Sermon Illustration

A wealthy merchant of Philadelphia, who would not listen to the gospel message in health, sent for me at his death-bed. I told him: “I have nothing now to tell you. You are a sinner, and here is a Savior. Do you feel your guilt, and will you take a Savior?” “No. There must be some better place than hell for a man of my respectability.”

When the Bastille was about to be destroyed a prisoner was brought out, who had long been lying in one of its gloomy cells. Instead of joyfully welcoming his liberty, he entreated that he might be taken back to his dungeon. It was so long since he had seen the light that his eye could not endure the light of the sun. Besides this, his friends were all dead, he had no home, and his limbs refused to move. His chief desire now was that he might die in the dark prison where so long he had been a captive.

At death a man sees all those thoughts which were not spent upon God to be fruitless. A Scythian captain having, for a draught of water, yielded up a city, cried out: “What have I lost? What have I betrayed?” So will it be with that man when he comes to die who hath spent all his meditations upon the world; he will say: “What have I lost? What have I betrayed? I have lost Heaven, I have betrayed my soul.” Should not the consideration of this fix our minds upon the thoughts of God and glory? All other meditations are fruitless; like a piece of ground which has much cost laid out upon it, but it yields no crop.