Sermons to the Natural Man | Page 7

to make a special effort and
a particular examination, in order to know the personal character.
Knowledge of God and His law, in the future life, is spontaneous and
inevitable; no creature can escape it; and therefore the bliss is
unceasing in heaven, and the misery is unceasing in hell. There are no
states of thoughtlessness and unconcern in the future life, because there
is not an instant of forgetfulness or ignorance of the personal character
and condition. In the world beyond this, every man will constantly and
distinctly know what he is, and what he is not, because he will "be
known" by the omniscient and unerring God, and will himself know in

the same constant and distinct style and manner.
If the most thoughtless person that now walks the globe could only
have a clear perception of that kind of knowledge which is awaiting
him upon the other side of the tomb, he would become the most
thoughtful and the most anxious of men. It would sober him like death
itself. And if any unpardoned man should from this moment onward be
haunted with the thought, "When I die I shall enter into the light of
God's countenance, and obtain a knowledge of my own character and
obligations that will be as accurate and unvarying as that of God
himself upon this subject," he would find no rest until he had obtained
an assurance of the Divine mercy, and such an inward change as would
enable him to endure this deep and full consciousness of the purity of
God and of the state of his heart. It is only because a man is unthinking,
or because he imagines that the future world will be like the present one,
only longer in duration, that he is so indifferent regarding it. Here is the
difficulty of the case, and the fatal mistake which the natural man
makes. He supposes that the views which he shall have upon religious
subjects in the eternal state, will be very much as they are in
this,--vague, indistinct, fluctuating, and therefore causing no very great
anxiety. He can pass days and weeks here in time without thinking of
the claims of God upon him, and he imagines that the same thing is
possible in eternity. While here upon earth, he certainly does not "know
even as also he is known," and he hastily concludes that so it will be
beyond the grave. It is because men imagine that eternity is only a very
long space of _time_, filled up, as time here is, with dim, indistinct
apprehensions, with a constantly shifting experience, with shallow
feelings and ever diversified emotions, in fine, with all the variety of
pleasure and pain, of ignorance and knowledge, that pertains to this
imperfect and probationary life,--it is because mankind thus conceive
of the final state, that it exerts no more influence over them. But such is
not its true idea. There is a marked difference between the present and
the future life, in respect to uniformity and clearness of knowledge.
"Now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known."
The text and the whole teaching of the New Testament prove that the
invisible world is the unchangeable one; that there are no alterations of
character, and consequently no alternations of experience, in the future
life; that there are no transitions, as there are in this checkered scene of

earth, from happiness to unhappiness and back again. There is but one
uniform type of experience for an individual soul in eternity. That soul
is either uninterruptedly happy, or uninterruptedly miserable, because it
has either an uninterrupted sense of holiness, or an uninterrupted sense
of sin. He that is righteous is righteous still, and knows it continually;
and he that is filthy is filthy still, and knows it incessantly. If we enter
eternity as the redeemed of the Lord, we take over the holy heart and
spiritual affections of regeneration, and there is no change but that of
progression,--a change, consequently, only in degree, but none of kind
or type. The same knowledge and experience that we have here "in
part" we shall have there in completeness and permanency. And the
same will be true, if the heart be evil and the affections inordinate and
earthly. And all this, simply because the mind's knowledge is clear,
accurate, and constant. That which the transgressor knows here of God
and his own heart, but imperfectly, and fitfully, and briefly, he shall
know there perfectly, and constantly, and everlastingly. The law of
constant evolution, and the characteristic of unvarying uniformity, will
determine and fix the type of experience in the evil as it does in the
good.
Such, then, is the general nature of knowledge in the future state. It