The point I want to make is this:  sin is hard, cruel, and merciless.  Instead of helping a man up it helps him down; and when, like Saul and his comrades, you lie on the field, it will come and steal your sword and helmet and shield, leaving you to the jackal and the crow.

But the world and Satan do not do all their work with the outcast and abandoned.  A respectable, impenitent man comes to die.  He is flat on his back.  He could not get up if the house were on fire.  Adroitest medical skill and gentlest nursing have been a failure.  He has come to his last hour.  What does Satan do for such a man?  Why, he fetches up all the inapt, disagreeable, and harrowing things in his life.  He says:  “Do you remember those chances you had for heaven, and missed them?  Do you remember all those lapses in conduct?  Do you remember all those opprobrious words and thoughts and actions?  Don’t remember them, eh?  I’ll make you remember them.”  And then he takes all the past and empties it on that death-bed, as the mail-bags are emptied on the post-office floor.  The man is sick.  He can not get away from them.

Then the man says to Satan:  “You have deceived me.  You told me that all would be well.  You said there would be no trouble at the last.  You told me if I did so and so, you would do so and so.  Now you corner me, and hedge me up, and submerge me in everything evil.”  “Ha! ha!” says Satan, “I was only fooling you.  It is mirth for me to see you suffer.  I have been for thirty years plotting to get you just where you are.  It is hard for you now—­it will be worse for you after awhile.  It pleases me.  Lie still, sir.  Don’t flinch or shudder.  Come now, I will tear off from you the last rag of expectation.  I will rend away from your soul the last hope.  I will leave you bare for the beating of the storm.  It is my business to strip the slain.”

While men are in robust health, and their digestion is good, and their nerves are strong, they think their physical strength will get them safely through the last exigency.  They say it is only cowardly women who are afraid at the last, and cry out for God.  “Wait till I come to die.  I will show you.  You won’t hear me pray, nor call for a minister, nor want a chapter read me from the Bible.”  But after the man has been three weeks in a sick-room his nerves are not so steady, and his worldly companions are not anywhere near to cheer him up, and he is persuaded that he must quit life:  his physical courage is all gone.

He jumps at the fall of a teaspoon in a saucer.  He shivers at the idea of going away.  He says:  “Wife, I don’t think my infidelity is going to take me through.  For God’s sake don’t bring up the children to do as I have done.  If you feel like it, I wish you would read a verse or two out of Fannie’s Sabbath-school hymn-book or New Testament.”  But Satan breaks in, and says:  “You have always thought religion trash and a lie; don’t give up at the last.  Besides that, you can not, in the hour you have to live, get off on that track.  Die as you lived.  With my great black wings I shut out that light.  Die in darkness.  I rend away from you that last vestige of hope.  It is my business to strip the slain.”