A FRIEND of ours was relating to us his walk over Vesuvius. Sulfur and smoke rose up out of the crater as he looked down, though the volcano was quiet. Even on a still day, to glance but for a moment into the smoke of the fire rising up out of the bowels of the earth, is a fearful sight. As our friend turned away, a man with a great stone in his uplifted hands called to him, but the ground burning to his feet, and the sulfur and smoke rising up around him, urged him along, and he did not stop at the man’s call.
Then the man pitched the great stone to the earth with all his force, and immediately the ground shook and trembled all around, and it seemed as if the whole surface might give way and all be swallowed up in a moment in the flames below. Trembling over the very fire beneath him, our friend hurried away.
What a voice to the unsaved sinner! Man, you are just over eternal burnings! Sometimes you have felt the terrors of hell and have trembled. You have looked, as it were, into the fiery future, and then you have hurried away. Perhaps at this moment you have a fresh sense of eternal woe, but, say you, “No more, no more; I must away from this.”
Like the man with the stone we cry to you, “Stop!” but no, you turn away. Then hearken: “After death the judgment.” These are awful words. The very ground on which you tread trembles. This life is but the thin crust, that may give way at any moment, and you may be plunged into eternity,