Man a Free Agent

LOOK upon that dripping, limp and helpless body that they have just taken from the water. Is he dead? “No,” says the physician. He is lying just on the verge of death and life. A single respiration will save him. And then how you work over him for dear life—shouting in his ear, chafing him and turning him over with quick and half-frantic haste. And in your intense anxiety that he should breathe, you find your own lungs laboring—breathing for him with all the power which they can command. But it is useless. He must breathe for himself or he is dead.
So I hear the Son of God say, “I am come that they might have life.” “He that believeth on the Son hath life.” And I see men in scores lying just on the edge of life eternal, where a single act of faith would save them; and I find myself trying to believe for them, and by a tremendous grasp of sympathetic faith to lay hold of eternal life on their behalf. But in vain. They must believe for themselves. God can become incarnate to save men; He can suffer and shed redeeming blood and die to save them. He can do anything and everything but choose for them. That is man’s inalienable prerogative. It is the crown jewel of his manhood. God will not take it from him. And from the first man that was placed in Eden to the last that shall be born on earth, the same message comes— “Choose ye.”
A. J. G.