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A large part of the wise conduct of life depends on grave consideration of consequences. It is a sharp pointed question, that pricks many a bubble, and brings much wisdom down into the category of folly.

I. A QUESTION WHICH EVERY WISE MAN WILL ASK HIMSELF. The consideration of consequences is not the highest guide, or always a sufficient one; or, by any means, in every case, an easily applied one. Do right! and face any results therefrom. He who is always forecasting possible issues will be so afraid of results that he will not dare to move; and his creeping prudence will often turn out the truest imprudence. But whilst many deductions must be made from the principle laid down, that the consideration of circumstances is a good guide in life, yet there are regions in which the question comes home with illuminating force. I believe that, in the long run, condition is the result of character and of conduct, and, for the most part, men are the architects of their own condition, and that they make the houses that they dwell in to fit the convolutions of the body that dwells within them. That being so, there can be nothing more ridiculous than that a man should refrain from marking the issue of his conduct, and saying to himself, "What am I to do in the end?" If you would only do that in regard of hosts of things in your daily life you could not be the men and women that you are. If the lazy student would only bring clearly before his mind the examination room, and the unanswerable paper, and the bitter mortification when the pass list comes out and his name is not there, he would not trifle as he does, but bind himself to his desk and his task. If the young man that begins to tamper with purity could see, as the older of us have seen, men with their bones full of the iniquity of their youth, do you think the temptations of the streets and low places of amusement would not be stripped of their fascination? "What will you do in the end?" Use that question as the Ithuriel spear which will touch the squatting tempter at your ear, and there will start up, in its own shape, the fiend. But the main application that I would ask you to make of the text is in reference to the final end, the passing from life. Death, the end, is likewise death, the beginning. Surely every wise man will take that into consideration. Surely, if it be true that we all of us are silently drifting to that one little gateway through which we have to pass one by one, and then find ourselves in a region all full of consequences of the present, he has a good claim to be counted a prince of fools who "jumps the life to come," and, in all his calculations of consequences, which he applies wisely and prudently to the trifles of the present, forgets to ask himself, "And, after all that is done, what shall I do then?"

II. A QUESTION WHICH A GREAT MANY OF US NEVER THINK ABOUT. "What will you do in the end?" Why! half of us put away that question with the thought in our minds, if not expressed, at least most operative, "There is not going to be any end; and it is always going to be just like what it is today." Did you ever think that there is no good ground for being sure that the sun will rise tomorrow; that it rose for the first time once; that there will come a day when it will rise for the last time? The uniformity of nature may be a postulate, but you cannot find any logical basis for it. Or, to come down from heights of that sort, have you ever laid to heart, that the only unchangeable thing in this world is change, and the only thing certain, that there is no continuance of anything; and that, therefore, you and I are bound, if we are wise, to look that fact in the face, and not to allow ourselves to be befooled by the difficulty of imagining that things will ever be different from what they are? Another reason why so many of us shirk this question is the lamentable want of the habit of living by principle and reflection. They tell us that in nature there is such a thing as protective mimicry, as it is called — animals having the power — some of them to a much larger extent than others — of changing their hues in order to match the gravel of the stream in which they swim or the leaves of the trees on which they feed. It is like what a great many of us do. Put us into a place where certain forms of frivolity or vice are common, and we go in for them. Take us away from these, and we change our hue to something a little whiter. But all through we never know what it is to put forth a good solid force of resistance, and to say, "No! I will not!" or, what is sometimes quite as hard to say, "Yes! though" — as Luther said in his strong way — "there were as many devils in Worms as there are tiles on the housetops, I will!" If people would live more by reflection and by the power of a resisting will, this question of my text would come oftener to them. And there is another cause that I must touch on for one moment, why so many people neglect this question, and that is because they know they durst not face it. What would you think of a man that never took stock because he knew he was insolvent, and yet did not want to know it? And what do you think of yourselves if, knowing that the thought of passing into that solemn eternity is anything but a cheering one, and that you have to pass into it, you never turn your head to look at it?

III. A QUESTION ESPECIALLY DIRECTED TO YOU YOUNG FOLK. It is so because with your buoyancy, with your necessarily limited experience, with the small accumulation of results that you have already in your possession, and with the tendencies of your age to live rather by impulse than by reflection, you are specially tempted to forget the solemn significance of this interrogation. And it is a question especially for you, because you have special advantages in the matter of putting it. We older people are all fixed and fossils, as you are very fond of telling us. The iron has cooled and gone into rigid shapes with us. It is all fluent with you. You may be pretty nearly what you like. You have not yet acquired habits — that awful thing that may be our worst foe or our best friend — you have not yet acquired habits that almost smother the power of reform and change. You have perhaps years before you in which you may practise the lessons of wisdom, the self-restraint which this question fairly fronted would bring.

IV. A QUESTION WHICH JESUS CHRIST ALONE ENABLES A MAN TO ANSWER WITH CALM CONFIDENCE. As I have said, the end is a beginning; the passage from life is the entrance on a progressive and eternal state of retribution. And Jesus Christ tells us two other things. He tells us that that state has two parts: that in one there is union with Him, life, blessedness forever; and that in the other there is darkness, separation from Him, death, and misery. These are the facts as revealed by the incarnate Word of God on which answers to this question must be shaped. "What will you do in the end?" If I am trusting to Him; if I have brought my poor, weak nature and sinful soul to Him, and cast them upon His merciful sacrifice and mighty intercession and life-giving Spirit, then I can say: "As for me, I shall behold Thy face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness."

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

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KJV: For among my people are found wicked men: they lay wait, as he that setteth snares; they set a trap, they catch men.

WEB: For among my people are found wicked men. They watch, as fowlers lie in wait. They set a trap. They catch men.