Divine answer: "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will
they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."

And we may profitably consider what this means in its application to our
own life. Such a warning is evidently meant to remind us that the
mystery of sin in human life is not to be got rid of by any such reliance
on vague hopes. This mystery of sin in the heart and life, misleading,
weakening, dragging us down, means in fact the subtle, poisonous,
creeping power which evil inclinations exercise over a weak and depraved
will. Are we, then, to trust to some sudden visitation from above, for
which we make no preparation, to break down or overthrow a power of this
kind? On the contrary, the words of this parable stand here to declare
to us that it is nothing less than perversity and folly in any man to go
on either defiling his nature, or degrading it, or even neglecting to
strengthen and support it, under this delusion that some day the breath
of Heaven will sweep it clean or give it new vigour. And your own
experience is in exact accordance with these parabolic warnings of the
Saviour. You know that your moral and spiritual nature is now at this
present time undergoing a process of continual and momentous change, that
every day, or week, or month leaves its mark upon it; and that your
soul's life means not waiting for some angel of God's providential grace
to visit you and carry you up into a new air; but it means that you are
weaving the web of your unchangeable destiny by your use or abuse of the
gifts of God that are in your hands to-day.

Born into the world with the taint of inherited corruption in us, as also
with the germs of pure affection and high instinct and purpose, we have
to take care for ourselves and for each other that the taint does not eat
out the good, by growing into sins of boyhood or of youth, or by
hardening into depraved habits in our manhood. If we let our youth take