we have to give account

To the Father who created us, the Son "who redeemed us, the Holy Ghost who dwelleth in us, we have to give account, not merely by the enactment of a positive law, but by the declaration of an eternal necessity, which forbids the divorce of responsibility from the consciousness of privilege and power. And this is ours, not as being atoms merged in the corporate ,existence and workings of the Church, but as presented individually to Him with whom we have to do; brought face to face with Him at every turn of life; either consciously walking with Him, like the Prophet of the patriarchal world, or less consciously watched by a Divine Presence which we only recognise when it thwarts us, like the angel whom Balaam had not at first his eyes open to see. There is a general way of recognising this, which easily admits it, but with little fruit. But we further trace the lesson into its details; and confess ourselves accountable for the possession and the use of every one of those separate gifts which form or adorn the master of this world and heir of the next —

1. Whether it be intellect — given us to comprehend, in a measure, that which passes comprehension in the deep things of God; — yet, when unsanctified, the characteristic attribute of the enemy of God.

2. Or speech — our glory, the best member that we have, when consecrated to the praises of God and to the proclamation of His will; — yet in its misuse a fire, a world of iniquity, defiling the whole body, setting on fire the course of nature, itself set on fire of hell; made to bless God, used to curse men.

3. Or time — the stuff that our lives are made of, the seed-field in which we are permitted to sow for eternity; given us for work, thought, prayer; given to carry us on from strength to strength till we appear before the God of gods in Sion; — but wasted, it may be, abused in vanities and pleasures which perish in the using, in raking together stones for the tomb of our sepulture, or faggots for the fire that is to burn us.

4. Or money — the most hazardous, yet the real gift of God. It may open heaven to us if we have sent our treasure there before us. But oh! how much oftener it is carried with us on the downward road, as if we had a toll to pay to open the gates of hell! And as all these gifts, and the many others which might be instanced, go to mould a man's character, ay, go to mould the characters of others by the imperceptible, irresistible interdependence of society, for these things too we are responsible; for that which we have made ourselves, for that which we have made others. But in this multifarious responsibility there is necessarily something of vagueness and uncertainty. One by one the burdens upon us have seemed more than we could bear. But what is there cumulative effect?(1) It is, perhaps, bewilderment. Take the colours on a painter's palette, as they lie side by side so brilliant in their beauty. Try the experiment of blending them into one, and what will be the result? One undistinguishable blotch of mud! And so it may prove to be with the mind, overstrained in the attempt to grasp the total of that which has been so alarming in its details.(2) Or the result may be carelessness. The first impression may have been deep, the second slighter, the third slighter still; and before the catalogue has been gone through, attention flags; some new trick of the tempter's art dazzles the eyes; and the man turns again, forgetting the burden on his back, to chase the butterflies of his childhood.(3) Or it may be desperation; — and like a beast of chase that faces round and breaks away through the array of its pursuers, he may altogether break the yoke and burst the bonds. And thus life glides away; and while responsibility is accumulating, the sense of it grows dull; conscience loses its sensitiveness and power, becomes callous, is seared as with a hot iron. But if a man can live, if a man can die with his eyes shut or his heart hardened to the sense of his responsibility, is he therefore free? If death were the end of all, then those who were content to accept the life and the death of the brute, might be almost deemed impregnable in their position. Fallen so low,. it might seem that they could fall no further. But though there are instances of this kind, how is it that they are so rare, even among those whose interest it would seem not to believe? How is it that conscience does make herself heard in the closing hours of life, when she has been bound and tongue-tied before? It is because at the approach of death there is something lifted of the veil that shrouds the unseen. Then the voice of warning assumes the voice of prophecy; and the message is, "It is appointed to all men once to die, and after this the judgment." Then, at last, all masks drop off, all veils fall away. It will be of little advantage to have silenced conscience, in the day when her whispers are replaced by the record written in the opened books. It will be no time to plead ignorance or lack of memory, when the light of the Judge's countenance shall illuminate the secret chambers of all hearts. Of all the terrors of that day, to men who, while the day of salvation lasted, have refused to be persuaded of the terrors of the Lord, which will be the chief? Will it be the exposure of all our sins and all our shame; the sins that we might have hidden, might have cleansed in His blood, but would not; the shame that we might have anticipated by taking shame to ourselves, clothing ourselves in our own confusion before Him, that we might receive from Him robes of grace and glory? This would be sufficiently terrible. Think, but for a moment, what an influence this sense of exposure to your fellow-sinners' judgment exerts over you even now. Ask yourselves, Has it ever happened that you have felt quite comfortable under the secret consciousness of an action, which has caused you agony as soon as you began to think that your neighbours knew it as well as yourselves? Is not this the plain and simple history of nine-tenths of the cases of desperate suicide that we hear of? But in that day all will be naked before all the world; no shelter in the present, no hope in the future! But amidst that great company — the first and last gathering of the universal human race — there are individuals whose presence may suggest a special pang. There are those whom we have known only too well, those whose companions we have been in vanity or in sin, those for whom we have to answer. If we have led souls into sin, either to share our own wickedness or to follow it; if we have made them the victims of our vile passions, or have taught them to indulge their own; if our words have shaken their faith, or hardened them in ungodliness; nay, if our silence has left them un-warned and unreproved, when a word spoken in season might have saved them from sin; then indeed the burden of responsibility will be as lead upon our souls in that day. Again, there will be those there who had a responsibility for us, and who knew it, and did their best to discharge it; those who loved us in our childhood; those who have nursed us in our decline. Their Christian love cannot lack its reward for themselves. But if all this, their ministry, their devotion, has been without avail to us, with what feelings are we to meet their eyes in that day? But we are still lingering in the suburbs of that judgment-place; as if for very shame turning our eyes away from the throne and Him that sitteth thereon. But though the presence of the universal race of Adam in that day shall enhance its horrors for the wicked, it is not to them that we are responsible; it is not they that shall fix our doom. No trees of the garden will be there to shelter us; no rocks and mountains to cover us. And not of God only, but of Him who is God and Man — of the man Christ Jesus, to whom the Father has committed this judgment, even because He is the Son of man.

(R. Scott, D. D.)