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ur ability, but belief that you can do great, grand, noble things, belief that you can become something great, noble, grand; belief in the possibility in this life or in some other life of unfolding all that is highest, truest, sweetest, in manhood and womanhood. It is this faith that is able to create the fact and make that which it trusts in.
Let us then believe in God, believe in truth, believe in humanity, believe in ourselves; and then we may work towards the coming of that far, grand time when the dreams of the world shall be realized and its faith shall become reality.
IS LIFE A PROBATION ENDED BY DEATH?
MY subject this morning is an attempted answer to the question, "Is Life a Probation ended by Death?" It will broaden itself naturally, if we cannot accept that theory of it, into the further question, What is the main end and purpose of our life? I take my text from the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians, the fifteenth and the sixteenth verses. I will read them as they appear in the Old Version: "See, then, that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time."
The idea of the writer is that, as we pass through the world, we should do it with our eyes kept intelligently open, looking about us on every hand, trying to comprehend the situation, to see what things are, and what we ought to do to play our part in the midst of them. Not heedlessly, not unwisely, he says, perhaps hardly the harsh word "fools," but as wise, as persons intelligently ready to take advantage of the situation and make the most of the condition in which one finds himself; redeeming the time, or, as the Revised Version has it, "buying up the opportunity "; being ready, that is, to pay whatever price is necessary in order to make the most of the situation.
This, then, is the spirit according to our text in which we should look over the problem of life; and this is the method by which we should attempt to guide its practical affairs.
That which people regard as the matter of most importance, any particular theory or plan of life which they may hold to be for them the most desirable, this, of course, is that to which they will direct their chief attention, on which they will lavish their thought, on which they will pour out their care, to which they will consecrate their energies. If now the theory or plan of life be false, if it be inadequate, if one is looking in the wrong direction for the success that he desires, or if he expects to achieve the great end and object of living by means which are not real, which do not match the actual facts of the world and of human life, then of course his effort is so far thrown away. He wastes energies, power, time, enthusiasm on wrong ends which might be used to the attainment of things which are real and fine and high.
Is it not then of the utmost importance that our conception of life, what it is for, what we ought to attempt to reach, and how we should make this attempt, should be an accurate one? Any young man starting out in life, if he sets up for himself a goal which is unworthy, which does not match his faculties and powers, and if he proposes to reach it by means which are not adequate to the attainment of his desires, do you not see how he wrecks and wastes his life? His opportunity is gone; and by and by he wakes up to find that the years have been dissipated, and he has not attained any worthy or noble end.
If this be true of a young man as he looks forward to a scheme or plan of life here during these few short years, how much more is a similar thing true, when we are contemplating not merely the question of a business, or professional or social failure and success, but are looking at the grander and more inclusive theme of the beginning and aim and outcome of life itself We have inherited from the past the idea that this life here, under the blue sky for a few years, as we live it, is a probation, that we are put here on trial, and that death ends it, and that, when we have passed that line, gone over from that which is visible here into the invisible, we are either "lost" or "saved," and things are definitely fixed forever.
I am perfectly well aware that the most of us who are here have given up this idea, though there may remain fragments and suggestions of it in our minds still haunting the chambers of the brain, not yet outgrown, not yet cleared away. But with most people in the modern world, if they are sincere, if they are consistent, the one great question with them is whether they are to be saved or lost in another life. And, if this be the true theory of things, then not only ought men to bend all their thought, their energies, devote their enthusiasms, consecrate their time and money to it as much as they do, but a thousand times more.
We look, perhaps, with a sort of amused curiosity, some of us, from what we regard as our superior point of view, at a man like Mr. Moody; and yet Mr. Moody is one man out of a million for his consistency and consecration to the thought which underlies all the Protestant churches of the modern world, with the exception of a few here and there. Mr. Moody believes that this life is a probation ended by death. There are thousands on thousand on thousands of men who say they believe it, who still cast in all their influence with churches that are based on it, and who yet devote their energies mainly to making money, to attaining social success, to pleasures of one kind or another, to political ambitions, who live as though this great fate were not overhanging the world, who meet their neighbors for pleasure or business, believing, if they are sincere, that this neighbor is heedlessly walking on to the brink of a gulf, and yet never speaking to him about it, never saying a word to imply that they really believe it; and yet this fear hangs over them, haunts their consciousness waking or sleeping; and, if you ask them if they believe it, they will say they suppose they do. In hours of danger, when disease threatens them or they are looking death in the face, they are affrighted, and try to flee to the traditional refuge as a place of safety.
The whole great Catholic Church teaches that nobody has the slightest chance of being saved except by becoming a member of her great body of believers and partaking of her sacramental means of grace.
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