ore
power to annihilate the object of their aversion than the shepherds of
the Cheviots to wipe out the sea by a wish. The sea is near those men
though they have never seen it; and, if they were cast into it, they
would perish, notwithstanding their opinion. Ah! the thing which by
God's appointment is, cannot by our arguments be blotted out of being.

2. There is a way from this present life to the place of future misery,
and also a way to the place of future blessedness. The way from this
world to the place of woe was made by man's sin; the way from this world
to the place of rest was made by the incarnation, death, and
resurrection of Christ. By the one way you can glide easily down; by the
other you may climb toilsomely, but surely up. The one goes with the
corrupt affections; the other against them. But let it be remembered
that the way of life, though hard, is not unhappy; the struggle, when
once fairly begun, is a grand, gladsome thing. Forth from this world
there are only two paths; by one or other of these two all men take
their departure; on one or other of these two paths we all are treading
now. We owe it to Christ that a way into safety has been opened for our
sinful world: "I am the way, ... no man cometh unto the Father but by
me."

3. There is no way over from one of these future states to the other.
The great gulf between them is fixed. This is the main fact of the
parable, and hereon its greatest lesson grows. The great gulf is fixed,
and after death none can change his place. This fact we now know without
further revelation, and if we believe it not on the testimony of Jesus,
neither would we believe it although one should rise from the dead to
declare it. This parable, in some of its minute features, is to our
vision necessarily obscure, because the scene is laid in the life to
come, but its main outline is as clearly visible as any temporal object
could be. It teaches with great perspicuity that when immortal spirits,
at the dissolution of the body, are thrown into the eternal world, it is
no longer possible that their place or their condition should be
changed: those who will not learn from this word of Christ that the
condition of the departed is for ever fixed at death will not learn it
in time to profit by the lesson.

4. Our Lord has thus emphatically taught us that there is no possibility
of passing from one state to another beyond the boundary of this life in
order that he may thereby const