For even in this life the door of mercy may be shut, and we may cry
in vain for mercy, when it is the time for justice. This is not
merely a doctrine: it is a fact; a common, patent fact. Men do
wrong, and escape, again and again, the just punishment of their
deeds; but how often there are cases in which a man does not escape;
when he is filled with the fruit of his own devices, and left to the
misery which he has earned; when the covetous and dishonest man
ruins himself past all recovery; when the profligate is left in a
shameful old age, with worn-out body and defiled mind, to rot into
an unhonoured grave; when the hypocrite who has tampered with his
conscience is left without any conscience at all.
They have chosen the curse, and the curse is come upon them to the
uttermost. So it is. Is the Commination service uncharitable, is
the preacher uncharitable, when they tell men so? No more so, than
the physician is uncharitable, when he says,--'If you go on misusing
thus your lungs, or your digestion, you will ruin them past all
cure.' Is God to be blamed because this is a fact? Why then
because the other is a fact likewise?
Now if this be, as I believe, the doctrine of the commination
service; if this be, as I believe, the message of Ash-Wednesday, it
is one which is quite free from superstition or cruelty: but it is
a message more disagreeable, and more terrible too, than any magical
imprecations of harm to the sinner could bring.
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