"Ah, but he also says, 'Because I have called and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at naught all my counsel, and would none of my reproof; I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer.' Oh it's all true, every word of it!" he cried, with a look of horror and despair that none who saw it could ever forget, "I feel it in my inmost soul. There was a time when mercy's door was open to me, but it's shut now, shut forever."
"O George, George!" sobbed his aunt, "the invitation is without limit—'whosoever will;' if you have a will to come, it cannot be that it is even now too late."
"But those words—those dreadful words," he said, turning eagerly toward her, "Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer.'"
"Are addressed to those who desire deliverance, not from sin itself, but only from its punishment," said Mr. Dinsmore. "If you have any desire to be saved from your sins, to be cleansed from their pollution, to be made holy, it is not too late—the 'whosoever will' is for you."
He shook his head sadly. "I don't know, I don't know, a death-bed is a poor place to analyze one's feelings. Oh! warn men everywhere not to put it off, not to put it off! Tell them it is running a fearful risk."
"We will, we will," said his aunt; "but, O George, think of yourself: 'cry to Jesus, he is able to save to the uttermost,' and he has no pleasure in the death of any soul; he would have you turn now and live: oh cry to him for mercy!"
"Too late, too late!" he muttered faintly, "the door is shut."
They knelt about his bed and poured out fervent prayers for him; they repeated promise after promise, invitations and assurances from the word, of God's willingness to save.
At last, "I'm going, going!" he gasped. "Oh God be merciful to me a sinner!" And with the last word the spirit took its flight.
Mrs. Carrington sank, half fainting, into Elsie's arms, and Mr. Dinsmore and the doctor bore her from the room.