house of prayer, but you had such a sermon that I could not understand. I listened; I wanted to hear something from your lips, some truth that might burn my soul and make me repent; but I did not know what you said; and here I am.” The ghost stamps his foot, and the man quivers like an aspen leaf, because he knows it is all true. Then the whole congregation arise before him as he lies upon his bed; he looks upon the motley group; he beholds the snowy heads of the old, and the glittering eyes of the young; and lying there upon his pillow, he pictures all the sins of his past life, and he hears it said, “Go you! unfaithful to your charge: you did not divest yourself of your love of pomp and dignity; you did not speak:
As though you ne’er might’st speak again,
A dying man to dying men.”
Oh! it may be something for that minister to leave his charge, something for him to die; but worst of all, the sting of death will be his sin; to hear his parish come howling after him to hell; to see his congregation following behind him in one mingled herd, he having led them astray, having been a false prophet instead of a true one, speaking peace, peace, where there was no peace, deluding them with lies, charming them with music, when he ought rather to have told them in rough and rugged accents the word of God. Truly it is true, it is true, the sting of death to such a man shall be his great, his enormous, his heinous sin of having deluded others.
8. Thus, then, having painted two full length pictures, I might give each one of you miniatures of yourselves. I might picture, oh drunkard, when your cups are drained, and when your liquor shall no longer be sweet to your taste, when worse than gall shall be the dainties that you drink, when within an hour the worms shall make a carnival upon your flesh; I might picture you as you look back upon your misspent life. And you, oh swearer, I think I see you there with your oaths echoed back by memory to your own dismay. And you, man of lust and wickedness, you who have debauched and seduced others, I see you there, and the sting of death to you, how horrible, how dreadful! It shall not be that you are groaning with pain, it shall not be that you are racked with agony, it shall not be that your heart and flesh fails; but the sting, the sting shall be your sin. How many in this place can spell that word “remorse?” I pray you may never know its awful meaning. Remorse, remorse! You know its derivation: it signifies to bite. Ah! now we dance with our sins — it is a merry life with us — we take their hands, and sporting in the noontime sun, we dance, we dance, and live in joy. But then those sins shall bite us. The young lions we have stroked and played with shall bite; the young adder, the serpent whose azure hues have well delighted us, shall bite, shall sting, when remorse shall occupy our souls. I might, but I will not tell you, a few stories of the awful power of remorse: it is the first pang of hell; it is the vestibule of the pit. To have remorse is to feel the sparks that blaze upwards from the fire of the bottomless pit of Gehenna; to feel remorse is to have eternal torment commenced within the soul. The sting of death shall be, unforgiven, unrepented sin.
9. 3. But if sin in the past is the sting of death, what must sin in the future be? My friends, we do not often enough look at what sin is to be. We see what it is: first the seed, then the blade, then the ear, and then the full grain in the ear. It is the wish, the imagination, the desire, the sight, the taste, the deed; but what is sin in its next development? We have observed sin as it grows, we have seen it at first a very little thing, but expanding itself until it has swelled into a mountain. We have seen it like “a little cloud, the size of a man’s hand,” but we have beheld it gather until it covered the skies with blackness and sent down drops of bitter rain. But what is sin to be in the next state? We have gone so far, but sin is a thing that cannot stop. We have seen into what it has grown, but into what will it grow? for it is not ripe when we die; it has to go on still; it is set in motion, but it has to unfold itself for ever. The moment we die the voice of justice cries, “Seal up the fountain of blood; stop the stream of forgiveness; he that is holy let him be holy still; he that is filthy let him be filthy still.” And after that the man goes on growing filthier and filthier still; his lust develops itself, his vice increases; all those evil passions blaze with tenfold more fury, and, amidst the companionship of others like himself, without the restraints of grace, without the preached word, the man becomes worse and worse; and who can tell into what his sin may grow? I have sometimes likened the hour of our death to that celebrated picture which I think you have seen in the National Gallery, of Perseus {b } holding up the head of Medusa. That head turned all people into stone who looked upon it. There is a warrior there with a dart in his hand: he stands stiffened, turned into stone, with the javelin even in his fist. There is another with a sword beneath his robe about to stab; he is now the statue of an assassin, motionless and cold. Another is creeping along stealthily, like a man in an ambush, and there he stands a consolidated rock; he has looked only upon that head, and he is frozen into stone. Well, such is death. What I am when death is held before me, that I must be for ever. When my spirit goes, if God finds me hymning his praise, I shall hymn it in heaven; does he find me breathing out oaths, I shall follow up those oaths in hell. Where death leaves me, judgment finds me. As I die, so shall I live eternally.
There are no acts of pardon passed
In the cold grave to which we haste.
It is for ever, for ever, for ever! Ah! there are a set of heretics in these days who talk of short punishment, and preach about God’s transporting souls for a term of years and then letting them die. Where did such men learn their doctrine, I wonder? I read in God’s word that the angel shall plant one foot upon the earth, and the other upon the sea, and shall swear by him who lives and was dead, that time shall be no longer. But if a soul could die in a thousand years it would die in time; if a million years could elapse, and then the soul could be extinguished, there would be such a thing as time; for talk to me of years, and there is time. But, sirs, when that angel has spoken the word, “Time shall be no longer,” things will then be eternal; the spirit shall proceed in its ceaseless revolution of weal or woe, never to end, for there is no time to stop it; the fact of its stopping would imply time, but everything shall be eternal, for time shall cease to be. It well becomes you then to consider where you are and what you are. Oh! stand and tremble on the narrow neck of land between the two unbounded seas, for God in heaven alone can tell how soon you may be launched upon the eternal future. May God grant that when that last hour may come, we may be prepared for it! Like the thief, unheard, unseen, it steals through night’s dark shade. Perhaps, as here I stand, and rudely speak of these dark hidden things, soon may the hand be stretched, and dumb the mouth that lisps the faltering strain. Oh! you who dwell in heaven, you power supreme, you everlasting King, let not that hour intrude upon me in an ill spent season; but may it find me wrapped in meditation high, hymning my great Creator. So in the last moment of my life I will hasten beyond the azure, to bathe the wings of this my spirit in their native element, and then to dwell with you for ever —
Far from a world of grief and sin,
With God eternally shut in.
10. II. “THE STRENGTH OF SIN is the law.”
11. I have attempted to show how to fight this monster — it is by extracting and destroying its sting. I prepare myself for the battle. It is true I have sin, and therefore I have put a sting into death, but I will endeavour to take it away. I attempt it, but the monster laughs me in the face, and cries, “The strength of sin is the law. Before you can destroy sin you must in some way satisfy the law. Sin cannot be removed by your tears or by your deeds, for the law is its strength, and until you have satisfied the vengeance of the law, until you have paid the uttermost farthing of its demands, my sting cannot be taken away, for the very strength of sin is the law.” Now, I must try and explain this doctrine, that the strength of sin is the law. Most men think that sin has no strength at all. “Oh!” say many, “we may have sinned very much, but we will repent, and we will be better for the rest of our lives; no doubt God is merciful, and he will forgive us.” And we hear many divines often speak of sin as if it were a very venial and minor thing. Inquire of them what
