"The shame of self and pity for thy Lord That One so sweet should e'er have placed Himself At disadvantage such, as to be used So vilely by a being vile as thee." But what a sweet and wholesome pain, mingled with the sense of safety and peace and hope--mingled with deep joy and boundless adoring gratitude and love as we see the stain of the old sins steadily being effaced and look forward to the sure bliss of Heaven in the future! Surely by means of such pain and gratitude and adoring love God makes sinful souls fit for Heaven. CHAPTER X PROBATION IN THIS LIFE Up to this we have been ignoring a large proportion of the inhabitants of the Unseen Land. To avoid misunderstanding we have kept in view those only of whom we had hope that they died in the fear and love of God. But there is no evading the thought that between these and the utterly reprobate, there are multitudes of Christian and heathen in that Unseen Life today who belong to neither class, mixed characters in all varying degrees of good or evil. Of many of them it could be said that those who knew them best saw much that was good and lovable in them. But it could not be said that they had consciously and definitely chosen for Christ. They must form the majority of those to-day in the Unseen Land. Therefore one cannot help wondering about them. One day death overtook them. The thought of them comes forcibly when some morning the newspapers startle us with the story of a terrible battle or railway smash or shipwreck or conflagration in which hundreds have passed out of life in a moment and the horror of the catastrophe is deepened by the thought that they have been called away suddenly unprepared. What of their position in the Intermediate Life? Our Christian charity prompts us to hope the best for them. But are we justified in hoping? It is impossible for thoughtful, sympathetic men to evade that question. It is cowardly to evade it. At any rate a treatise on the Intermediate Life can hardly pass over altogether the thought of the majority of its inhabitants and it cannot be wrong for us humbly and reverently to think about them. § 2 I have already pointed out the solemn responsibility of this earth life in which acts make habits and habits make character and character makes destiny. I am about to point out the grave probability, to say the least of it, that in a very real sense this life may be the sole probation time for man. But this does not shut out the question of the poor bereaved mother by the side of her dead son. "If any soul has not in penitence and faith definitely accepted Jesus Christ in this life is it forever impossible that he may do so in any other life?"