“More than I dare to remember.”

“And as many more, perhaps, where the person died.”

“Yes, fully as many more.”

“Then did not the bitter failure of these death-bed repentances to bear the tests of time shake your confidence in their value under the tests of eternity?”

“It did,—­it does,” said the clergyman, with tears in his eyes.  The conversation made a deep impression on my mind.  It was strong evidence, from a quarter in which I least looked for it, of the utter paltriness and insufficiency of fear as a motive when brought to bear upon decisions in spiritual things.  There seem to be no words strong enough to stigmatize it in all other affairs except spiritual.  All ages, all races, hold cowardice chief among vices; noble barbarians punished it with death.  Even civilization the most cautiously legislated for, does the same thing when a soldier shows it “in face of the enemy.”  Language, gathering itself up and concentrating its force to describe base behavior, can do no more than call it “cowardly.”  No instinct of all the blessed body-guard of instincts born with us seems in the outset a stronger one than the instinct that to be noble, one must be brave.  Almost in the cradle the baby taunts or is taunted by the accusation of being “afraid.”  And the sting of the taunt lies in the probability of its truth.  For in all men, alas! is born a certain selfish weakness, to which fear can address itself.  But how strange does it appear that they who wish to inculcate noblest action, raise to most exalted spiritual conditions, should appeal to this lowest of motives to help them!  We believe that there are many “death-bed repentances” among hale, hearty sinners, who are approached by the same methods, stimulated by the same considerations, frightened by the same conceptions of possible future suffering, which so often make the chambers of dying men dark with terrors.  Fear is fear all the same whether its dread be for the next hour or the next century.  The closer the enemy, the swifter it runs.  That is all the difference.  Let the enemy be surely and plainly removed, and in one instance it is no more,—­is as if it had never been.  Every thought, word, and action based upon it has come to end.

I was forcibly reminded of the conversation above quoted by some observations I once had opportunity of making at a Methodist camp-meeting.  Much of the preaching and exhortation consisted simply and solely of urgent, impassioned appeals to the people to repent,—­not because repentance is right; not because God is love, and it is base not to love and obey him; not even because godliness is in itself great gain, and sinfulness is, even temporarily, loss and ruin; but because there is a wrath to come, which will inflict terrible and unending suffering on the sinner.  He is to “flee” for his life from torments indescribable and eternal; he is to call on Jesus, not to make him holy, but to save him from woe, to rescue him from frightful danger; all