he present alone, necessarily, by the
simplest and yet strongest law of Nature, must suffer loss: _this is
Judgment by Nature's law_. This, too, is the keynote of every
verse--"the future," "the future"; and God, who is clearly discerned by
Reason as behind Nature, "which is but the name for an effect whose
Cause is God,"--God is clearly recognized as returning a harvest in the
_future_, in strict and accurate accord with the sowing of the
_present_. This is very clear. Then how simple and how certain that
if this is God's irrefragable law in Nature, it must have its
fulfillment too in the moral nature of man. It has been one of the
chief sorrows of the book that neither wrong nor confusion is righted
here, and those "days of darkness" to which _all_ life tends are no
discriminative judgment, nor is there anything of the kind in a scene
where "all things come alike to all." Then surely, most surely, unless
indeed man alone sows without reaping,--alone breaks in as an exception
to this law,--a thought not consonant with reason,--there must be to
him also a harvest of reaping according to what has been sown: in other
words a _Judgment_. Although still, let us mark, our writer does not
assume to say anything as to where or when that shall be, or how
brought about, this is all uncertain and indefinite: the fact is
_certain_; and more clear will the outline of that judgment-seat stand
out, as our writer's eyes become accustomed to the new light in which
he is standing,--the fact is already certain.

Solemn, most solemn, is this; and yet how beautiful to see a true
reason--but let us emphasize again not _depraved_, but exercising her
royal function of sovereignty over the flesh, not subject to
it--drawing such true and sure lessons from that which she sees of the
law of God in Nature. It is a _reasonable_, although in view of sin, a
fearful expectation; and with exactness is the word chosen in Acts:
Paul _reasoned_ of judgment to come; and reason, with conscience,
recognized the force of the appeal, as "Felix trembled." Thus that
solemn double appointment of man: death and judgment has been discerned
by Nature's light, and counsel is given in view of each. We said that
our writer had reached the climax of his perplexities in view of death
in chap. ix. when he counseled us to "merrily drink our wine"; but now
judgment discerned, death itself even not necessarily the end, at
length soberness prevails; and with an evide