HERE is a solemn warning to sinners who despise and deny Christ. The following certified incident from real life we select from correspondence of the Canada Christian Advocate :—
A man, Dr. Adam Clark, who had indulged the hope of final salvation regardless of character, was on his death-bed. In the prime of life, his cup of pleasure was drained to the dregs, and exhausted nature refused to recruit her wasted energies. Pale and wan, with an awful sense of an uncertain future, the horrors of remorse distracting his inmost soul, the bitter cup of despair persistently held to his lips by the unrelenting hand of an abused and now fully awakened conscience, his hope that all would finally be well with him was forever swept away. No hope; no trust in God; his bed was no bed of roses, although surrounded by every comfort wealth could furnish.
With the dread realities before his eyes, he cried: “Oh! I can’t die; there is no mercy now for me; God can’t forgive me now. Oh! how I wish I had lived differently. If I could only live, I would lead a different life.” *I encouraged him to hope in the mercy of God in Christ Jesus, and earnestly besought him to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ with all his heart, and he should be saved. “Do you think that God will forgive me for Christ’s sake, such a sinner as I have been?” “Yes; oh! yes,” said I. “He came to seek and save just such ones as you. Be willing to have Him save you now, just as you are.” “Oh! no,” said he; “it is too late now,” while the tears streamed down his young face, pallid with disease and suffering. I had never witnessed such a scene before, and I never shall forget the awful expression of that dying sinner’s face to my dying breath.
* This person is the original narrator of the case.—Editor.
I told him I would pray for him, and that he must pray for himself, and left the room ere my senses forsook me. Horror-stricken almost, and with a feeling as if death’s fingers were clutching at my own heart-strings, I could not bear to witness such fearful despair. I went down the stairs, and soon one of his spasms of pain came on; and unable to bear it, with no hope, no peace, no Jesus to sustain him, he gave way to the fiends, as it seemed to me, which possessed him. With fearful curses, frightful imprecations, and horrid oaths, he drove his faithful wife from the room, and he lay there alone to battle with the raging hand of disease, cursing God, and screaming with rage and pain, so that he could be heard in the neighbouring houses. I could do nothing for him, and the curses and maledictions of that hour ring in my ears like the wail of the lost in the dark regions of despair. And soon I heard he was dead. Gone to the bar of God, to render up his account at the judgment.
God save us from such a passing away as that; torturing fiends instead of soothing angels round his dying couch. Black despair in lieu of the overshadowing wing of angelic hope. Death and the judgment staring him in the face, instead of peace in believing and joy in the Holy Ghost. Horrid blasphemies instead of “Oh! death, where is thy sting? Oh! grave, where is thy victory?” A fearful looking forward to the future in lieu of “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and because He lives, I shall live also.”
Too late, too late, instead of “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.” Such is the fearful end of those who trust in the mercy of God out of Christ, for “God out of Christ is a consuming fire.”
Upon the wicked “He shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest; this shall be the portion of their cup” (Ps. xi, 6). “The Lord is known by the judgment which He executeth: the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands. Higgaion, i.e. (meditation). Selah—a long pause! The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God” (Ps. ix, 16, 17). “Yea, they sacrificed their sons and daughters unto devils, and shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan: and the land was polluted with blood” (Ps. cvi, 37, 38). Let us all take warning and seek grace to prepare us for eternity! The religion, faith, preaching, and prayer that ignores hell and seeks to evade the facts of God’s Word is of the devil whatever name hypocrites may gave it.—Sent by REV. JAMES MACLEOD from Canada, the concluding paragraph being his.