Final Perseverance not Inevitable.
When our Lord says that none can pluck from the Father's hand those who are His, He does not say that they who are His may not themselves break or fall away from Him. What else is the meaning of that terrible question: "Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?" When St. Paul says that God's gifts are without repentance on God's part, he does not add that they cannot be rejected by man, since this had already been the case, with the very generation of Jews about whom he was writing to the Romans. The grace of God does not make our final perseverance inevitable. It makes it possible, probable, morally certain, if you will, but morally and not mechanically certain. God who has made us free respects the freedom which He has given us. He does not crush it even by His own merciful gifts; and grace no more absolutely assures Heaven than does natural will, or the force of habit conquer the road to it. And this leads me to ask what are the causes which make endurance to the end difficult in so very many Christian lives.
I. There is, first of all, what our Lord calls, "the persecution that ariseth because of the word." In some shape or other this is inevitable. Persecution is in any case friction; and as we all know, friction, if only it be continued long enough, brings movement to a standstill, until there be a new supply of the impelling force. Men who have done much for Christ have given way at last under the stress of relentless persecution.
II. And then there are, as our Lord says, the false Christs and the false prophets. Our faith is undermined by people who talk and write in the very best English, and who have so much about them that is winning and agreeable that we cannot believe what is really going on. We cannot go on breathing a bad air, and be as we were when we lived high up on the mountain, unless we take very great precautions. Not to take them under such circumstances as these is to be in a fair way to forfeit perseverance.
III. And then there is the weariness which steals over thought and heart with the lapse of time. Human faculties, after all, are finite. They spend themselves and they fall back into lassitude and exhaustion. After great experiences, there is I do not say a relapse, but a condition of less keenness of insight, less tension of will, less warmth of affection, less conscious effort of intelligence and of sanctified passion; and lookers on say that the excitement has passed, and that common sense has resumed its sway, and the soul, too, knows that something has passed from it inevitably, no doubt, from the nature of the case. And with this knowledge there comes depression; and this depression is in its way a trial, permitted, as we may believe, in order to make our service of God more unselfish than it would be if it were sustained throughout life by an uninterrupted sense of ecstasy. But it is a trial under which some men have failed. And then it may be the case that all is lost, and that perseverance is forfeited.
IV. And once more, there is the trifling with conscience, not necessarily in great matters, but in a number of little matters omission of morning and evening prayers, or their curtailment; neglect of a regular review of conscience; carelessness as to the object upon which money is spent, and as to the proportion in which it is given to works of religion and mercy; recklessness in intercourse with others, especially if they are younger or less well informed. These and like matters help forward and dull the inoperative condition of conscience, which is in itself preparatory to a great failure. Perseverance is likely to be secured by three things especially: (1) By a sense of constant dependence on God; (2) by prayer for perseverance; (3) by keeping the mind fixed as much as possible on the end of life and on that which follows it.
H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit,No. 1,143.