actual state one of hopeful promise for this period, for this life which no death shall terminate?  Nay, is it a state of any promise at all, of any chance at all?  Suppose, for a moment, one with a crippled body, full of the seeds of hereditary disease, poor, friendless, irritable in temper, low in understanding; suppose such an one just entering upon youth, and ask yourselves, for what would you consent that his prospects should be yours?  What should you think would be your chance of happiness in life, if you were beginning in such a condition?  Yet, I tell you that poor, diseased, irritable, friendless cripple has a far better prospect of passing his fifty, or sixty, years, tolerably, than they who have not begun to turn towards God have of a tolerable eternity.  Much more wretched is the promise of their life; much more justly should we be tempted, concerning them, to breathe that fearful thought, that it were good for them if they had never been born.  And now if, as by miracle, that cripple’s limbs were to be at once made sound, if the seeds of disease were to vanish, if some large fortune were left him, if his temper sweetened, and his mind became vigorous, should not we be excused, considering what he had been and what he now was, if we, for a moment, forgot the uncertainty of the future; if we thought that a promise so changed, was almost equivalent to performance?  And may not this same excuse be urged for some over-fondness of confidence for their well-doing whom we see so near to the kingdom of God, when we consider how utter is the misery, how hopeless the condition of those who do not appear to have, as yet, stirred one single step towards it?

LECTURE XIV.

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MATTHEW xxii. 14.

For many are called, but few are chosen.

The truth here expressed is one of the most solemn in the world, and would be one of the most overwhelming to us, if habit had not, in a manner, blunted our painful perception of it.  There is contained in it matter of thought more than we could exhaust, and deeper than we could ever fathom.  But on this I will not attempt to enter.  I will rather take that view of the text which concerns us here; I will see in how many senses it is true, and with what feeling we should regard it.

“Many are called, but few are chosen.”  The direct application of this was to the parable of those invited to the supper; in which it had been related, how a great multitude had been invited, but how one among them—­and the application as well as the fact in human life, require that this one should be taken only as a specimen of a great number—­had been found unworthy to enjoy the feast prepared for them.  They had not on the wedding garment; they had not done their part to fit themselves for the offered blessing:  therefore they were called, but not chosen.  God had willed to do them good, but they would not; and therefore, though he had called them at the beginning, he, in the end, cast them out.