"Oh," says some one, "you don't know how strong a mind I have." I reply: Losses, accident, bereavement, and sickness may shipwreck the best physical or mental condition. There are those who have been ten years in lunatic asylums who had as good a mind as you. While they had their minds they neglected God, and when their intellect went, with it went their last opportunity for heaven. Now they are not responsible for what they do, or for what they say; but in the last day they will be held responsible for what they did when they were mentally well; and if, on that day, a soul should say: "Oh, God, I was demented, and I had no responsibility," God will say: "Yes, you were demented; but there were long years when you were not demented. That was your chance for heaven, and you missed it." Oh, better be, as the Scotch say, a little "daft," nevertheless having grace in the heart; better be like poor Richard Hampson, the Cornish fool, whose biography has just appeared in England—a silly man he was, yet bringing souls to Jesus Christ by scores and scores—giving an account of his own conversion, when he said: "The mob got after me, and I lost my hat, and climbed up by a meat-stand, in order that I might not be trampled under foot, and while I was there, my heart got on fire with love toward those who were chasing me, and, springing to my feet, I began to exhort and to pray." Oh, my God, let me be in the last, last day the Cornish fool, rather than have the best intellect God ever created unillumined by the Gospel of Jesus Christ!
Consider what an uncertain possession you have in your intellect, when there are so many things around to destroy it; and beware, lest before you use it in making the religious choice, God takes it away with a stroke. I know a good many of my friends who are putting off religion until the last hour. They say when they get sick they will attend to it, but generally the intellect is beclouded; and oh; what a doleful thing it is to stand by a dying bed, and talk to a man about his soul, and feel, from what you see of the motion of his head, and the glare of his eye, and from what you hear of the jargon of his lips, that he does not understand what you are saying to him. I have stood beside the death-bed of a man who had lived a sinful life, and was as unprepared for eternity as it is possible for a man to be, and I tried to make him understand my pastoral errand; but all in vain. He could not understand it, and so he died.
Oh! ye who are putting off until the sick hour preparation for eternity, let me tell you that in all probability, you will not be able in your last hour to attend to it at all. There are a great many people who say they will repent on the death-bed.
I have no doubt there are many who have repented on the death-bed, but I think it is the exception. Albert Barnes, who was one of the coolest of men, and gave no rash statistics, said thus: that in a ministry of nearly half a century—he was over seventy when he went up to glory—he had known a great many people who said they repented on the dying bed, but, unexpectedly to themselves, got well; and he says, How many of those, do you suppose, who thought it was their dying bed, and who, after they repented on that dying bed, having got well, lived consistently, showing that it was real repentance, and not mock repentance—how many? not one! not one!
II. Again: this stroke may come to you in the withdrawal of God's spirit.
I see people before me who were, twenty years ago, serious about their souls. They are not now. They have no interest in what I am saying. They will never have any anxiety in what any minister of the Gospel says about their souls. Their time seems to have passed. I know a man, seventy-five years of age, who, in early life, became almost a Christian, but grieved away the spirit of God, and he has never thought earnestly since, and he can not be roused. I do not believe he will be roused until eternity flashes on his astonished vision.
It does seem as if sometimes, in quite early life, the Holy Spirit moves upon a heart, and being grieved away and rejected, never comes back. You say that is all imaginary? A letter, the address of which I will not give, dated last Monday morning, came to me on Tuesday, saying this: "Your sermon last night (that is, last Sabbath night) did not fit my case, although I believe it did all others in the Academy; but your sermon of a week ago did fit my case, for I am 'past feeling.' I am not ashamed to be a Christian. I would as soon be known to be a Christian as anything else. Indeed, I wish I was, but I have not the least power to become one. Don't you know that with some persons there is a tide in their spiritual natures which, if taken at the flood, leads on to salvation? Such a tide I felt two years ago. I want you to pray for me, not that I may be led to Christ—for that prayer would not be answered—but that I may be kept from the temptation to suicide!"
What I had to say to the author of that I said in a private letter; but what I have to say to this audience is: Beware lest you grieve the Holy Ghost, and He be gone, and never return. Next Wednesday, at two or three o'clock, a Cunard steamer will put out from Jersey City wharf for Liverpool. After it has gone one hour, and the vessel is down by the Narrows, or beyond, go out on the Jersey City wharf, and wave your hand, and shout, and ask that steamer to come back to the wharf. Will it? Yes, sooner than the Holy Ghost will come back when once He has taken his final flight from thy soul. With that Holy Spirit some of you have been in treaty, my dear friends.
The Holy Spirit said: "Come, come to Christ." You said: "No, I won't." The Spirit said, more importunately: "Come to Christ." You said: "Well, I will after awhile, when I get my business fixed up; when my friends consent to my coming; when they won't laugh at me—then I'll come." But the Holy Spirit more emphatically said: "Come now." You said: "No, I can't. I can't come now." And that Holy Spirit stands in your heart to-night, with His hand on the door of your soul, ready to come out. Will you let Him depart? If so, then, with a pen of light, dipped in ink of eternal blackness, the sentence may be now writing: "Ephraim is joined to his idols. Let him alone! Let him alone!" When that fatal record is made, you might as well brace yourselves up against the sorrows of the last day, against the anguish of an unforgiven death-bed, against the flame and the overthrow of an undone eternity; for though you might live thirty years after that in the world, your fate would be as certain as though you had already entered the gates of darkness. That is the dead line. Look out how you cross it!
"'There is a line by us unseen,
That crosses every path;
The hidden boundary between
God's patience and His wrath.'"