Charity might even gild it over; but Holiness deals not with the name, but with the reality; and holiness must shrink from sin and thrust it away. This ought to be the most readily perceived and admitted of all Scripture truths, that GOD cannot tolerate near iniquity; that—if I may venture reverently to use such words—even if GOD were willing to receive to Himself an unchanged sinner, the actual reception would be morally impossible; the same heaven could not contain holiness and sin! No, brethren, if the sinner is to enter heaven, it must be, not because his name is changed, but his nature; he must be actually without fault before GOD. We see this to have been the case with those described in the text: for it is expressly said, “In their mouth was found no guile.” Observe, it is not, GOD mercifully overlooked their guile for the sake of His dear Son, the Guileless One; He charitably called them guileless; but “in their mouth was found (the testimony of truth to the searching of holiness) no guile: yea, for they are altogether blameless, without spot or blemish.” It is an actual, not an imputed faultlessness that is thus described. Now, how is it to be attained by sinful men? And here comes in a second answer of popular theology. At or after death, CHRIST meets the departed, and by His resurrection-power quickens that which was dead, purifies that which was corrupt, spiritualises, sanctifies, and, as by a miracle, converts the sinner into a perfect saint. This is an answer only second in popularity to the one we have been considering. Those who urge it, believe that man is naturally depraved, that, under grace, he retains much, almost all, his old nature, that he is very faulty in deed, in will and affections. They know that he must be faultless to gain accession to heaven and dwell with GOD and the Lamb, and this faultlessness they hope for and pray for; but there is no effort to acquire it; there is no concern for the absence, the continued absence of it; it is regarded as altogether a thing of the future; the free and perfect gift—perfect at once—to the released soul and the raised body. Men who hold this view, are often better than their creed requires them to be. In love of GOD and devotion to Him, they strive to abandon sin and cultivate holiness; but they have no definite object in view of becoming faultless here, in order to be faultless in heaven. They seem to believe that they cannot get any nearer to faultlessness whatever they do, and that those who have made no efforts, ay, have even led ungodly lives, and, but for a few last sighs and ejaculations, would have died ungodly deaths, are just as qualified, just as fit in many cases, just as sure recipients of instantly converting and perfecting grace in the next world!