September 13

And before him shall be gathered all nations; and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the, goats; and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. - Matthew 25:32-33.

HOW lovely, glorious, and sublime are the appearances of nature! And yet all these are doomed to destruction. “The heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up.” The animals are very superior to all inanimate productions. How remarkable are the qualities of many of them! while some of them surpass man in strength, the sagacity of others seems scarcely distinguishable from reason itself. Yet Solomon says, “The spirit of the beast goeth downward, and the spirit of man goeth upward.” For they are not moral agents, nor destined to give account of themselves to God. But no man ever perished, or ever will perish: he had a beginning, but he will have no end. He dies indeed, but “the spirit returns to God who gave it.” He dies indeed, but the body that enters the grave, and even sees corruption, will not remain there. “All that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth: they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.”

Men are not only God’s creatures, but they are God’s subjects too. He has given them not only appetites, but reason; not only passions, but conscience; he has given them not only blessings to enjoy, but laws to observe. They are capable of knowing his will; they are informed of it; they are bound to obey it. And “we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ;” for “God will bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil.” Now, this is the subject here represented; and it is worthy our regard, that He who represents it here will himself occupy the chief place in the proceedings of that day, for “he shall come to be our Judge.” What a contrast he must have perceived, at the time he uttered these words, between his condition then and his future grandeur! He was then “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;” “He had not where to lay his head;” “He was despised and rejected of men;” but then he knew, he felt, that “before him should be gathered all nations,” and that “the Son of man should come in his glory.”

Observe, “all nations.” It must, therefore, include our own. It must include the young, the old, the rich, the poor, the professor and the profane. These will not only be spectators, but they will be parties concerned. It is a solemn thing for a man to be judged of his own conscience. Oh, how pleasing is the approval of that sentence, of that deputy of God within! but oh, how intolerable its frown! “The spirit of a man may sustain his infirmity, but a wounded spirit who can bear?” It is a solemn thing for a man to stand before an earthly tribunal with his property, his liberty, and his life at stake, to leave the court acquitted of all charges, to return to the bosom of his family, or to return to be confined again, not for trial, but for execution; but all this is nothing, “less than nothing and vanity,” compared with the arrangements and decisions here announced. Men are now variously intermingled, and it would not be safe for a mortal to undertake the task of separating’ them; for, as the Saviour in the parable says, “there would be danger lest, while he pulled up the tares, he should root up also the wheat with them; both, therefore, must grow together until the harvest.” Many ends are to be answered by this intermixture now,-many with regard to the wicked, many with regard to the godly themselves.

And there is another reason to be assigned why the one is now imperfectly punished and the other is imperfectly rewarded; namely, that we are now under an introductory dispensation, that we are now in a state of discipline and trial. But hereafter comes a state of retribution:-“And he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats; and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.”