It is with some of you half past five in the morning, and some faint
streaks of light. With others it is seven o'clock, and thus full dawn.
With others it is twelve o'clock at noon, and you sit in full blaze of
Gospel pardon. I bring you congratulation. Joseph delivered from
Potiphar's dungeon; Daniel lifted from the lion's den; Saul arrested
and unhorsed on the road to Damascus. Oh, you delivered captives, how
your eyes should gleam, and your souls should bound, and your lips
should sing in this pardon! From what land did you come? A land of
darkness. What is to be your destiny? A land of light. Who got you
out? Christ, the Lord. Can you sit so placidly and unmoved while all
heaven comes to your soul with congratulation, and harps are strung,
and crowns are lifted, and a great joy swings round the heavens at the
news of your disinthrallment? If you could realize out of what a pit
you have been dug, to what height you are to be raised, and to what
glory you are destined, you would spring to your feet with "Hosanna!"
In 1808 there was a meeting of the emperors of France and Russia at
Erfurt. There were distinguished men there also from other lands. It
was so arranged that when any of the emperors arrived at the door of
the reception-room, the drum should beat three times; but when a
lesser dignitary should come, then the drum would sound but twice.
After awhile the people in the audience-chamber heard two taps of the
drum. They said: "A prince is coming." But after awhile there were
three taps, and they cried: "The emperor!" Oh, there is a more
glorious arrival at your soul to-night! The drum beats twice at the
coming in of the lesser joys and congratulations of your soul; but it
beats once, twice, thrice at the coming in of a glorious King--Jesus
the Saviour, Jesus the God! I congratulate you. All are yours--things
present and things to come.
II. I come now to speak of the second division--those who are seeking;
some of you with more earnestness, some of you with less earnestness.
But I believe that to-night, if I should ask all those who wish to
find the way to heaven to rise, and the world did not scoff at you,
and your own proud heart did not keep you down, there would be a
thousand souls who would cry out as they rose up: "Show me the way to
heaven!" That young man who smiled to the one next to him, as though
he cared for none of these things, would be on his knees crying for
mercy. Why this anxious look? Why this deep disquietude in the soul?
Why, at the beginning of this service, did you do what you have not
done for years--bow your head in prayer? You are seeking.
"I am a gambler," says one man. There is mercy for you. "I am a
libertine," says another. There is mercy for you. "I have plunged into
every abomination." Mercy for you. The door of grace does not stand
ajar to-night, nor half swung around on the hinges. It is wide, wide
open; and there is nothing in the Bible, or in Christ, or God, or
earth, or heaven, or hell, to keep you out of the door of safety, if
you want to go in. Christ has borne your burdens, fought your battles,
suffered for your sins. The debt is paid, and the receipt is handed to
you, written in the blood of the Son of God--will you have it? Oh,
decide the matter now! Decide it here! Fling your exhausted soul down
at the feet of an all-compassionate, all-sympathizing, all-pitying,
all-pardoning Jesus. The laceration on His brow, the gash in His side,
the torn muscles and nerves of His feet beg you to come.
But remember that one inch outside the door of pardon, and you are in
as much peril as though you were a thousand miles away. Many a
shipwrecked sailor has got almost to the beach, but did not get on it.
There are thousands in the world of the lost who came very near being
saved--perhaps as near as you are to-night--but were not saved.
On the eastern coast of England, a few weeks ago, in a
fishing-village, there was a good deal of excitement. While people
were in church, the sailors and fishermen hearing the Gospel on the
Sabbath, there was a cry: "To the beach!" and the minister closed the
Bible, and with his congregation went out to help, and they saw in the
offing a ship in trouble; but there was some disorder amid the
fishing-smacks, and amid all the boats, and it was almost impossible
to get anything launched. But after awhile they did, and they pulled
away for the wreck, and came almost up, when suddenly the distressed
bark in the offing capsized, and they all went down. Oh, if the
lifeboats had only been ten minutes quicker! And how many a life-boat
has been launched from the Gospel shore! It has come almost up to the
drowning, and yet, after all, they were not rescued. Somehow they did
not get into it!
I suppose there are people who have asked for our prayers, and I
suppose there were some in the side room, last Sabbath night, talking
about their souls, who will miss heaven. They do not take the last
step, and all the other steps go for nothing until you have taken the
last step, for I have here, in the presence of God and this people, to
announce the solemn truth, that to be almost saved is to be lost
forever. That is all I have to say to the second division.
III. I come now to speak to the careless. You look indifferent, and I
suppose you are indifferent. You say: "I came in here because a friend
invited me to see what is going on, but with no serious intentions
about my soul. I have so much work, and so much pleasure on hand,
don't bother me about religion." And yet you are gentlemanly, and you
are lady-like, in your behavior, and, therefore, I know that you will
listen respectfully if I talk courteously. Christian people are
sometimes afraid to talk to men and women of the world lest they be
insulted. If they talk courteously to people of the world, they will
listen courteously. So now I try to come in that way, and in that
spirit, and talk to those of you who tell me that you are careless
about your soul.
Then you have a soul, have you? Yes, precious, with infinite capacity
for joy or suffering, winged for flight somewhere. Beckoned upward,
beckoned downward. Fought after by angels and by fiends. Immortal!
"The sun is but a spark of fire,
A transient meteor in the sky:
The soul, immortal as its Sire,
Can never die."
Your body will soon be taken down, the castle will be destroyed, the
tower will be in the dust, the windows will be broken out, and the
place where your body sleeps will be forgotten; but your soul, after
that, will be living, acting, feeling, thinking--where? where? Oh,
there must be something of incomputable worth in that for which heaven
gave up its best inhabitant, and Christ went into martyrdom, and at
the coming of which angels chant an eternal litany and devils rush to
the gate. When everything above you, and beneath you, and around you,
is intent upon that soul, you can not afford to be careless,
especially when I think, this moment while I speak, there are
thousands of souls in heaven rejoicing that they attended to this
matter in time, while at this very instant there are souls in the lost
world mourning that they did not attend to it in time. Hark to the
howling of the damned!
Oh, if this room could be vacated of this audience, and you were all
gone, and the wan spirits of the lost could come up and occupy this
place, and I could stand before them with offers of pardon through
Jesus Christ, and then ask them if they would accept it, there would
come up an instantaneous, multitudinous, overwhelming cry: "Yes! yes!
yes! yes!" No such fortune for them. They had their day of grace, and
sacrificed it. You have yours; will you sacrifice it? I wish that I
could have you see these things as you will one day see them.
Suppose, on your way home, a runaway horse should dash across the
street, or between the dock and the boat you should accidentally slip,
where would you be at twelve o'clock to-night or seven o'clock
to-morrow morning? Or for all eternity where would you be? I do not
answer the question. I just leave it to you to answer.
But suppose you escape fatal accident. Suppose you go out by the
ordinary process of sickness. I will just suppose now that your last
hour has come. The doctor says, as he goes out of the room: "Can't get
well." There is something in the faces of those who stand around you
that prophesies that you can not get well. You say within yourself: "I
can't get well." Where are your comrades now? Oh, they are off to the
gay party that very night! They dance as well as they ever did. They
drink as much wine. They laugh as loud as though you were not dying.
They destroyed your soul, but do not come to help you die.
Well, there are father and mother in the room. They are very quiet,
but occasionally they go out into the next room and weep bitterly. The
bed is very much disheveled. They have not been able to make it up
for two or three days. There are four or five pillows lying around,
because they have been trying to make you as easy as they could. On
the one side of your bed are all the past years of your life--the
Bibles, the sermons, the communion-tables, the offers of mercy. You
say: "Take them away." Your mother thinks you are delirious. She says:
"There is nothing there, my dear, nothing there." There is something
there! It is your wasted opportunities. It is your procrastinations.
It is those years you gave to the world that you ought to have given
to Christ. They are there; and some of them put their fingers on your
aching temples, and some of them feel for the strings of your heart,
and some put more thorns in your tumbled pillow, and you say: "Turn me
over." And they turn you over, but, alas! there is a more appalling
vision. You say: "Take that away!" They say: "There is nothing there,
nothing there." There is--an open grave there! the judgment is there!
a lost eternity is there! Take it away! They can not take it away.
You say: "How dark it is getting in the room!" Why, the burners are
all lighted. Your family come up one by one, and tenderly kiss you
good-bye. Your feet are cold, and the hands are cold, and the lips are
cold, and they take a small mirror and they put it over your mouth to
see if there is any breathing, and that mirror is taken away without a
single blur upon it; and they whisper through the room: "She is gone."
And then the door of the body opens and the soul flashes out. Make
room for the destroyed spirit.
Push back that door! Lost! Let it come into its eternal residence.
Woe! woe! No cup of merriment now, but cup of the wrath of Almighty
God. The last chance for heaven gone. The door of mercy shut. The doom
sealed. The blackness of darkness forever!
Voltaire is there. Herod is there. Robespierre is there. The
debauchees are there. The murderers are there. All the rejectors of
Jesus Christ are there. And you will be there unless you repent. You
can not say, my dear brother, that you were not warned. This sermon
would be a witness against you. You can not say that God's Holy Spirit
never strove with your heart. He is striving now. You can not say that
you had no chance for heaven, for the Omnipotent Son of God offers you
His rescue. You can not say: "I had no warning about that world; I
didn't know there was any such place," for the Bible distinctly rings
in your ears to-day, saying: "At the end of the world the angels shall
separate the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into a
furnace of fire." And again that book says: "The wicked shall be
turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God." And again it
says: "The smoke of their torment ascendeth for ever and ever."
You can not say that you did not hear about heaven, the other
alternative, for you hear of it now: "The Lamb which is in the midst
of the throne shall lead them to living fountains of water, and God
shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." No sorrow, no suffering,
no death. Oh, will you be careless any longer, when I tell you that
Christ, the Conqueror of earth and hell, offers you now escape from
all peril, and offers to introduce you this very hour into the peace
and pardon of the Gospel, preparing you for that good land? The sides
of Calvary run blood for you. Jesus, who had not where to lay His
head, offers you His heart as a pillow of rest. Christ offers with His
own body to bridge over the chasm of death, saying: "Walk over Me; I
am the way."
O suffering Jesus! the thief scoffed at Thee, and the malefactor spat
on Thee, and the soldiers stabbed Thee; but these who sit before Thee
to-day have no heart to do that. O Jesus! tell them of Thy love, tell
them of Thy sympathy, tell them of the rewards Thou wilt give them in
the better land. Groan again, O blessed Jesus! groan again, and
perhaps when the rocks fall, their hard hearts may break.
"Nothing brought Him from above,
Nothing but redeeming love."
The promise is all free, the path all clear. Come, Mary, and sit
to-night at the feet of Jesus. Come, Bartimeus, and have your eyes
opened. Come, O prodigal! and sit at thy father's table. Come, O you
suffering, sinning, dying the soul! and find rest on the heart of
Jesus. The Spirit and Bride say "Come," and Churches militant and
triumphant say "Come," and all the voices of the past, mingling with
all the voices of the future, in one great thunder of emphasis, bid
you "Come now!" Are not those of you who are in the third class ready
to pass over into the second division, and become seekers after
Christ? Ay, are you not ready to pass over into the first division,
and become the pardoned sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty? I
can do no more than offer you, through Jesus Christ, peace on earth
and everlasting residence in His presence.
"When God makes up His last account
Of natives in His holy mount,
'Twill be an honor to appear
As one new-born and nourished there."
Good-night! The Lord bless you! Go to your homes seeking after Christ.
Sleep not until you have made your peace with God. Good-night--a deep,
hearty, loving, Christian good-night!