A man who had rejected Christianity and thought it all trash, came to die.  He was in the sweat of a great agony, and his wife said:  “We had better have some prayer.”  “Mary, not a breath of that,” he said.  “The lightest word of prayer would roll back on me like rocks on a drowning man.  I have come to the hour of test.  I had a chance, and I forfeited it.  I believed in a liar, and he has left me in the lurch.  Mary, bring me Tom Paine, that book that I swore by and lived by, and pitch it in the fire, and let it burn and burn as I myself shall soon burn.”  And then, with the foam on his lip and his hands tossing wildly in the air, he cried out:  “Blackness of darkness!  Oh, my God, too late!” And the spirits of darkness whistled up from the depth, and wheeled around and around him, stripping the slain.

Sin is a luxury now; it is exhilaration now; it is victory now.  But after awhile it is collision; it is defeat; it is extermination; it is jackalism; it is robbing the dead; it is stripping the slain.  Give it up to-day—­give it up!  Oh, how you have been cheated on, my brother, from one thing to another!  All these years you have been under an evil mastery that you understood not.  What have your companions done for you?  What have they done for your health?  Nearly ruined it by carousal.  What have they done for your fortune?  Almost scattered it by spendthrift behavior.  What have they done for your reputation?  Almost ruined it with good men.  What have they done for your immortal soul?  Almost insured its overthrow.

You are hastening on toward the consummation of all that is sad.  To-day you stop and think, but it is only for a moment, and then you will tramp on, and at the close of this service you will go out, and the question will be:  “How did you like the sermon?” And one man will say:  “I liked it very well,” and another man will say:  “I didn’t like it at all;” but neither of the answers will touch the tremendous fact that, if impenitent, you are going at eighteen knots an hour toward shipwreck!  Yea, you are in a battle where you will fall; and while your surviving relatives will take your remaining estate, and the cemetery will take your body, the messengers of darkness will take your soul, and come and go about you for the next ten million years, stripping the slain.

Many are crying out:  “I admit I am slain, I admit it!” On what battle-field, my brothers?  By what weapon?  “Polluted imagination,” says one man; “Intoxicating liquor,” says another man; “My own hard heart,” says another man.  Do you realize this?  Then I come to tell you that the omnipotent Christ is ready to walk across this battle-field, and revive, and resuscitate, and resurrect your dead soul.  Let Him take your hand and rub away the numbness; your head, and bathe off the aching; your heart, and stop its wild throb.  He brought Lazarus to life; He brought Jairus’ daughter to life; He brought the young man of Nain to life, and these are three proofs anyhow that he can bring you to life.