is open to Him and turned His way, Christ comes, God comes. That is the
only story. There is put aside everything else. Election,
predestination, they can go where they please. I am sure that God gives
Himself to every soul that wants Him and declares its want by the open
readiness of the signal which He knows. How did the sun rise on our city
this morning? Starting up in the east, the sun came in its majesty into
the sky. It smote on the eastward windows, and wherever the window was
all closed, even if it were turned eastward, on the sacred side of the
city's life, it could not come in; but wherever any eastward window had
its curtains drawn, wherever he who slept had left the blinds shut, so
that the sun when it came might find its way into his sleepiness, there
the sun came, and with a shout awoke its faithful servant who had
believed in him even before he had seen him, and said, "Arise, arise
from the dead, and I will give thee life." This is the simplicity of it
all, my friends. A multitude of other things you need not trouble
yourselves about. I amaze myself when I think how men go asking about
the questions of eternal punishment and the duration of man's torment in
another life, of what will happen to any man who does not obey Jesus
Christ. Oh, my friends, the soul is all wrong when it asks that. Not
until the soul says, "What will come if I do obey Jesus Christ?" and
opens its glorified vision to see all the great things that are given to
the soul that enters into the service of the perfect one, the perfect
love, not until then the perfect love, the perfect life, come in. A man
may be--I believe it with all my heart--so absolutely wrapped up in the
glory of obedience, and the higher life, and the service of Christ, that
he never once asks himself, "What will come to me if I do not obey?" any
more than your child asks you what you will do to him if he is not
obedient. Every impulse and desire of his life sets toward obedience.
And so the soul may have no theory of everlasting or of limited
punishment, or of the other life.