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Prodigious is the inconsistency of some modern reasoners. They believe in the immortality of the soul. They see that the man is the development of the boy, and that the acts of the youth leave their impress on the whole after-life. They say law is inflexible, and that miracles therefore are impossible. They affirm that justice is so exact that its penalty must fall on its proper victim, and that therefore Christ’s death is not vicarious. But somehow at this point all their reasoning falls to pieces. According to them, man in the future life is not to be dealt with after this inflexibility of law and this exactness of justice. According to them, up to the moment of death law goes in a straight, unbending line; why then, in the name of all pretence of reason, does it fail at that point, so that wickedness, which has met with its exact punishment in this world, fails to meet with it in that coming one? Dear young man, fearlessness as to what that future may be is stark madness. It is folly for which there is no name, for a man all through his earthly life to bear the traces of the indolence and self-willedness of his youth. But oh, what must it be for all the future and eternal life to bear the traces of the wrongs that have been done to the soul in this? What must it be for all the possible features with which the soul entered on this life—truth, purity, love, faith—not only to have lain undeveloped, but to have been quenched? Let me conjure and entreat you to look at this subject. Do not, for the sake of all that is dear to you, close your eyes to it. Let the great future take its right place as you are starting in life. Be assured that the language of Scripture concerning those that have perished is prompted by God’s yearning for your immortal well-being, while it accords with all the analogies of creation: “For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord, therefore shall they eat the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.”