Consider what an uncertain possession you have in your intellect, when there are so many things around to destroy it; and beware, lest before you use it in making the religious choice, God takes it away with a stroke.  I know a good many of my friends who are putting off religion until the last hour.  They say when they get sick they will attend to it, but generally the intellect is beclouded; and oh; what a doleful thing it is to stand by a dying bed, and talk to a man about his soul, and feel, from what you see of the motion of his head, and the glare of his eye, and from what you hear of the jargon of his lips, that he does not understand what you are saying to him.  I have stood beside the death-bed of a man who had lived a sinful life, and was as unprepared for eternity as it is possible for a man to be, and I tried to make him understand my pastoral errand; but all in vain.  He could not understand it, and so he died.

Oh! ye who are putting off until the sick hour preparation for eternity, let me tell you that in all probability, you will not be able in your last hour to attend to it at all.  There are a great many people who say they will repent on the death-bed.

I have no doubt there are many who have repented on the death-bed, but I think it is the exception.  Albert Barnes, who was one of the coolest of men, and gave no rash statistics, said thus:  that in a ministry of nearly half a century—­he was over seventy when he went up to glory—­he had known a great many people who said they repented on the dying bed, but, unexpectedly to themselves, got well; and he says, How many of those, do you suppose, who thought it was their dying bed, and who, after they repented on that dying bed, having got well, lived consistently, showing that it was real repentance, and not mock repentance—­how many? not one! not one!

II.  Again:  this stroke may come to you in the withdrawal of God’s spirit.

I see people before me who were, twenty years ago, serious about their souls.  They are not now.  They have no interest in what I am saying.  They will never have any anxiety in what any minister of the Gospel says about their souls.  Their time seems to have passed.  I know a man, seventy-five years of age, who, in early life, became almost a Christian, but grieved away the spirit of God, and he has never thought earnestly since, and he can not be roused.  I do not believe he will be roused until eternity flashes on his astonished vision.

It does seem as if sometimes, in quite early life, the Holy Spirit moves upon a heart, and being grieved away and rejected, never comes back.  You say that is all imaginary?  A letter, the address of which I will not give, dated last Monday morning, came to me on Tuesday, saying this:  “Your sermon last night (that is, last Sabbath night) did not fit my case, although I believe it did all others in the Academy; but your sermon of a week ago did fit my case, for I am ’past feeling.’