III.  This fatal stroke spoken of in the text may be our exit from this world.  I hear aged people sometimes saying:  “I can’t live much longer.”  But do you know the fact that there are a hundred young people and middle-aged people who go out of this life to one aged person, for the simple reason that there are not many aged people to leave life?  The aged seem to stand around like stalks—­separate stalks of wheat at the corner of the field; but when death goes a-mowing, he likes to go down amid the thick of the harvest.  What is more to the point:  a man’s going out of this world is never in the way he expects—­it is never at the time he expects.  The moment of leaving this world is always a surprise.  If you expect to go in the winter, it may be in the summer; if in the summer, it may be in the winter; if in the night, it maybe in the day-time; if you think to go in the day-time, it may be in the night.  Suddenly the event will rush upon you, and you will be gone.  Where?  If a Christian—­into joy.  If not a Christian—­into suffering.

The Gospel call stops outside of the door of the sepulcher.  The sleeper within can not hear it.  If that call should be sounded out with clarion voice louder than ever rang through the air, that sleeper could not hear it.  I suppose every hour of the day, and now, while I am speaking, there are souls rushing into eternity unprepared.  They slide from the pillow, or they slip from the pavement, and in an eye-twinkling they are gone.  Elegant and eloquent funeral oration will not do them any good.  Epitaph, cut on polished Scotch granite, will not do them any good.  Wailing of beloved kindred can not call them back.

But, says some one:  “I’ll keep out of peril; I will not go on the sea, I will not go into battle—­I’ll keep out of all danger.”  That is no defense.  Thousands of people, last night, on their couches, with the front door locked, and no armed assassin anywhere around, surrounded by all defended circumstances, slipped out of this life into the next.  If time had been on one side of the shuttle and eternity on the other side of the shuttle, they could not have shot quicker across it.  A man was saying:  “My father was lost at sea, and my grandfather, and my great-grandfather.  Wasn’t it strange?” A man, talking to him, said:  “You ought never to venture on the sea, lest you, yourself, be lost at sea.”  The man turned to the other, and said:  “Where did your father die?” He replied:  “In his bed.”  “Where did your grandfather die?” “In his bed.”  “Where did your great-grandfather die?” “In his bed.”  “Then,” he said, “be careful, lest some night, while you are asleep on your couch, your time may come!”