Do not look where I point, but yonder stands a man who once had a beautiful home in this city.  His house had elegant furniture, his children were beautifully clad, his name was synonymous with honor and usefulness; but evil habit knocked at his front door, knocked at his back door, knocked at his parlor door, knocked at his bedroom door.  Where is the piano?  Sold to pay the rent.  Where is the hat-rack?  Sold to meet the butcher’s bill.  Where are the carpets?  Sold to get bread.  Where is the wardrobe?  Sold to get rum.  Where are the daughters?  Working their fingers off in trying to keep the family together.  Worse and worse, until everything is gone.  Who is that going up the front steps of that house?  That is a creditor, hoping to find some chair or bed that has not been levied upon.  Who are those two gentlemen now going up the front steps?  The one is a constable, the other is the sheriff.  Why do they go there?  The unfortunate is morally dead, socially dead, financially dead.  Why do they go there?  I will tell you why the creditors, and the constables, and the sheriffs go there.  They are, some on their own account, and some on account of the law, stripping the slain.

An ex-member of Congress, one of the most eloquent men that ever stood in the House of Representatives, said in his last moments:  “This is the end.  I am dying—­dying on a borrowed bed, covered by a borrowed sheet, in a house built by public charity.  Bury me under that tree in the middle of the field, where I shall not be crowded, for I have been crowded all my life.”  Where were the jolly politicians and the dissipating comrades who had been with him, laughing at his jokes, applauding his eloquence, and plunging him into sin?  They have left.  Why?  His money is gone, his reputation is gone, his wit is gone, his clothes are gone, everything is gone.  Why should they stay any longer?  They have completed their work.  They have stripped the slain.

There is another way, however, of doing that same work.  Here is a man who, through his sin, is prostrate.  He acknowledges that he has done wrong.  Now is the time for you to go to that man and say:  “Thousands of people have been as far astray as you are, and got back.”  Now is the time for you to go to that man and tell him of the omnipotent grace of God, that is sufficient for any poor soul.  Now is the time to go to tell him how swearing John Bunyan, through the grace of God, afterward came to the celestial city.  Now is the time to go to that man and tell him how profligate Newton came, through conversion, to be a world-renowned preacher of righteousness.  Now is the time to tell that man that multitudes who have been pounded with all the flails of sin and dragged through all the sewers of pollution at last have risen to positive dominion of moral power.

You do not tell him that, do you?  No.  You say to him:  “Loan you money?  No.  You are down.  You will have to go to the dogs.  Lend you a shilling?  I would not lend you five cents to keep you from the gallows.  You are debauched!  Get out of my sight, now!  Down; you will have to stay down!” And thus those bruised and battered men are sometimes accosted by those who ought to lift them up.  Thus the last vestige of hope is taken from them.  Thus those who ought to go and lift and save them are guilty of stripping the slain.