| Things to Live For |
Chapter 9 |
Page 6 |
We cannot sin against others, hurting them only, and receiving no hurt to ourselves. We are not merely sowers of seed in other lives; but while we are scattering the seed in the field of our neighbor, we are sowing also in our own field. There are two harvests. He that corrupts another life makes his own life more corrupt than before. The tempter may cause the fall and ruin of another soul, but the evil in himself has become more evil in his doing so. Every good thing we do strengthens the good that is in us, and every wrong thing makes the wrong in use more dominant.
Nor is this all. There is a law of justice in this world which requites to every man according to his deeds. We are not living under a reign of chance. It is not merely accidental that certain people who do wrong receive punishment, and that certain people who do good receive reward. Sometimes it seems as if the law did not work universally, – that some who do wrong are not requited, and that some who do good receive no reward. But this inequality of justice is only seeming. Life does not end at the grave. If it did, we might say that the Lord’s ways are not always equal. God’s dealings with men are not closed in this life. The story is continued. If the Bible narrative of Joseph ended with the boy carried into Egypt a slave, or with the slave lad cast into prison on false charges, we would grieve over the terrible wrongs done to an innocent person and left unrequited. But when we read the story through to the end, all such feelings vanish. So the cases in which wrong seems to be unpunished and virtue unrewarded are simply unfinished life stories. There are other chapters which will be written on the other side. When all has been completed, there will be no inequality, no injustice. All our faithfulness will have its full reward, and all sin will receive its due punishment.
“There is no wrong, by any one committed,
But will recoil;
Its sure return, with double ill repeated,
No skill can foil.
“As on the earth the mists it yields to heaven
Descend in rain,
So on his head, whoe’er has evil given,
It falls again.
“It is the law of life that retribution
Shall follow wrong;
It never fails, although the execution
May tarry long.”
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