into a few minutes. But time sufficient is, nevertheless, given
wherein to test our _truthfulness_, the soil in which truth grows, the
mirror that reflects its beams; time sufficient is given to say Yes
or No to that God who claims our faith and love. Truth comes with
authority and majesty as an ambassador from the living God, and with
clear voice, pure eye, and an arm omnipotent to save, offers to give
light, life, and liberty to the captive spirit. But we may evade his
bright glance, and close our ears to his voice, and refuse to consider
his claims, and deal falsely with his arguments; we may reject his
offers, and, shrinking back from his touch and his helping hand,
retire into the gloom of self-satisfied pride, preferring the darkness
to the light; or we may make merry with Heaven's ambassador, and mock
him as they did the prophet of old; or cry out, "Away with him!" as
the world cried to the Lord of light and life. And what if the second
ambassador never comes again with such pressing earnestness, but
passes by the door once so rudely closed against him, and will knock
no more? Or, though he may in mercy return again and again, what if
the eye gets blinded by the very light which it rejects? and the ear
becomes so familiar with the voice, that it attracts attention no
more than the winds that beat upon the wall; and the heart becomes so
hardened as to be unimpressible, until the dread sentence is at last
passed,--"Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched
out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my
counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your
calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as
desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress
and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will
not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me: for
that they _hated_ knowledge, and _did not choose_ the fear of the
Lord: they would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof.