may be in this life, they shall be found "meet for the inheritance of the saints" in the life to come. But it is all a delusion.[21]
21: "The Scripture never represents the state of future misery, as a state of purgation and purification, or anything like analogous to a state of trial, where men may fit and qualify themselves for some better state of existence: but always as a state of retribution, punishment, and righteous vengeance, in which God's justice (a perfection of which some men seem to render no account) vindicates the power of His majesty, His government, and His love, by punishing those who have despised them."--_Horbery_, vol. ii. p. 183.
"Life is the time to serve the Lord, The time to insure the great reward."
The Bible teaches plainly, that as we die, whether converted or unconverted, whether believers or unbelievers, whether godly or ungodly, so shall we rise again when the last trumpet sounds. There is no repentance in the grave: there is no conversion after the last breath is drawn. Now is the time to believe in Christ, and to lay hold on eternal life. Now is the time to turn from darkness unto light, and to make our calling and election sure. The night cometh when no man can work. As the tree falls, there it will lie. If we leave this world impenitent and unbelieving, we shall rise the same in the resurrection morning, and find it had been "good for us if we had never been born."[22]
22: "This life is the time of our preparation for our future state. Our souls will continue for ever what we make them in this world. Such a taste and disposition of mind as a man carries with him out of this life, he shall retain in the next. It is true, indeed, heaven perfects those holy and virtuous dispositions which are begun here; but the other world alters no man as to his main state. He that is filthy will be filthy still; and he that is unrighteous will be unrighteous still."--_Archbishop Tillotson's Sermon on Phil. iii. 20._ (See _Horbrey_, vol. ii. p. 133.)