New Tabernacle Sermons

by T. De Witt Talmage

And some of you, to-night, have come up to that line. Ay, you have lifted your foot, and when you put it down, it will be on the other side! Look out how you cross it! Oh, grieve not the Spirit of God, lest He never come back!

III. This fatal stroke spoken of in the text may be our exit from this world. I hear aged people sometimes saying: "I can't live much longer." But do you know the fact that there are a hundred young people and middle-aged people who go out of this life to one aged person, for the simple reason that there are not many aged people to leave life? The aged seem to stand around like stalks—separate stalks of wheat at the corner of the field; but when death goes a-mowing, he likes to go down amid the thick of the harvest. What is more to the point: a man's going out of this world is never in the way he expects—it is never at the time he expects. The moment of leaving this world is always a surprise. If you expect to go in the winter, it may be in the summer; if in the summer, it may be in the winter; if in the night, it maybe in the day-time; if you think to go in the day-time, it may be in the night. Suddenly the event will rush upon you, and you will be gone. Where? If a Christian—into joy. If not a Christian—into suffering.

The Gospel call stops outside of the door of the sepulcher. The sleeper within can not hear it. If that call should be sounded out with clarion voice louder than ever rang through the air, that sleeper could not hear it. I suppose every hour of the day, and now, while I am speaking, there are souls rushing into eternity unprepared. They slide from the pillow, or they slip from the pavement, and in an eye-twinkling they are gone. Elegant and eloquent funeral oration will not do them any good. Epitaph, cut on polished Scotch granite, will not do them any good. Wailing of beloved kindred can not call them back.

But, says some one: "I'll keep out of peril; I will not go on the sea, I will not go into battle—I'll keep out of all danger." That is no defense. Thousands of people, last night, on their couches, with the front door locked, and no armed assassin anywhere around, surrounded by all defended circumstances, slipped out of this life into the next. If time had been on one side of the shuttle and eternity on the other side of the shuttle, they could not have shot quicker across it. A man was saying: "My father was lost at sea, and my grandfather, and my great-grandfather. Wasn't it strange?" A man, talking to him, said: "You ought never to venture on the sea, lest you, yourself, be lost at sea." The man turned to the other, and said: "Where did your father die?" He replied: "In his bed." "Where did your grandfather die?" "In his bed." "Where did your great-grandfather die?" "In his bed." "Then," he said, "be careful, lest some night, while you are asleep on your couch, your time may come!"

Death alone is sure. Suddenly, you and I will go out of life. I am not saying anything to your soul that I am not going to say to my own soul. We have got to go suddenly out of this life. If I am prepared for that change, I do not care where my body is taken from—at what point I am taken out of this life. If I am ready, all is well. If I am not ready, though I might be at home, and though my loved ones might be standing around me, and though there might be the best surgical and medical ability in the room, I tell you, if I were not prepared, I would be frightened more than tongue can tell. It may seem like cowardice, but I am not ashamed to say that I should have the most indescribable horror about going out of this world if I thought I was unprepared for the next—if I had no Christ in my soul; for it would be a plunge compared with which a leap from the top of Mont Blanc would be nothing.

But this brings me to the most tremendous thought of my text. The text supposes that a man goes into ruin, and that an effort is made afterward for his rescue, and then says the thing can not be done. Is that so? After death seizes upon that soul, is there no resurrection? If a man topples off the edge of life, is there nothing to break his fall? If an impenitent man goes overboard, are there no grappling-hooks to hoist him into safety? The text says distinctly: "Then a great ransom can not deliver thee."

I know there are people who call themselves "Restorationists," and they say a sinful man may go down into the world of the lost; he stays there until he gets reformed, and then comes up into the world of light and blessedness. It seems to me to be a most unreasonable doctrine—as though the world of darkness were a place where a man could get reformed. Is there anything in the society of the lost world—the abandoned and the wretched of God's universe—to elevate a man's character and lift him at last to heaven? Can we go into companionship of the Neroes and the Herods, and the Jim Fisks, and spend a certain number of years in that lost world, and then by that society be purified and lifted up? Is that the kind of society that reforms a man and prepares him for heaven? Would you go to Shreveport or Memphis, with the yellow fever there, to get your physical health restored? Can it be that a man may go down into the diseased world—a world overwhelmed by an epidemic of transgressions—and by that process, and in that atmosphere, be lifted up to health and glory? Your common sense says: "No! no!" In such society as that, instead of being restored, you would go down worse and worse, plunging every hour into deeper depths of suffering and darkness. What your common sense says the Bible reaffirms, when it says: "These shall go away into three months of punishment." I have quoted it wrong. "These shall go away into ten years of punishment." I have quoted it wrong. "These shall go into a thousand years of punishment." I have quoted it wrong. "These shall go into everlasting punishment." And now I have quoted it right; or, if you prefer, in the words of my text: "Then a great ransom can not deliver thee."

Now just suppose that a spirit should come down from heaven and knock at the gates of woe and say: "Let that man out! Let me come in and suffer in his stead. I will be the sacrifice. Let him come out." The grim jailer would reply: "No, you don't know what a place this is, or you would not ask to come in; besides that, this man had full warning and full opportunity of escape. He did not take the warning, and now a great ransom shall not deliver him."

Sometimes men are sentenced to imprisonment for life. There comes another judge on the bench, there comes another governor in the chair, and in three or four years you find the man who was sentenced for life in the street. You say: "I thought you were sentenced for life." "Oh!" he says, "politics are changed, and I am now a free man." But it will not be so for a soul at the last. There will be no new judge or new governor. If at the end of a century a soul might come out, it would not be so bad. If at the end of a thousand years it might come out, it would not be so bad. If there were any time in all the future, in quadrillions and quadrillions of years, that the soul might come out, it would not be so bad; but if the Bible be true, it is a state of unending duration.

Far on in the ages one lost soul shall cry out to another lost soul: "How long have you been here?" and the soul will reply: "The years of my ruin are countless. I estimated the time for thousands of years; but what is the use of estimating when all these rolling cycles bring us no nearer the terminus." Ages! Ages! Ages! Eternity! Eternity! Eternity! The wrath to come! The wrath to come! The wrath to come! No medicine to cure that marasmus of the soul. No hammer to strike off the handcuff of that incarceration. No burglar's key to pick the locks which the Lord hath fastened. Sir Francis Newport, in his last moment, caught just one glimpse of that world. He had lived a sinful life. Before he went into the eternal world he looked into it. The last words he ever uttered were, as he gathered himself up on his elbows in the bed: "Oh, the insufferable pangs of hell!" The lost soul will cry out: "I can not stand this! I can not stand this! Is there no way out?" and the echo will answer: "No way out." And the soul will cry: "Is this forever?" and the echo will answer: "Forever!"