"It is appointed unto man once to die, but after this___" (Heb. 9:27).
God's appointments always come round. When Captain Scott, the intrepid Englishman who went into the Antarctic regions hoping to discover the South Pole, he made all the arrangements for success that human wisdom and forethought could devise; he had relays of provisions left for them on their return, he had engaged a party to come in time to a certain place to meet them. He went south, was bitterly disappointed to find a Scandinavian explorer had been there and left the evidence of his discovery. He started with his companions on the way back, came midst the most terrific storms man had ever encountered, and found that someone had failed him. He laid down to die and before passing away he wrote in his diary, "We did the best we knew, made all the arrangements that experience and wisdom of man could devise, but our appointments have failed." Valiant man, brave heart, must die disappointed because man' s appointments fail! But God's never fail! It is not only appointed that man shall die, but after this there is an appointment that all must reach and meet. After life, after the Gospel, after the last sermon has been heard, after the last conviction has been wrought in the heart by the Holy Ghost, after you have attended the last meeting, heard the last prayer, after the sight of your loved ones has faded out from your vision, after the last pressure of the hand, after the last good-bye, after the death damp has been wiped from your brow, after the doctor says, "He is gone." What then?
Oh, yes; this does concern you; it is the appointment that God has made for you. Death is on your track -- nearer now than ever before. How old are you? Twenty years? Death has gained twenty years on you. Fifty years old? Death has gained fifty years on you. Does not concern the young so much? Oh, it surely does; there are more young folks die than any others. Half of the race die before they are fifteen years old. The average age of the remainder is thirty-eight years. Only one person in five hundred reaches the age of sixty-five. Your pulse is beating funeral marches to the grave. Hear the poet as he sings the truth that you do not want to hear, you do not like to think about. You may as well acknowledge it, you do not like to hear such sermons as I am preaching; you want bouquets and rosewater; you forget that the man who is called of God to preach the Gospel is called to preach not what you want to hear, but what you ought to hear. The poet was true to human experience:
Lo, on a narrow neck of land, 'Twixt two unbounded seas I stand, Secure, insensible.
A moment's time, a moment's space, Removes me to that heavenly place, Or shuts me up in hell.
Death is an enemy. I read the other day one of the maxims of the Duke of Wellington, and it read like this: "Never undervalue your enemy." Death is a monster, the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. God's Word for it -- and you must meet death. Think of it now, hear the Master say, "Be ye also ready for in such an hour as you think not," you must meet this enemy.
"My thoughts on awful subjects roll. Damnation and the dead. What horrors seize a guilty soul, Upon a dying bed."
"But O the soul where vengeance reigns, It sinks with groans and endless cries; It rolls amidst the burning flames, In endless woes and agonies.
There swallowed up in darkest night Where devils howl and thunders roar, To rage in keen despair and guilt, When thousand thousand years are o'er."
Death is an hour of testing. Testing even to saints. Thomas Walsh, one of Wesley's preachers, was on his death bed and the enemy had pursued him to the very end. He cried to God in agony of soul for deliverance, and He heard and the shadows fled away. But what must it be to the sinner who has failed to make the needed preparation for the hereafter. I was called once to see a man who was in the agonies of death. It was an awful scene, but all the agonies of the body can never atone for the sins of the soul. A woman was dying and she said to the doctor, "I will give you half of what I am worth if you will prolong my life six months." He replied, "Madam, I have medicine to dispense, but I cannot dispense time." But after the six months are gone, what then.? Louis the Fourteenth said when dying, "The thoughts of the past trouble me." A man went to a campmeeting and was wonderfully wrought upon by the Holy Spirit. When approached by one of the workers he said, "I have no time for religion. I am very busy." But he had to take time to die; then he was troubled because at that meeting he had said no to God, and he declared with his dying breath, "God left me that night." But will you please get the thought, the agony of the intense regret at that solemn moment did not atone for the sin in rejecting the call of the Spirit. Dr. Ichabod Spencer tells us in his book, "A Pastor's Sketches," of a Universalist who on his death bed renounced his Universalism and exhorted his son to follow his mother's teaching. He said: "Die? I will not. I spurned my mother's prayers; I was mean to my godly wife, and now hell is my doom forever." His wife exhorted him to pray; Dr. S. pointed him to Jesus; but all of no avail. His past rejections of the Christ seemed to appall his soul, and he died in despair and without any hope or any repentance. But after this -- what then? We all must die because one man sinned, and so death passed upon all men for that all men have sinned; but please remember that judgment is personal. The sinner and the saint will appear in the eternal world just exactly as they were when they left this one. Same person, same character, same record for God to scan. Then man will reap just exactly as he sowed, and just what he sowed. The past determines the future. On the night of the fourteenth of April, eighteen hundred and sixty-five, Abraham Lincoln went to the theater to see a play called "Our American Cousin." He sat in a private box, and while there Wilkes Booth came along the corridor, entered the box and shot the President right behind the right ear. The bullet destroyed the nerves of sensation and the nerve of motion. Mr. Lincoln never knew what struck him. He was carried across the street into a house where he died at eight twenty the next morning. Booth made his escape, jumping from the box to the floor of the stage, his stirrup catching in the flag which draped the box, caused him to fall and sprain his ankle. He made his way out of the rear of the theater, mounted a horse that was ready for him, and went across the long bridge into Virginia. The U. S. Calvary were on his track and they overtook him in a barn in a little village in the rear of Fredericksburg, where he was lying wounded. The orders to the soldiers were not to shoot, as they wanted to take him alive; but a fanatic named Boston Corbett fired from his carbine and the bullet entered right behind the right ear, exactly where Booth's ball struck Mr. Lincoln, with this difference, only one nerve was destroyed -- the nerve of motion. Booth could not move a limb, but he knew all that was transpiring; he was reaping what he sowed and more than he sowed. He died knowing the way of the transgressor is hard, and the end is harder. After this a judgment for deeds done in the body. Every word, every thought, every secret thing. God sees and knows and hears, and keeps the record. For every abused privilege we shall give an account, and let us remember that unused privileges are abused privileges. What have you done with time? How did you spend it? What use did you make of the Word given to you. Oh, eternity will be an awful eternity to the man who has simply neglected his privileges. I am convinced after a ministry of over forty-five years, that the preachers of today are not making enough of eternal verities. The people have heaped to themselves teachers, because they want their ears tickled. There are very few who are in the same rank with the eloquent Frenchman who said, "When I endeavor to represent eternity, I avail myself of whatever I can conceive most firm and durable. I heap imagination on imagination, conjecture on conjecture. I go from one age to the time of publishing the Gospel, then to the publication of the law, and from the law to the flood, and from the flood to creation. I join this epoch to the present time, and J imagine Adam yet living. Had Adam lived u11 now, and had he lived in misery, had he passed all his time on a rack, or in a fire, what an idea must we form of his condition? At what price would we agree to expose ourselves to miseries so great? What imperial glory would appear glorious were it followed by so much woe; vet this is not eternity -- all this is nothing in comparison with eternity. I go further still. I proceed from imagination to imagination, from supposition to supposition, I take the greatest number of years that can be imagined. I add ages to ages, millions of ages to millions of ages. I form of all these one mixed number, and I stay my imagination. After this I suppose God to create a world like this which we inhabit. I suppose Him creating it by forming one atom after another, and employing in the production of each atom the time fixed in my last calculation. What a numberless sum of ages would the production of such a world in such a manner require? Then I suppose the Creator to arrange these atoms and to pursue the plan of arranging them as of creating them. Finally, I suppose Him to annihilate the whole, observing the same method in the dissolution as in the creation and disposition of the whole. What an immense duration would be consumed -- and yet, this is not eternity -- it is only a point in comparison thereof. Reaping time is coming and it is an eternal reaping! One night passed in a burning fever, or in struggling among the waves of the sea, between life and death, appears of immense length. It seems to the sufferer as if the sun had forgotten its course, and as if all the laws of nature itself were subverted. What then will be the state of these victims to Divine displeasure, who after they shall have passed through the ages we have just described, will be obliged to make this awful reflection, "All this is but an atom of our misery." What will their despair be when they shall be forced to say to themselves, "Again we must revolve through these enormous periods, again we must suffer the privation of celestial happiness, devouring flames again, cruel remorse again, crimes and blasphemies again and again -- for ever and for ever." These chains forever! Oh, the absorbing periods of eternity, accumulated ages upon myriads of ages, these will be the forever of the lost!
We must get rid of all contraband goods if we would avoid the agonies of the damned. All sin, all anger, pride, malice, unforgiveness, all slanderous words. I was one time crossing the border, and the porter came to me and said, "Captain, if you do not want to be awakened when the inspectors come through, just open your suitcase and I will look after it and close it up after inspection." I did not fear any inspection, and so did as he told me; but across the aisle there was a man who had something of which he was in doubt about its passing. He had quite a time with the conductor, telling him and asking for information. Well, God will be the Inspector and it becomes us to be careful, for after this there will nothing pass that He hates -- and the only thing that God hates is sin in the heart -- and it will not escape His all-searching eye. The history of the heart will be laid open, and how can men hope to escape when every day he carries around with him the evidence of his fall; for whether he likes to think of it or not, a suit of clothes on the individual is evidence he belongs to a fallen race; for when man was innocent he wore no clothes and did not know he was naked. With sill came shame, and man finally got to a place where sin had wrought such havoc with him that he could not blush. God says so in His Word. Read your Bibles and see.
After this, man will be judged for what he did not do. To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin. Knowledge without action is simply good for nothing. Live up to what you know, or it is so much the worse for you. You might have repented and you did not. You did not seek God, you did not mind the Spirit, you did not improve the time, you did not obey God, you did not pray, you did not do good when you knew what good was; and let me say right here, the church of Jesus Christ will be judged by the same rule. To the church that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to that church it is sin. We preach to the world around us and we ignore the truths we preach, forgetting, apparently, that as we measure out to others it will be measured to us. We preach, "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His," Please apply that to the church today. "If any church have not the Spirit of Christ it is none of His." It works both ways. Every coin has two sides to it, and every truth that we preach we should preach to ourselves first. The church must live the truth it professes; it must back up the pulpit by a life. I am heartily in sympathy with Mr. Spurgeon when he condemns the relation of past sins with the gusto that some folks have. Sin is awful, and no saint of God can look upon the sins of the past with any complacency. Let me give you Mr. Spurgeon's exact words. You may not like them, but I do, and if you do not, it is evidence you need them. "I must confess that I am shocked with some people I know who glibly rehearse their past lives up to the time of their supposed conversion, and talk of their sins, which they hope have been forgiven them, with a smack of their lips as though there was something fine in having been such an offender. I hate to hear a man speak of his experience in sin as a Greenwich pensioner might talk of Trafalgar and the Nile. The best thing to do with our past sins, if it be forgiven, is to bury it. Yes, and let us bury it as they used to bury suicides, let us drive a stake through it, in horror and contempt, and never set up a monument to its memory. If you ever do tell anything of your youthful wrongdoing, let it be with blushes and tears, with shame and confusion of face, and always speak of it to the honor of the infinite mercy which forgave you. Never let the devil stand behind you and pat you on the back and say, 'You did me a good turn in those days.' Oh, it is a shameful thing to have sinned, a degrading thing to have lived in sin, and it is not to be wrapped up into a story telling and told out as an exploit, as some do. The old man is crucified with him who boasts of being related to the crucified felon. If any member of your family had been hanged, you would tremble to hear anyone mention the gallows, you would not run about and say, 'Do you know I had a brother hanged at Newgate?' Your old man of sin is hanged; do not talk about him', but thank God it is so, and as He blots out the remembrance of it, do you the same, except so far as it makes you humble and grateful." I remember reading once of a man in the Pacific Garden in Chicago, who was in the habit of going over his past life and telling folks how mean he had been, but one night he came to the meeting and told the folks he would never do so again, for he had read in the Word where God said, "I will remember them no more against you," "and," said he, "if God will not mention them, I will not." To him that knoweth to do good to him it is sin. Let us avoid sin in every particular.
After this, a life spent in sin, comes the Justice of the Infinite God, and as sure as the Bible is the Word of God, it means punishment for sin, and as the sinner in eternity is always a sinner, it means he is always punished: or, in other words, it is a punishment that is eternal. Men have been known to sneer at this doctrine, everywhere but on a death bed. There they have felt, if conscious at all, it is an awful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Human opinions and human feelings have no bearing on this doctrine. Albert Barnes once wrote some truths that are worth the consideration of every sane person: "The Bible travels on from age to age, bearing the same fearful doctrine, and is unchanged in its warnings and appeals. Some of each generation listen, are admonished, and saved. The rest pass on and die. Human opinions do not alter facts. Human opinion does not remove death beds, and graves and sorrows, nor will it remove and annihilate a world of woe. Facts stand unchanged by the changes of human belief, and fearful events roll on just as though man had expected them. Nine-tenths of all the dead expected not to die at the time when in fact they died, and more than half listen now to no admonition that death will ever come. They who have died had an expectation that they would live many years. But death came. He was not stayed by their belief or unbelief. He came steadily on. Each day he took a stride toward them, step by step he advanced, so that' they could not evade or retreat until he was near enough to strike, and they fell. And so, though the living will not hear, death comes to them. And so the doom of the sinner rolls on. Each day, each hour, each moment it draws nearer. Whether he believes it or not it makes no difference in the fact -- it comes. It will not recede. In spite of all attempts to reason, or to forget it, the time comes, and at the appointed time the sinner dies. Cavil and ridicule do not affect this. There is no power in a joke to put away fevers or convulsions and groans. The laugh and the song close no grave, and put back none of the sorrows of the second death. The dwellers in Pompeii could not put back the fires of the volcano by derision, nor would the mockery of the inhabitants of Sodom have stayed the sheet of flame that came from heaven. The scoffing sinner dies and is lost just like others. The young man who has learned to cavil and deride religion dies just like others. No cavil has yet changed a fact, none has ever stayed the arrow of death." God's Word is true, the comforting parts of it are true, and the more terrible passages are equally true. Man dies. God said this would be his portion if he transgressed the command. God appointed the time for man to die, and the very same One has said, AFTER THIS, after death there is a settling time, an award for the deeds done in this life; there is a second death, an eternal separation form God, and good folks and angels, and heaven; and it means a lake of fire, outer darkness, weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth; it means the company of the damned in hell forever, whoremongers, debauchees, lost spirits, angels who fell, the beasts and false prophets, are one and yet never one, for there is no unity in hell. As Dr. Munsey says, "Hell is a world of ugly ruins shrouded in night's blackest pall, where no one of the damned has a friend, and filled with cursings and strife, and where all ranks and sexes are herded in one promiscuous mob with foulest demons, and where every stinking cave is inhabited with fiends and gnashing ghosts, and on whose black crags the ravens of despair sit and croak, and where God's eternal justice plies His burning whip and remorse lays on his fiery thongs, the flashes of whips and thongs their only light -- world without end." His thoughts troubled him. . . . (Dan. 5:6).
Why should a king be troubled? He was the monarch of the mightiest kingdom in the earth. He was surrounded by fawning courtiers, nobility, an army, and lived in a palace with a treasury at his command. Lords and ladies waited on him. He lived in a city the walls of which were one hundred and fifty feet high. They were so broad that four chariots could drive abreast on their top, and yet this king was troubled. He was strong, physically, in the prime of life, hearty and well -but he was much troubled. Same reason that you should be if you are not. He was doing what you, sinner, are doing today, he was trifling with sacred things. His father had led an army to the Holy Land, sacked the city, robbed the temple, brought the vessels dedicated to sacred uses back to the capitol city, and now midst all the drunken revelry that went with a Babylonian banquet, he commanded the holy vessels to be brought out, and he was about to drink from them when God showed His hand.
Did you ever stop to think that there is nothing really secular? All things are sacred, because they have a relation to God and eternity. Whatsoever we do we are to do it as unto the Lord. There is nothing that is trifling. Apeles engaged on a painting was very particular as to all the details of his subject, and one asked him., "Why do you pay so much attention to trifles?" and he answered, "I am painting for eternity." We are living for eternity. There are two classes of people in this world -- atheists and eternalists; this worldy, and the other worldly. When a celebrated sculptor was working on a statue, he paid much attention to the hairs on the head, and some bystander said, "No one will see them," and he said, "Yes, the gods will see them." God sees and knows and notes down all that we do and all that we say, and all that we think, and wherever we go and who we are with, and why we are there; and in due time He will have something to say, and something to do. With this king the time was ripe for God to take part; many years had rolled away, but He remembered and this night He showed His hand. You remember that we sing, "It was the hand of God on the wall," and the poet was right. God wrote His verdict on the wall, Thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting. Weighed in God's balances. Did you ever think that like the messengers of old to whom the king trusted the gold and silver, that we, too, must "weigh in at Jerusalem?" It will matter then very little what men have thought and said about you, but it will be immensely important what God thinks just then; and please get the thought that I believe the Holy Ghost wants you to have at this time, God will always show His hand, and in the nearing of death and eternity the sinner's thoughts will always trouble him.
A few years ago man stood before the altar to be wedded to a fair girl to whom he pledged faith and loyalty. For years they worked together to acquire a competency, but failed, and were seventy thousand dollars worse off than nothing. But again they faced the world with new and other propositions, and fortune smiled on them; wealth flowed in, and the world was at their feet. He had an office and business and a private secretary, and she a woman, young and beautiful. In process of time the wife was divorced, and it follows she was brokenhearted, for the money she received could not heal the wounds that scarred her heart. The young and fairer woman now became the wife before the law, and with wealth at their command they went where they pleased, gratified every desire, feasted their eyes, and all that allured, but soon the former wife died, and now there came a face, the face of the dead between the things the world offered and this man, and his thoughts troubled him. He went hither and thither, but he saw the face, and carried his thoughts with him. There came a time when God showed His hand, uttered His thunders in this man's conscience, until one day, to get rid of the thoughts that troubled him, he committed suicide, went into eternity by his own hand -- and he is thinking yet. Man cannot get rid of God. The Psalmist said, "If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the earth, there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall uphold me. If I make my bed in hell thou art there."
A manufacturer beginning business promised God while on bended knees in prayer that if He prospered him he would give Him one-tenth of all that he made. The Lord heard and answered him, and money flowed in until that man was giving God five thousand dollars a year, and then the devil of greed whispered, "You are giving too much. Where are there others who are giving as much as you?" And he listened and said to himself, "I can put that in my business and increase my capital." But God who heard his prayer heard him thinking, and saw him acting out his thoughts, and one night that man woke up and his room was all illuminated and looking out of his window he saw that God was withdrawing from the partnership -- just showing His hand, taking out His goods. Oh, do not forget it! You can raise more cotton, you can build more and larger barns, but as sure as you are a foot high God will be reckoned with. He will show His hand. You are making a record for Divine inspection and you cannot blot it out. Pilate wrote above the crucified Christ, "Jesus, the King of the Jews," and the Jewish officers came to him and complained, saying, "Write He said 'I am King of the Jews.'" But Pilate answered, "What I have written I have written." So it is with you, with all of us; our record is indelible, and nothing but the blood of Jesus Christ can ever cancel it. What we have written we have written, and God sees it and will settle with us. It is the yesterdays that trouble the sinner, and the tomorrow Judgment Day.
What might have been troubles the sinner. To him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin. God said so in the past and says so today. I did not make these facts; He made them and you must face them. It might have been so different with all of us if we had only minded God. The record might have been so different. A Chicago doctor paid attention to another woman than his wife, and led by his lusts ran off to the Pacific Coast with her. His wife went after him, asked him to come back and live as a decent man and husband should do, and she would forgive him. He came, and then, woman-like, the wife paid the fare back to Chicago of the woman who had been with him. In a few years he was running with her again, and the wife secured a divorce, the doctor then marrying his former paramour. For fifteen years they lived together in a Chicago home of wealth and splendor, but one day a pistol shot was heard, the wife ran into the parlor, and there on the velvet carpet laid the doctor. The neighbors ran in and found her wringing her hands and saying, "Oh, he would not forget; he would think!" He could not forget. God would not let him. The past troubled him, his thoughts troubled him and over yonder he is troubled yet.
Faces of the dead trouble some folks. A thoughtless husband, fond of stag parties, often went off and left his wife alone in the home. But perhaps you do not know what a stag party is.
Well, you ought to know, and I will tell you. It is a party where there are no women, where women are not wanted; and whenever you find anything of that kind, there is some deviltry going on, generally. Men always need the refining presence of the other sex. Place a lot of men together away from home, and their morals degenerate, and as a consequence of degenerated morals there is conversation that is not fit for print. Every old soldier knows this to be true. There is more deviltry going on in the army where there are all men, and results show it, than society ever dreamed of. Put an army in camp near a city and as a consequence the birthrate in that city increases. Statistics in the past have proved it. This man went off on stag parties so often that one time when he returned, his wife said, "Oh, husband, I do wish you would stay home some with me." And the brute said, "What do you want? Haven't you got a good home? If you want more money, say so, and you can have it." He seemed not to know that four square walls do not make a home. One time he went off to the woods with one of his stag parties, and while he was gone she was taken sick, and in a few days died. Wire could not reach him. Mails could not, so when he came back he looked on a face in a coffin, a face that was to haunt him in all the coming years. Through with stag parties now, when it was too late. Mourns now, stays home now, when it is too late. Oh, no, Mr. Longfellow, you are wrong; there is no "dead past" -- the past is very much alive until there is repentance and it goes under the blood.
Places of the dead? Yes, photographed by memory in the indelible of eternity. A woman was left with several children. The bread winner was lying out in yonder graveyard, and she determined she would keep them together, cost what it might. You know that a woman will keep the children together when a man can see no way to do it. This mother kept them, trained them, worked hard to educate them, saw them all married and prospering. The eldest took her home, just as he should have done; no man can neglect his mother and have the blessing of the God of the skies rest upon him After some years she was on her death bed. The children were all there, lovingly watching and ministering to her, "Mother, you have always been a good mother to us." She turned her old gray head towards him, looked him clear through and said, "John, you never said so before." The poor old soul had longed for some words of appreciation, but they had not come. True she had a good home, all that money could buy, but she wanted to hear something, some words that never came, till the end was near. See that face? Yes. Troubled by the memory? Oh, yes. Say, young man, go to see your mother; write her a letter -- say a love letter -- she is your best girl; tell her what her heart longs to hear, and you will feel better.
Opportunities gone haunt the sinner, and they come back only in the memory. Just to think, the Man of Calvary, He of the nail-pierced hand, has stood and knocked at the door of your heart. He whom angels worshipped, who had all the glories of heaven as His own, before He came to this world, knocks, again and again at the door of your heart, and says, "If any man will hear my voice, and open unto me I will come in and sup with him and he with Me." And yet men bar Him out, keep him standing there with the dews upon His head, but still pleading to come in, standing there until at last He goes away, driven by neglect and coldness and wickedness, to return no more forever. A woman missed her daughter one night, missed her for six long years, sought her every place, until all the money was gone, and heart still breaking. One night she walked into a police station, saw the chief, told him the story, and the police officer guessed the rest -- and guessed correctly. He said to her, "Go home and bring me your photograph and I will see what I can do." A few hours more and she was there handing a photo to the chief, who looking at it said, "This is not you." And she replied with choking voice, "That is my picture as I was when she went away. If I was to give you my picture as I am now, she would not know it." The chief took the picture down to the red-light district, saw the proprietor of a dance hall where the women of the town were in the habit of going, and told him to hang the picture up on one of the pillars of the room. He did so and it hung there several months. One night he came into the hall about twelve o'clock at night and saw a number of the girls looking down on the floor. He went to them and said, "What is the matter?" And the reply was, "Nellie has fainted." "What made her faint?" "Why, she saw that picture." The man gathered her up in his arms, took her down to his auto, and started with her somewhere, when the cool air restored her to consciousness and she asked, "Where are you taking me?" "I am taking you to your mother. Be still -- I know the whole story. Your mother is waiting for you." They reached the home, the mother was waiting, and soon she was back again in the arms of a mother whose love had never once failed. The sight of that mother's face won her back to love and home. But oh, the grief of it! Nineteen centuries ago the God of the universe so loved that He allowed His own Son to hang on that middle cross for six mortal hours, nailed there by your sins and mine, and yet men today, sinners, are trampling the blood of Jesus under their feet, are counting it a common thing. Calvary is in the world's vision today, but men see it not, pass it by. God commended His love, but man today ignores the Christ, and goes on to sin and death.
Remembered sins haunt the sinner. Like Banquo's ghost, they will not down. A few years ago a murder was committed at Blue Island. A man who once boarded with an old resident and his granddaughter who kept house for him, after a year's absence came back and asked again for the privilege of boarding with them. The old man said, "Just as daughter says." She replied, "He can have his old room." So he took possession. In the course of time he ascertained the old man had some money, which he kept in the mattress on his bed. One night the boarder came downstairs in his stocking feet, went out into the woodshed, got the ax, entered the room, smashed in the head of the man, then killed the granddaughter, and was putting his hand under the mattress to take the money when a dog barked, and thinking the neighbors were aroused, he left hastily and without the money. For a year he went over the West, working here and there, until one day he walked into the police station at Chicago and accosting the desk sergeant he said, "I want to give myself up." "What for?" asked the officer. "For murder," said the culprit. "Where?" was the next question. "At Blue Island, one year ago I murdered an old man and his granddaughter." "What brought you back?" "I will tell you. When I took the old man's life I was after the money he had in his mattress. I reached my hand out to take it when I heard a dog bark. I left, thinking the neighbors were aroused, and went West, but no matter where I went I could hear that dog bark. I would lie down at night and wake up startled by the barking of the dog. I have come back to get rid of that dog's bark." Every sinner has a dog on his track. Memory will haunt him; aye, he has a pack of hounds on his track; memory and conscience will never cease to bark, and only by repentance towards God can an evil conscience be purged.
There will come to every sinner to trouble him the memory of opportunities that he murdered. Off the coast of Scotland there was a bell buoy, placed there by the government of Great Britain to warn the sailor in times of fog. One day a young man in a sheer spirit of recklessness destroyed the bell buoy and the government never replaced it. The young man became a sailor; after a while was a captain and sailing his vessel off the coast of Scotland he was caught in a dense fog, and his vessel wrecked; his life was lost and some rescued sailors said that he kept crying, "Oh, for the bell buoy," but he had destroyed it years before.
Many a sinner when the cold hand of death comes feeling round his heartstrings will cry for the sermon he once sneered at, will long for an altar call and a mourners' bench, and the prayers of the saints, but they will never come back.
A coming judgment haunts the sinner, troubles the sinner. It is not death that men fear. It is what comes after death. Man will meet all his sinful record at the judgment. "Know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee to judgment." And the Christ that men reject today will be the Judge. The person you do not want to see is not the person that injured you, but the one you have injured. And the sinner has injured Jesus, insulted Him, turned Him away. Did you ever read Whittier's "Skipper Ireton?" He tells of the Skipper of a fishing vessel that went out at the beginning of the season to fish. The skipper getting the first catch of fish and first back to Marblehead, would get the highest prices. Ireton secured his haul of fish and was on the way back when he saw a fishing vessel wrecked, and the crew in the water. As he drew near they begged him to take them on, but he, intent on the gold, passed them by, leaving them to die. His crew told the story, and the women of Marblehead, widows of the sailors he passed by, tarred and feathered him, rode him on a rail. but Whittier makes Ireton to say, "It is not the reproach of the tar and feathers, nor the riding on the rail that stings me, but I see the faces of the men I left to drown, the white hands uplifted, the dying cry for help." So the sinner all through the ages of eternity will see the face of the mother who prayed, the wife who wept, the children who fasted, that he might be saved. He will think of the Christ who died for him, and his thoughts will trouble him, and never, never will there come a time when he will cease to think, to regret, to curse himself and his own folly.
But now listen while I tell you that you can get rid of all the sins of the past. Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be whiter than snow; though they be crimson yet shall they be as wool. He is able to save to the uttermost all them that come, and He says, "Him that cometh I will in nowise cast out." Make Jesus your Friend, make Him your Advocate. Let your Elder Brother plead your case. Mr. Moody was one time holding a meeting that was so largely attended the authorities forbade any more being allowed in the building. An usher was stationed at the door to keep folks out. A lady of the town got out of her carriage, walked up to the door as though all she had to do was to ask and she would be admitted, but the usher kindly told her there was no room for her. But I am Mrs. No difference; Mrs. could not get in; the orders were to be obeyed. The Representative in Congress of that District walked up and said, "I am Mr. _____ of this District, and being in the city a few days I thought I would like to hear Mr. Moody," and he presented his card; but it was no use -- no one admitted. Then came the Mayor of the City, and he was sure of admittance; he told who he was, but no, sir, he, too, was denied. Just then came a seedy-looking man up to the usher and he said, "I want to get in and hear Mr. Moody," and he was told it was too late; the building was crowded and no more were to be admitted. But he said, "Yes, I will see him; tell Mr. Moody his brother George is at the door." The usher walked up the aisle, told Mr. Moody, who said, "My brother George at the door? Let him in." And he came in. Mr. Moody had just left his own chair to begin his sermon, and he told George to sit down on his chair. So it will be with you if you make Jesus your Elder Brother. I expect that each saint will have the enemy to object to his entrance to the City of God, into the temple of God, but I am sure the Word teaches that He will say, "Come, ye blessed of my Father," and He will rise from His throne and tell then' to sit down, for even as He overcame so have they overcome through His blood and the Word of their testimony, and shall sit down with Him on His throne.
Old John Burns was the citizen hero of Gettysburg. When the battle was on the Confederates having invaded Pennsylvania, he took his old squirrel rifle and went out on the firing line and pumped lead into the ranks of the enemy until he was wounded. The press of the North lauded the old hero to the skies, called him all the good names they could think of. Abraham Lincoln, the President, heard of Burns and his deed, and sat down and wrote, "Mr. Burns, Gettysburg, Pa., Dear sir: I have heard of your conduct at Gettysburg, and I write to assure you I would be very glad to welcome you to Washington, and in the White House anytime you may be pleased to come. Yours, A. Lincoln." You may be sure John Burns was pleased to go. He got out his best bib and tucker, his old Prince Albert coat, brushed up his old silk hat, and went to Washington. The usher at the White House door met him and asked his name. "I am John Burns, of Gettysburg." "Welcome, sir; we are expecting you." He went in, met Mr. Lincoln, who made him feel at home, and took him to church the next day. As they walked up the aisle they were the observed of all observers The obsequious usher bowed Mr. Lincoln into the pew, but when old John Burns attempted to follow, the usher said, "No, no, old man; you cannot go in there." But Mr. Lincoln reached out his long arm and said, "He is my old man; let him in." And in he went. So I am believing the enemy who is an accuser of all the brethren, of every child of God, will follow clear to the gates of the City, he will accuse of all the sins that ever were committed, all the mistakes that ever were made, will say, "He belongs to me; he has no right in there." But the Christ of Calvary who died to save, and who heard you down at that mourners' bench, will say, "He is Mine. Let him in." And then with all the blood-washed saved to all eternity, you will go in to go out no more forever, and with the saints of all ages you will be "transported your Lord and your Savior to greet." Thank God for Jesus, thank God for the Blood, thank God for the Holy Spirit, thank God for the Word, which is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth. Praise His Name Forever!
