If there is any moral elevation to be found in the world, if the tide of evil is in any measure stemmed, if society is able in any degree to hold together, and human life has any security or enjoyment, to what is it owing? It is owing to the measure in which truth is respected, and practical truth and righteousness practiced. Imagine what the world would become, if truth and honesty disappeared, and falsehood and deceit reigned everywhere; morality gone, wickedness triumphant, family and social bonds dissolved. And the world owes it to God’s grace, and to God’s providence that it is not so. Were the government of God for a brief season to cease, it would quickly be apparent what Satan would make of the world. It would indeed be a hell upon earth.
Let us then extend this principle to the whole universe. Imagine that evil was supreme, truth banished, righteousness annihilated. What a fearful state of things! And who is the judge, what is the standard, what power maintains truth, righteousness, and order? God is the judge, truth is the standard, and it is the power of God alone which ensures the maintenance of everything that is good and excellent, and which will ensure the judgment of all evil in due time, and its disappearance from the scene of ordered government. But it is not till the game is played out, not till the conflict between the powers of good and evil ceases, that all this will take place in its full, final, and everlasting issues. The history of corruption and violence on the face of this earth will, when iniquity is full and God’s purposes accomplished, come to an end. The result to the moral agent, whether of blessing, or of judgment, will be at that time in the strictest sense, everlasting.
Once before, the wickedness of mankind was so great and so universal, that God cleared the earth by the deluge. Some may be “willingly ignorant of this,” or may willfully deny it; to the Christian it is the most solemn confirmation of those statements of Scripture which assures us of the overwhelming judgment which is coming upon all, who are not found in the true ark, that is Christ. Meanwhile the gospel, God’s grand ordinance for the salvation of men, is being proclaimed, and happy are those who fear and accept God’s proffered terms of mercy. “Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come” (1 Tim. 4:88For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. (1 Timothy 4:8)).
W. Kelly