ted on the
dying bed, but, unexpectedly to themselves, got well; and he says, How
many of those, do you suppose, who thought it was their dying bed, and
who, after they repented on that dying bed, having got well, lived
consistently, showing that it was real repentance, and not mock
repentance--how many? not one! not one!

II. Again: this stroke may come to you in the withdrawal of God's
spirit.

I see people before me who were, twenty years ago, serious about their
souls. They are not now. They have no interest in what I am saying.
They will never have any anxiety in what any minister of the Gospel
says about their souls. Their time seems to have passed. I know a man,
seventy-five years of age, who, in early life, became almost a
Christian, but grieved away the spirit of God, and he has never
thought earnestly since, and he can not be roused. I do not believe he
will be roused until eternity flashes on his astonished vision.

It does seem as if sometimes, in quite early life, the Holy Spirit
moves upon a heart, and being grieved away and rejected, never comes
back. You say that is all imaginary? A letter, the address of which I
will not give, dated last Monday morning, came to me on Tuesday,
saying this: "Your sermon last night (that is, last Sabbath night)
did not fit my case, although I believe it did all others in the
Academy; but your sermon of a week ago did fit my case, for I am 'past
feeling.' I am not ashamed to be a Christian. I would as soon be known
to be a Christian as anything else. Indeed, I wish I was, but I have
not the least power to become one. Don't you know that with some
persons there is a tide in their spiritual natures which, if taken at
the flood, leads on to salvation? Such a tide I felt two years ago. I
want you to pray for me, not that I may be led to Christ--for that
prayer would not be answered--but that I may be kept from the
temptation to suicide!"

What I had to say to the author of that I said in a private letter;
but what I have to say to this audience is: Beware lest you grieve the
Holy Ghost, and He be gone, and never return. Next Wednesday, at two
or three o'clock, a Cunard steamer will put out from Jersey City wharf
for Liverpool. After it has gone one hour, and the vessel is down by
the Narrows, or beyond, go out on the Jersey City wharf, and wave your
hand, and shout, and ask that steamer to come back to the wharf. Will
it? Yes, sooner than the Holy Ghost will come back when