Verse 11
Consider sonic of the thoughts which press upon a mind conscious of its own wonderful nature. It perceives in part an evident likeness, and in part an equally marked unlikeness, to its Maker. (1) We know by instinct and by revelation that God has made us in part like to Himself; that is, immortal. (2) We learn that our nature stands in a marked contrast to the Divine; that the immortal nature which is within us is of a mutable kind, susceptible of the most searching changes.
I. Our immortal being is always changing, for good or evil, always becoming better or worse. All our life long, and in every stage of it, this process, which we vaguely call the formation of character, is going on. Our immortal nature is taking its stamp and colour; we are receiving and imprinting ineffaceable lines and features. As the will chooses, so the man is.
II. This continual change is also a continual approach to, or departure from, God. Heaven and hell are but the ultimate points of the diverging lines on which all are ever moving. The steady and changeless rise and fall of the everlasting lights is not more unerring. It is a moral movement, measured upon the boundaries of life and death.
III. Such as we become in this life by the moral change wrought in our immortal nature, such we shall be for ever. Our eternal state will be no more than the carrying out of what we are now. And if these things be so, with how much awe and fear have we need to deal with ourselves. (1) We must needs learn to keep a keen watch over our hearts. Every change that passes upon us has an eternal consequence; there is something ever flowing from it into eternity. (2) We have need not only to watch, but to keep up a strong habit of self-control. By its own continual acting, our fearful and wonderful inward nature is perpetually determining its own character. It has a power of self-determination, which to those who give over watching and self-control becomes soon unconscious, and at last involuntary.
H. E. Manning, Sermons, vol. i., p. 47.
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