There is a hovering hope in the minds of a vast multitude that there will be an opportunity in the next world to correct the mistakes of this; that, if we do make complete shipwreck of our earthly life, it will be on a shore up which we may walk to a palace; that, as a defendant may lose his case in the Circuit Court, and carry it up to the Supreme Court or Court of Chancery and get a reversal of judgment in his behalf, all the costs being thrown over on the other party, so, if we fail in the earthly trial, we may in the higher jurisdiction of eternity have the judgment of the lower court set aside, all the costs remitted, and we may be victorious defendants forever.

My object in this sermon is to show that common sense, as well as my text, declares that such an expectation is chimerical.  You say that the impenitent man, having got into the next world and seeing the disaster, will, as a result of that disaster, turn, the pain the cause of his reformation.  But you can find ten thousand instances in this world of men who have done wrong and distress overtook them suddenly.  Did the distress heal them?  No; they went right on.

That man was flung of dissipations.  “You must stop drinking,” said the doctor, “and quit the fast life you are leading, or it will destroy you.”.  The patient suffers paroxysm after paroxysm; but, under skillful medical treatment, he begins to sit up, begins to walk about the room, begins to go to business.  And, lo! he goes back to the same grog-shops for his morning dram, and his even dram, and the drams between.  Flat down again!  Same doctor.  Same physical anguish.  Same medical warning.

Now, the illness is more protracted; the liver is more stubborn, the stomach more irritable, and the digestive organs are more rebellious.  But after awhile he is out again, goes back to the same dram-shops, and goes the same round of sacrilege against his physical health.

He sees that his downward course is ruining his household, that his life is a perpetual perjury against his marriage vow, that that broken-hearted woman is so unlike the roseate young wife that he married, that her old schoolmates do not recognize her; that his sons are to be taunted for a life-time by the father’s drunkenness, that the daughters are to pass into life under the scarification of a disreputable ancestor.  He is drinking up their happiness, their prospects for this life, and, perhaps, for the life to come.  Sometimes an appreciation of what he is doing comes upon him.  His nervous system is all a tangle.  From crown of head to sole of foot he is one aching, rasping, crucifying, damning torture.  Where is he?  In hell on earth.  Does it reform him?

After awhile he has delirium tremens, with a whole jungle of hissing reptiles let out on his pillow, and his screams horrify the neighbors as he dashes out of his bed, crying:  “Take these things off me!” As he sits, pale and convalescent, the doctor says:  “Now I want to have a plain talk with you, my dear fellow.  The next attack of this kind you will have you will be beyond all medical skill, and you will die.”  He gets better and goes forth into the same round again.  This time medicine takes no effect.  Consultation of physicians agree in saying there is no hope.  Death ends the scene.