Sad Ending of a Life that Might have been Otherwise.
I remember a few years ago I felt very anxious for a man who was present
at a meeting like this. At the close of the meeting I asked all to rise,
and he rose among the others. I took him aside and said, "Now you are
going to become a Christian--you will come out for the Lord now?" He
said he was wanting to very much. The man was trembling from head to
foot, and I thought surely he was going to accept Him. I spoke to him in
his hesitating condition, and found out what was standing between him
and Christ. He was afraid of his companions. Nearly every day and night
news came to me that some of these employers and clerks make light of
these meetings, and make fun of all who attend them, and so many give
the same reason that this man did. I said to him: "If heaven is what we
are led to believe it is, I would be willing to accept it and bear their
fun." I talked with him, but he wouldn't accept it. He went off, but for
weeks he came every night, and went away as he came, without accepting
it. One day I received a message to come and see him. He was sick, and I
went to his chamber. He wanted to know if there was hope for him in the
eleventh hour? I spoke to him, and gave him every hope I could. Day
after day I visited him, and, contrary to all expectation, I saw him
gradually recovering. When he got pretty well he was sitting on the
front porch, and I sat down by him and said: "You will be going now to
confess Christ; you'll be going to take your stand for him now?" "Well,"
said he, "Mr. Moody, I promised God on my sick bed that I would; but I
will wait a little. I am going over to Michigan, where I am going to buy
a farm and settle down, and then I'll become a Christian." "If God
cannot make you a Christian here he cannot do it there," I replied. I
tried to get him to make an unconditional surrender, but he wouldn't; he
would put it off till the next spring. "Why," I said, "you may not live
till next spring." "Don't you see I am getting quite well?" "But are you
willing to take the risk till next spring?" "Oh, yes, I'll take it; Mr.
Moody, you needn't trouble yourself any more about my soul; I'll risk
it; you can just attend to your business, and I will to mine, and if I
lose my soul, no one will be to blame but myself--certainly not you, for
you've done all you could." I went away from that house then with a
heavy heart.
I well remember the day of the week, Thursday, about noon, just one week
from that very day, when his wife sent for me. When I went to their home
I found her in great trouble, and learned that he had had a relapse. I
asked if he had expressed a desire to see me. She said "No; he is always
saying 'there is no hope,' and I cannot bear to have him die in that
condition." I went into the room. He did not speak to me, but I went
around to the foot of the bed and looked in his face and said, "Won't
you speak to me?" and at last he fixed that terrible deathly look upon
me and said, "Mr. Moody, you need not talk to me any more. It is too
late; there is no hope for me now. Go talk to my wife and children; pray
for them; but my heart is as hard as the iron in that stove there. When
I was sick He came to the door of my heart, and I promised to serve Him,
but I broke that promise, and now I must die without Him." I got down to
pray. "You needn't pray for me," he said. I prayed, but it seemed as if
my prayer went no higher than my head. He lingered till that night,
repeating, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and I am not
saved." There he lay in agony, every few minutes this lamentation
breaking from him. Just as the sun was going down behind those Western
prairies, his wife leaned over him, and in an almost inaudible voice, he
whispered, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and I am not
saved," and he died. He had lived a Christless life, he died a
Christless death, he was wrapped in a Christless shroud, and he was
buried in a Christless grave. Oh, how dark and sad! Dear friends, the
harvest is passing; the summer will soon be ended; won't you let Him
redeem you?
By the Wayside.
I went down past the corner of Clark and Lake streets one day, and,
fulfilling my vow, on seeing a man leaning up against a lamp-post, I
went up to him and said: "Are you a Christian?" He damned me and cursed
me, and told me to mind my own business. He knew me, but I didn't know
him. He said to a friend of his that afternoon that he had never been so
insulted in his life, and told him to say to me that I was damning the
cause I pretended to represent. Well, the friend came and delivered his
message. "May be I am doing more hurt than good," I said; "may be I'm
mistaken, and God hasn't shown me the right way." That was the time I
was sleeping and living in the Young Men's Christian Association rooms,
where I was then President, Secretary, janitor, and everything else.
Well one night, after midnight I heard a knock at the door. And there on
the step leading into the street stood this stranger I had made so mad
at the lamp-post, and said he wanted to talk to me about his soul's
salvation. He said: "Do you remember the man you met about three months
ago at the lamp-post, and how he cursed you? I have had no peace since
that night; I couldn't sleep. Oh, tell me what to do to be saved." And
we just fell down on our knees, and prayed, and that day he went to the
noon prayer meeting and openly confessed the Saviour, and soon after
went to the war a Christian man. I do not know but he died on some
Southern battle-field or in a hospital, but I expect to see him in the
kingdom of God.
Sowing the Tares.
I was at the Paris Exhibition in 1867, and I noticed there a little oil
painting, only about a foot square, and the face was the most hideous I
have ever seen. On the paper attached to the painting were the words
"Sowing the tares," and the face looked more like a demon's than a
man's. As he sowed these tares, up came serpents and reptiles, and they
were crawling up his body, and all around were woods with wolves and
animals prowling in them. I have seen that picture many times since. Ah!
the reaping time is coming. If you sow to the flesh you must reap the
flesh.
What Moody Saw in the Chamber of Horror.
When I was in London I went into a wax work there--Tassands--and I went
into the chamber of Horror. There were wax figures of all kinds of
murderers in that room. There was Booth who killed Lincoln, and many of
that class: but there was one figure I got interested in, who killed
his wife because he loved another woman, and the law didn't find him
out. He married this woman and had a family of seven children. And
twenty years passed away. Then his conscience began to trouble him. He
had no rest; he would hear his murdered wife pleading continually for
her life. His friends began to think that that he was going out of his
mind; he became haggard and his conscience haunted him till, at last he
went to the officers of the law and told them that he was guilty of
murder. He wanted to die, life was so much of an agony to him. His
conscience turned against him. My friends if you have done wrong, may
your conscience be woke up, and may you testify against yourself. It is
a great deal better to judge our own acts and confess them, than go
through this world with the curse upon you.
Reaping the Whirlwind.
I remember in the north of England a prominent citizen told a sad case
that happened there in the city of Newcastle-on-Tyne. It was about a
young boy. He was very young. He was an only child. The father and
mother thought everything of him and did all they could for him. But he
fell into bad ways. He took up with evil characters, and finally got to
running with thieves. He didn't let his parents know about it. By and by
the gang he was with broke into the house, and he with them. Yes, he had
to do it all. They stopped outside of the building, while he crept in
and started to rob the till. He was caught in the act, taken into court,
tried, convicted, and sent to the penitentiary for ten years. He worked
on and on in the convict's cell, till at last his term was out. And at
once he started for home. And when he came back to the town he started
down the street where his father and mother used to live. He went to the
house and rapped. A stranger came to the door and stared him in the
face. "No, there's no such person lives here, and where your parents are
I don't know," was the only welcome he received. Then he turned through
the gate, and went down the street, asking even the children that he met
about his folks, where they were living, and if they were well. But
everybody looked blank. Ten years rolled by and though that seemed
perhaps a short time, how many changes had taken place! There where he
was born and brought up he was now an alien, and unknown even in the old
haunts. But at last he found a couple of townsmen that remembered his
father and mother, but they told him the old house had been deserted
long years ago, that he had been gone but a few months before his father
was confined to his house; and very soon after died broken-hearted, and
that his mother had gone out of her mind. He went to the mad-house where
his mother was, and went up to her and said, "Mother, mother, don't you
know me? I am your son." But she raved and slapped him on the face and
shrieked, "You're not my son," and then raved again and tore her hair.
He left the asylum more dead than alive, so completely broken-hearted
that he died in a few months. Yes the fruit was long growing, but at the
last it ripened to the harvest like a whirlwind.
Madness and Death.
I was coming along north Clark street one evening when a man shot past
me like an arrow. But he had seen me, and turned and seized me by the
arm. Saying eagerly, "Can I be saved to-night. The devil is coming to
take me to hell at 1 o'clock tonight." "My friend, you are mistaken." I
thought the man was sick. But he persisted that the devil had come and
laid his hand upon him, and told him he might have till 1 o'clock, and
said he: "Won't you go up to my room and sit with me." I got some men up
to his room to see to him. At 1 o'clock the devils came into that room,
and all the men in that room could not hold him. He was reaping what he
had sown. When the Angel of Death came and laid his cold hand on him, oh
how he cried for mercy.