My dear friends, here is a solemn lesson to be learnt from this
text. What is true of whole nations, and of whole churches, is very
often true of single persons--of each of us.

To most men--to all baptized Christian men, perhaps--there comes a
day of visitation, a crisis, or turning-point in our lives. A day
when Christ sets before us, as he did to those Jews, good and evil,
light and darkness, right and wrong, and says, Choose! Choose at
once, and choose for ever; for by what you choose this day, by that
you must abide till death. If you make a mistake now, you will rue
it to the last. If you take the downward road now, you will fall
lower and lower upon it henceforth. If you shut your eyes now to
the things which belong to your peace, they will be hid from your
eyes for ever; and nothing but darkness, ignorance, and confusion
will be before you henceforth.

What will become of the man's soul after he dies, I cannot say.
Christ is his judge, and not I. He may be saved, yet so as by fire,
as St. Paul says. Repentance is open to all men, and forgiveness
for those who repent. But from that day, if he chooses wrongly,
true repentance will grow harder and harder to him--perhaps
impossible at last. He has made his bed, and he must lie on it. He
has chosen the evil, and refused the good; and now the evil must go
on getting more and more power over him. He has sold his soul, and
now he must pay the price. Again, I say, he may be saved at last.
Who am I, to say that God's mercy is not boundless, when the Bible
says it is? But one may well say of that man, 'God help him,' for
he will not be able to help himself henceforth.

It is an awful thing, my friends, to think that we may fix our own