Let us turn to the other question. If, when we are through with this life--as we soon shall be through with it--we are not through with existence--if there is a life beyond the present not measured by years or ages,--how can it be made worth having? Is there any way in which our immortality can be assured to us as an immortal good? After all the doubts and darkness, the mystery and suffering, the bitterness and disappointment, of this life, may it in any way be found a great and a good thing, after all, that we have lived? To answer these questions we must come back to the old truth--the truth of your childhood. The "advanced thought" of our day has discovered nothing to change the fact that men are out of the way, they are not what they should be. Every man knows this. The Bible expresses it in a very plain way by saying _they are sinners_. As such it deals with them; to such alone it opens its door of hope. The Bible is of no use to you unless you are a sinner. If you call this cant, I am sorry for it, but I cannot help it; I cannot change it. The only men for whom God is dealing here for good, for whom he is making possible an immortality of honor and happiness, are the sinful. And is not this well for us? Does it not at once bring hope to you--a hope as great as it is mysterious? You know that life has not been to you an unstained thing any more than it has been to any of us. To know this is to know sin, the one appalling fact of the universe, the one unspeakable woe of our being. In the simplest way, then, my dear A----, let me say that the first step in your coming right with God, and so right with the future, is to know and to feel that you are wrong. The Bible closes the door of hope for ever on the man who comes claiming the brightness and the good of a life beyond the grave because he is worthy of it. These words were once familiar to you: "By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified." Rom. iii. 20. Can he who is wrong make himself right? Can he be all he ought to be? Can he do all he ought to do? Can you set right all the wrong and all the failure of the past? Can you make the future without error? To ask these questions is to answer them to every honest conscience.