to the proffered grace of conversion, when that grace might have been accepted. Indeed, to expect anything else is tantamount to hoping that God will not punish the wicked on that great day on which He intends to let them experience the full power of His justice, the full severity of His anger. No, presumptuous sinner! such a grace is not for you.
Shown by examples from Scripture after the manner of similes. Send forth sighs to heaven as you are lying on your bed of sickness, pray as fervently as you know how for that grace (although I much doubt whether you will then think very earnestly of that God whom yon have so constantly forgotten during life) pray, I say, but your own despairing conscience will give you the same answer that Samuel gave the unhappy Saul. The latter was surrounded by his enemies; he knew not what to do, and in his anguish he cried out to the dead prophet: O Samuel, holy Prophet! help me in my necessity; “I am in great distress; for the Philistines fight against me;…therefore I have called thee that thou mayest show me what I shall do.” “Why askest thou me?” was the answer, “seeing the Lord has departed from thee?” or as the Hebrew text has it, “since the Lord is thy enemy?” “Therefore hath the Lord done to thee what thou sufferest this day. He will rend thy kingdom out of thy hand.…And the Lord also will deliver Israel with thee into the hands of the Philistines,” and to-morrow you and your sons shall be slain, “because thou didst not obey the voice of the Lord.”[1] Your conscience, O sinner! will make you the same reproach on your death-bed. What do you ask or desire in your anguish from that Lord whom you have made your enemy, refusing to be reconciled to Him during life, and remaining His enemy till death? When the merciful God offered you the grace of repentance you should have cried out to Him; then you might have confessed your sins, and having begun to amend your life, have humbly begged for the grace of perseverance and a happy death. But in vain do you now expect that favor from your bitter enemy. In vain do you hope that He whom you refused to recognize during life, and whom you now know simply because you are in extreme necessity in vain do you hope that He will give you His kingdom of heaven, that you have troubled yourself so little about hither-
- ↑ Coarotor nimis; siquidem Philistiim pugnant adversum me; vocavi ergo te, ut ostenderes mihi quid faciam. Quid interrogas me, cum Dominus recesserit a te? Idcirco quod pateris, fecit tibi Dominus hodie. Scindet regnum tuum de manu tua. Et dabit Dominus etiam Israel tecum in manus Philistiim. Quia non obedisti voci Domini.—I. Kings xxviii. 15–19.
