The Way of All Flesh
them, or do you find any of their books securing the respectful attention of those competent to judge concerning them? I think not; and I think also you know as well as I do why it is that they have sunk back into the abyss from which they for a time emerged: it is because after the most careful and patient examination by the ablest and most judicial minds of many countries, their arguments were found so untenable that they themselves renounced them. They fled from the field routed, dismayed, and suing for peace; nor have they again come to the front in any civilised country.
"You know these things. Why, then, do I insist upon them? My dear young friends, your own consciousness will have made the answer to each one of you already; it is because, though you know so well that these things did verily and indeed happen, you know also that you have not realised them to yourselves as it was your duty to do, nor heeded their momentous, awful import.
"And now let me go further. You all know that you will one day come to die, or if not to die—for there are not wanting signs which make me hope that the Lord may come again, while some of us now present are alive—yet to be changed; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, for this corruption must put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality, and the saying shall be brought to pass that is written, 'Death is swallowed up in victory.'
"Do you, or do you not believe that you will one day stand before the Judgement Seat of Christ? Do you, or do you not believe that you will have to give an account for every idle word that you have ever spoken? Do you, or do you not believe that you are called to live, not according to the will of man, but according to the will of that Christ who came down from Heaven out of love for you, who suffered and died for you, who calls you to him, and yearns towards you that you may take heed even in this your day—but who, if you heed not, will also one day judge you, and with whom there is no variableness nor shadow of turning?
"My dear young friends, strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth to Eternal Life, and few there be that
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