"I have nothing to expect, sir, but condemnation! Nothing ahead but condemnation!"
The speaker spoke with difficulty. He was a big man of massive features, just stricken down seriously ill, and had been told that his illness must soon prove fatal. His nurse sought, as quietly as possible, to ease his sufferings, which were very great.
"Oh, don't talk of pain!" he cried, bitterly. "It is the mind, woman, the mind!" Then slowly and deliberately he said: "I knew it at the time—every time. I knew it. I knew that a penalty must follow sin. Yet I have done wrong, knowing that it was wrong; first with a few qualms, then brushing aside conscience, and at last with the coolness of a fiend. Sir, not in one minute of my life have I lived for heaven, for God, or for Christ; no, not one minute."
"But Christ died for the ungodly and for sinners," was the comforting reply.
"Oh, yes, Christ died for sinners. I know that. My intellect is clear, sir; clearer than ever before, I tell you."
His voice became shrill and concentrated. "I can see almost into eternity; I can feel that unless Christ Himself is believed on, His death can do me no good."
Soon after this he said: "I have been following up the natural laws, and see an affinity between them and the great law of God's moral universe. Heaven is for the holy and believing; without, all are dogs and whoremongers. That is the distinction! It is all right, all right. God is just and holy."
After eleven o'clock, roused by the striking of the clock, he looked around. He sensed the presence of his nurse, and of his Christian friend waiting nearby. "It is awfully dark here," he whispered; "my feet stand on the slippery edge of a great gulf. Oh, for some foundation!"
He stretched out his hand, as if feeling for a way. "Christ," gently whispered his friend; "He is a firm foundation." "For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." 1 Cor. 3:11.
"Not for me!" he moaned, and pen cannot describe the immeasurable woe in that awful answer.
Can anyone read this solemn incident and not be moved to the deepest depths of his moral being? Can a true believer in the Lord Jesus read it, and not with adoration, heartfelt and solemn, bless God that his feet stand firm upon the "Rock of Ages"?
Can any mere professor of Christianity read it and not tremble, as his conscience whispers to him that his feet are resting only upon the quicksand of time, through which at any moment he may sink into eternity to meet an unknown God, and to stand before the judgment seat with his sins all unforgiven?
Can any skeptic read it and not, in spite of himself, find his heart quail before the stupendous and awful realities of an eternity, for which, even to the extent of one true thought, he is unprepared, utterly without foundation of any kind—a wild, unreasoning "leap in the dark"?
The frame-work of human wisdom, whether religious or atheistic, is as airy nothings when the presence of God and of eternity are brought to bear upon it. The foundations of time, secure and strong as they seem while the pulse of life beats full and steady, avail naught in the dread hour of death. The frown of "the king of terrors," well named so for an unbelieving soul, abashes all false confidence then. When the dark billows of death, with their deepening and resistless tides, surge in upon the struggling soul, vainly does it endeavor to keep its foothold upon the shores of time. Vain is the strength of man, or the help of man, in that hour. One foundation alone stands firm then: Jesus Christ, the righteous.
The soul that has built on this foundation stands firm amid the crash of created things, and in the dissolution of soul and body. With peculiar force at such a moment does the word of the living and eternal God, "still and small," sound its comforting and assuring utterances in the believer's ear, taking away all doubt and uncertainty. The flood may rise, the storm beat ever so vehemently upon the house, but, founded upon the rock, it cannot be shaken, and the heart reposes in peaceful joy upon the word of Him who said, "Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious stone, a sure foundation, and he that believeth on Him shall not be confounded."