Punishment

The Reckoning. — You desire to take death into your reckoning that it may not surprise you unawares. He who should go upon a long journey, and provide for every difficulty on the road but one, would probably find the journey a failure. If, with a rolling chariot for the solid ways, he had forgotten to find the means of crossing the last river which would divide him from the country which he sought, he would be disappointed after all his pains. If you have provided for life, but have not also prepared for death, what better will you be, my hearer, than such a foolish traveller? We have heard of one, who, going into a tavern, ordered according to his wildest wishes, and feasted sumptuously on the best the house afforded, hour after hour; but when the host came with the bill, he told him that he had no money, and had quite forgotten the reckoning, thinking it quite enough to attend to the eating and drinking while these were the order of the day, without perplexing himself about the unknown future. Alas! my hearer, are you living in this inn of life, forgetting the reckoning? Do go from cup to cup, from merriment to merriment, feasting as tho there were no day of account appointed for you? If so, are you fool or knave, or both? For a man who would enjoy life, and yet shirk the account of his responsibilities with which the scene must close, is either foolish, or knavish, or both. Surely, since we must die, since “there is no discharge in this war,” since every man must be a conscript to the army of death, since, whether it be to-morrow or the next day, or in a few years’ time, every one of us must pass through the iron gate, it behoves us, knowing the fact, to take it into our account, to be diligent in forestalling its demands, and providing for its emergencies.

The Fate of the Self-Righteous. — I have heard of an army, who, being defeated in battle, endeavored to make good a retreat. With all their might the soldiers fled to a certain river, where they expected to find a bridge across which they could retreat and be in safety. But when they came to the stream, there was heard a shriek of terror — “The bridge is broken, the bridge is broken!” All in vain was that cry; for the multitude hurrying on behind, pressed upon those that were before and forced them into the river, until the stream was glutted with the bodies of drowned men. Such must be the fate of the self-righteous.

A Lost Soul. — In the life of Benjamin Keach — and he also was one of my predecessors — I find the case of a man who had been a professor of religion, but had departed from the profession, and had gone into awful sin. When he came to die, Keach, with many other friends went to see him, but they could never stay with him above five minutes at a time; for he said, “Get ye gone; it is of no use your coming to me; I have sinned away the Holy Ghost; I am like Esau, I have sold my birthright, and tho I seek it carefully with tears, I can never find it again.” And then he would repeat dreadful words, like these: “My mouth is filled with gravel-stones, and I drink wormwood day and night. Tell me not, tell me not of Christ! I know he is a Savior, but I hate him, and he hates me. I know I must die; I know I must perish!” And then followed doleful cries, and hideous noises, such as none could bear. They returned again in his placid moments, only to stir him once more, and make him cry out in his despair, “I am lost! I am lost! It is of no use for you to take the trouble to tell me anything about it!”

The Trifler’s Doom. — Here is a man, who, as a young man, heard the gospel and grew up under the influence of it. He is an intelligent man, a Bible reader, and somewhat of a theologian. He attended a Bible class, was an apt pupil, and could explain much of Scripture, but he took to lightness and frothiness. He made an amusement of religion and a sport of serious things. Sermons he frequented that he might talk of them and say that he had heard the preacher. After the sermon, when others were impressed, he was merry. He had discovered some mistake in the preacher, in his pronunciation, in the grammatical construction of a sentence, or in a misquotation from a poet, and this he mentioned with gusto, passing by all the good that was spoken. That was only his way: he did not mean any hurt by it; at least, he would have said so had any one seriously reproved him.

He came under the bond of this religious trifling, but it was a cord of vanity small as a packthread. Years ago he began to be bound to his sin by this kind of trifling, and at the present moment I am not sure that he ever cares to go and hear the gospel or to read the word of God, for he has grown to despise that which he sported with. The wanton witling has degenerated into a malicious scoffer: his cord has become a cart-rope.

Doom of the Unstable. — I remember one that fell into a gross sin, of whom a brother unwisely said, “if that man is not a Christian, I am not.” His prayers had certainly been sweet. Many a time they have melted me down before the throne of grace, and yet the life of God could not have been in his soul, for he lived and died in flagrant vice, and was impenitent to the last. Such cases I can only attribute to a sort of levity, which can be charmed with a sermon or a play; take a pew at the chapel or a box at the opera with equal nonchalance; and eagerly follow the excitement of the hour, “every thing by turns and nothing long.” “Unstable as water, they shall not excel.”

The Mocker’s Doom. — Ah! it was not long ago that a man who had laughed and mocked at- me full many a time, went down one Sabbath day to Brighton, to spend his day in the excursion — he came back that night to die! On Monday morning, when he was dying, who do you suppose he wanted? He wanted Mr. Spurgeon! the man he had laughed at always; he wanted him to come and tell him the way to heaven, and point him to the Savior. And altho I was glad enough to go, it was doleful work to talk to a man who had just been Sabbath-breaking, spending his time in the service of Satan, and had come home to die. And die he did, without a Bible in his house, without having one prayer offered for him except that prayer which I alone did offer at his bedside. Ah! it is strange how the sight of a death bed may be blessed to the stimulating of our zeal. I stood some year or so ago, by the bedside of a poor boy, about sixteen years of age, who had been drinking him self to death, in a drinking bout, about a week before, and when I talked to him afiout sin and righteousness, and judgment to come, I knew he trembled, and I thought that he had laid hold on Jesus. When I came down from those stairs, after praying for him many a time, and trying to point him to Jesus, and having but a faint hope of his ultimate salvation, I thought to myself, 0 God! I would that I might preach every hour, and every moment of the day, the unsearchable riches of Christ; for what an awful thing it is to die without a Savior.