And yet, if that thought does not stir you up to repentance, consider, once more, if you are unsaved, how horrible is the place appointed for you!
How fearful must be the doom which you will receive! You are not a young sinner-he would be damned. You are an old sinner-how increasingly awful must be your doom! You are not one who has sinned because of mere youthful passion; but you have sinned when passion has died away, and when prudence has taken possession of your soul; you have sinned when the heat and emotion of youth have died; you have sinned, therefore, worse than a young man can have done. O old man, O old woman, may a child warn you? I am sure I love you with all my heart, and even now my young eyes weep for you. Have you never seen an old man led by a little child when he was blind? It may be that, though you are blind, a little child will lead you to the Savior; it is a child who now speaks to you. O gray-headed man and gray-headed woman, wouldn’t it be to you an eternal source of misery if I, a youth, were saved, and you, who are elderly, were lost? Oh! when you see a young Christian, doesn’t a tear run down your cheek? When you see a child in grace, doesn’t a sigh of repentance ever come from your heart?
I think, if I were old like you, and saw some young child saved, I would wring my hands in misery, and say, “O Lord, is such a child a Christian, and yet I am unsaved, I am unforgiven, I am still unpardoned?” Tremble, tremble, tremble, O aged sinner! Be afraid, be afraid, be afraid, O unregenerate old man and old woman! Let your knees knock together, let your blood curdle in your veins, let your heart quiver, let your flesh be ready to creep at the thought that you will be lost; and that, as the Lord God lives, there is but a step between you and death-between you and hell!
But there are THE YOUNG; and they are, perhaps, smiling, and saying, “Ah! all that is good advice for old people; it is good that old people should be religious, but why should we think about such things yet? We have not come to our eleventh hour yet.”
What did you say, young man? “I said, I had not come to my eleventh hour yet.” What did you say? Will you repeat that sentence? No; you dare not, for you don’t know when your eleventh hour may be. Does any man know which will be his eleventh hour? Does any one of you know how many more days you may have to live? I don’t; nor do you. Does any one of my friends conceive that the time of his death is a long way off? No, beloved, there is such a thing as death in the church pew! The angel of death may, at this very moment, be coming in at that door, and flapping his black wings across this place, to find someone who is marked for destruction; and before you will return home this evening, your soul may have departed, and you may have gone from this stage of existence.
Consider then, I say, for you are all, if you are not called by grace, like the man in the eleventh hour, standing idle in the marketplace. Consider, you who are very young, have you not given too much time to Satan and the world already? I don’t like the devil well enough to think that he ought to have the first twenty years of a man’s life. Consider, young man; hasn’t Satan had more than enough service from you? Do you think it will give you any comfort, on your deathbed, to reflect that you were for many years living in sin, and not saved early? And don’t you know that religion is so sweet that we should seek it for its sweetness, even if it were not necessary for our soul’s security? Ah! you men and women of the eleventh hour, for that is what each one of you are, may our Master come to you even at this moment; and if he finds you idle, may he say, “You also go and work in my vineyard”!
I will conclude with just a few words of encouragement to the eldest man and the oldest woman amongst us.
Don’t think that you are beyond hope because you are aged. Don’t believe Satan when he says to you, “Oh! you are too old a sinner to be saved.” Tell him that he is a liar, and that he does not know anything about it; for there are none that are too old to be saved. God will have mercy on all those that come to him. He has no objection to youth; he has no objection to old age. Listen, you aged sinners! If you are now under a sense of sin, if you are desirous of being saved, there is mercy in the Lord Jesus even for you. And O beloved friends, each and every one of you, are you this night crying out for mercy? Are you desirous of pardon? Do you feel that life is short, and death is sure? Don’t you know that, in a few short days, or months, or years, that a casket will hold your body, and your soul will have gone from it into eternity? Do you wish for a guide across the trackless desert which leads to heaven or to hell? Do you want a conductor to lead you into Paradise? Do you desire angelic wings to lift you up to the Celestial City? Do you seek for Christ’s blood to cleanse you, for God’s grace to sanctify you, then there is mercy for you; there is mercy for all who feel their need of it, and ask the Lord for it. The worse your character, the more reason you should go to the Lord Jesus. It is free grace that we preach; and the vilest, most guilty, oldest, youngest sinner-anybody who feels their need of a Savior, is welcome to that Savior now. The Lord give you grace to seek him! Remember that the least prayer will be heard; the weakest desire, the feeblest groan will be acknowledged in heaven; and doubtful as you are that you ever will find mercy, you most assuredly will, if you seek it through Christ.
Farewell! old man! Farewell! old woman! I don’t know who you are; but it was laid on my heart to seek you, and I have sought you. O poor old man and old woman, you are like one who once lost himself in a pine forest! The snow fell thickly around him; it was dark, damp, and cold. The howling of the wolf could be heard by him in the distance, and he feared that, during the darkness of the night, he would be consumed. There remained only one protection for him, and that was, that he would light a fire, by which he might warm himself, and frighten away the wild beasts. He gathered together the pinewood and the dry leaves, wherever he could find them; and he took out his matches. He tried to strike one match, but it was good for nothing. He tried another, and another, and another; and once he thought he had a light, and carefully held it in his fingers, seeking to bring it to the little kindling he had laid beneath his pile of wood; but it died out, to his bitter disappointment. For some time, he kept on striking his matches; he did so carelessly at first; but, as the number diminished, he struck each one more carefully, till he came to the last two. He struck one of the last two matches very carefully; he put it under his pinewood; it flamed a moment, and then a gust of wind blew it out, and now he came to his last match. The wolf was howling, the wild wind was whistling, the snow was falling, the night was darkening; he feared that he must be there all night without a fire! Already his stiff joints began to freeze; his fingers were already numb. You may guess how that man crouched down on the earth, to strike, within the circle his body might make, his last match. You may imagine how earnestly he put up his prayer to God, that he might succeed the last time. “O Lord, let this last match succeed,” he cried. And anxiously he look at the match for a while, fearful that it too might fail. He strikes that match. On it depends his life; it is his all; yet he strikes it. Ah, glorious! the flame has caught. It blazes! He sits down, and cheers himself. He is saved! He is saved! Saved from the cold and from the devouring wolf.
Now, in the same way, there is the gray-headed old man; he has his last match in the box. He has struck sixty-nine of them all to no effect, and now he has got to the very last match. O God, if you don’t cause that last match to strike for him, he is lost forever! If you don’t give him the light from heaven, fire from above, he must perish forever! God grant that that last match may succeed with you, O old man! And old woman!
God bless you, dear friends! A happy new year to every one of you! Many new years to those of you who are bound for heaven; and a new year in heaven to those whom God may take away before another year comes around! Amen!
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
