II. I must now close by endeavoring to speak of THE LAST GREAT BALANCE; and here would I speak very solemnly, and may the Spirit of God be with us. Time shall soon be over; eternity must soon begin, death is hurrying onward; the pale horse at his utmost speed is coming to every inhabitant of this earth. The arrow of death is fitted to the string, and soon shall it be sent home. Man’s heart is the target. Then, after death, cometh the judgment; the dread assize shall soon commence. The trump of the archangel shall awake the sleeping myriads, and, standing on their feet, they shall confront the God against whom they have sinned. Methinks I see the scales hanging in heaven, so massive that none but the hand of Deity can uphold them. Let me cast my eye upward, and bethink me of that hour when I must myself enter those scales and be weighed once for all. Come, let me speak for each man present. Those scales yonder are exact; I may deceive my fellows here, but deceive God I cannot then. I may be weighed in the balances of earth, which shall give but a partial verdict, and so commit myself to a false idea that I am what I am not, that I am hopeful when I am hopeless. But those scales are true. There is no means whatever of flattering them into a false declaration; they will cry aloud and spare not. When I get there, the voice of flattery shall be changed into the voice of honesty. Here I may go daily on crying, “Peace, peace, when there is no peace;” but there the naked truth shall startle me, and not a single word of consolation shall be given me that is not true. Let me therefore ponder the fact, that those scales are exactly true and cannot be deceived. Let me remember also, that whether I will or not, into those scales I must go. God will not take me on my profession. I may bring my witnesses with me; I may bring my minister and the deacons of the church to give me a character, which might be thought all-sufficient among men, but God will tolerate no subterfuge. Into the scales he will put me do what I may; whatever the opinion of others may be of me, and whatever my own profession. And let me remember, too, that I must be altogether weighed in the scales. I cannot hope that God will weigh my head and past over my heart—that because I have correct notions of doctrine, therefore he will forget that my heart is impure, or my hands guilty of iniquity. My all must be cast into the scales. Come, let me stretch my imagination, and picture myself about to be put into those scales. Shall I be able to walk boldly up and enter them, knowing whom I have believed, and being persuaded that the blood of Christ and his perfect righteousness shall bear me harmless through it all; or shall I be dragged with terror and dismay? Shall the angel come and say, “Thou must enter?” Shall I bend my knee and cry, “Oh, it is all right,” or shall I seek to escape? Now, thrust into the scale, do I see myself waiting for one solemn moment. My feet have touched the bottom of the scales, and there stand those everlasting weights and now which way are they turned? Which way shall it be? Do I descend in the scale with joy and delight, being found through Jesus’ righteousness to be full weight, and so accepted; or must I rise, light, frivolous, unsound in all my fancied hopes, and kick the beam? Oh, shall it be, that I must go where the rough hand of vengeance shall seize, and drag me downward, into fell despair? Can you picture the moments of suspense? I can see a poor man standing on the drop with the rope round his neck, and oh, what an instant of apprehension must that be; what thoughts of horror must float through his soul! How must a world of misery be compressed into a second? But O. my hearers, there is a far more terrible moment still for you that are Godless, Christless, careless: that have made a profession of religion, and yet have it not in your hearts. I see you in the scales. but what shall we say? The wailings of hell seem not sufficient to express your misery, In the scales without Christ! Not long ere you shall be in the jaws of hell, without pity and without compassion. O, my dear hearers! if you could hope to get to heaven without being weighed—if God would believe what you say without testing you, I would not care admit asking you this morning to ascertain the state of your own hearts. But if God will try you, try yourselves; if he will judge you, judge your own hearts. Don’t say that because you profess to be religious therefore you are right—that because others imagine you to be safe that therefore you are so. Weigh yourselves put your hearts into the balance. Do not be deceived. Pull the bandage from your eyes, that your blindness may be removed, and that you may pass a just opinion upon yourselves as to what you are. I would have you not only see yourselves as others see you, but I would have you see yourselves as God sees you; for that after all, is your real state; his eye is not to be mistaken; he is the God of but;, and just and right is he. How fearful a thing will it be, if any of us who are members of Christ’s church shall be cast into hell at last. The higher we ascend, the greater will be our fall, like Icarus in the old parable, who flew aloft with waxen wings, till the sun did melt them and he fell. And some of you are flying like that: you are flying up with waxen wings. what if the terrible heat of the judgement day should melt them! I sometimes try to picture, how terrible the reverse to me if found to be rejected at last. Let what I shall say for myself suit for all. Nay, and must it be, if I live in this world and think I am a Christian and am not—must it be that I must go from the songs of the sanctuary to the cursings of the synagogue of Satan? Must I go from the cup of the Eucharist to the cup of devils? Must I go from the table of the Lord to the feast of fiends? Shall these lips that now proclaim the word of Jesus, one day utter the wailings of perdition? Shall this tongue that has sung the praises of the Redeemer be moved with blasphemy? Shall it be that this body which has been the receptacle of so many a mercy—shall it become the very house and home of every misery that vengeance can invent? Shall these eyes that now look on God’s people one day behold the frightful sights of spirits destroyed in that all-consuming fire? And must it be that the ears that have heard the hallelujahs of this morning, shall one day hear the shrieks, and groans, and howls, of the lost and damned spirits? It must be so if we be not Christ’s. Oh how frightful will it be! Methinks I see some grave professor at last condemned to hell. There are multitudes of sinners, lying in their irons, and tossing on their beds of flame; lifting themselves upon their elbows for a moment, then seem to forget their tortures as they see the professor come in, and they cry—”Art thou become like one of us? Is the preacher himself damned? What! is the deacon of the church below, come to sit with drunkards, and with swearers? “Ah,” they cry, “aha, aha, art thou bound up in the same bundle with us after all?” Surely the mockery of hell must be itself a most fearful torture; professing sinners mocked by those who never professed religion.
But mortal life can ne’er describe the miseries of a disappointed blasted hope, when that hope is lost—it involves the loss of mercy, the loss of Christ, the loss of life—and it involves moreover, the terrible destruction and the awful vengeance of Almighty God. Let us one and all go home this day, when yet God’s sky is heavy, and let us bend ourselves at his altar, and cry for mercy. Every man apart—husband apart from wife. Apart, let us seek our chambers of praying again and again, “Lord renew me: Lord forgive me: Lord accept me.” And whilst, mayhap, the tempest which is now lowering over the sky, and ere another tempest direr still shall fall on us with its fearful terrors, may you find peace. May we not then find ourselves lost, lost for ever, where hope can never comet It shall be my duty to search myself. I hope I shall be enabled to put myself into the scale; promise me my hearers, that each of you will do the same.
I was told one day this week by some one, that having preached for several Sabbaths lately upon the comforting doctrines of God’s Word, he was afraid that some of you would begin to console yourselves with the idea that you were God’s elect when perhaps you were not. Well, at least, such a thing shall not happen, if I have done what I hoped to do this morning. God bless you, for Jesus sake.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
