Death alone is sure.  Suddenly, you and I will go out of life.  I am not saying anything to your soul that I am not going to say to my own soul.  We have got to go suddenly out of this life.  If I am prepared for that change, I do not care where my body is taken from—­at what point I am taken out of this life.  If I am ready, all is well.  If I am not ready, though I might be at home, and though my loved ones might be standing around me, and though there might be the best surgical and medical ability in the room, I tell you, if I were not prepared, I would be frightened more than tongue can tell.  It may seem like cowardice, but I am not ashamed to say that I should have the most indescribable horror about going out of this world if I thought I was unprepared for the next—­if I had no Christ in my soul; for it would be a plunge compared with which a leap from the top of Mont Blanc would be nothing.

But this brings me to the most tremendous thought of my text.  The text supposes that a man goes into ruin, and that an effort is made afterward for his rescue, and then says the thing can not be done.  Is that so?  After death seizes upon that soul, is there no resurrection?  If a man topples off the edge of life, is there nothing to break his fall?  If an impenitent man goes overboard, are there no grappling-hooks to hoist him into safety?  The text says distinctly:  “Then a great ransom can not deliver thee.”

I know there are people who call themselves “Restorationists,” and they say a sinful man may go down into the world of the lost; he stays there until he gets reformed, and then comes up into the world of light and blessedness.  It seems to me to be a most unreasonable doctrine—­as though the world of darkness were a place where a man could get reformed.  Is there anything in the society of the lost world—­the abandoned and the wretched of God’s universe—­to elevate a man’s character and lift him at last to heaven?  Can we go into companionship of the Neroes and the Herods, and the Jim Fisks, and spend a certain number of years in that lost world, and then by that society be purified and lifted up?  Is that the kind of society that reforms a man and prepares him for heaven?  Would you go to Shreveport or Memphis, with the yellow fever there, to get your physical health restored?  Can it be that a man may go down into the diseased world—­a world overwhelmed by an epidemic of transgressions—­and by that process, and in that atmosphere, be lifted up to health and glory?  Your common sense says:  “No! no!” In such society as that, instead of being restored, you would go down worse and worse, plunging every hour into deeper depths of suffering and darkness.  What your common sense says the Bible reaffirms, when it says:  “These shall go away into three months of punishment.”  I have quoted it wrong.  “These shall go away into ten years of punishment.”  I have quoted it wrong.  “These shall go into a thousand years of punishment.”  I have quoted it wrong.  “These shall go into everlasting punishment.”  And now I have quoted it right; or, if you prefer, in the words of my text:  “Then a great ransom can not deliver thee.”