ld have the most
indescribable horror about going out of this world if I thought I was
unprepared for the next--if I had no Christ in my soul; for it would
be a plunge compared with which a leap from the top of Mont Blanc
would be nothing.

But this brings me to the most tremendous thought of my text. The text
supposes that a man goes into ruin, and that an effort is made
afterward for his rescue, and then says the thing can not be done. Is
that so? After death seizes upon that soul, is there no resurrection?
If a man topples off the edge of life, is there nothing to break his
fall? If an impenitent man goes overboard, are there no
grappling-hooks to hoist him into safety? The text says distinctly:
"Then a great ransom can not deliver thee."

I know there are people who call themselves "Restorationists," and
they say a sinful man may go down into the world of the lost; he stays
there until he gets reformed, and then comes up into the world of
light and blessedness. It seems to me to be a most unreasonable
doctrine--as though the world of darkness were a place where a man
could get reformed. Is there anything in the society of the lost
world--the abandoned and the wretched of God's universe--to elevate a
man's character and lift him at last to heaven? Can we go into
companionship of the Neroes and the Herods, and the Jim Fisks, and
spend a certain number of years in that lost world, and then by that
society be purified and lifted up? Is that the kind of society that
reforms a man and prepares him for heaven? Would you go to Shreveport
or Memphis, with the yellow fever there, to get your physical health
restored? Can it be that a man may go down into the diseased world--a
world overwhelmed by an epidemic of transgressions--and by that
process, and in that atmosphere, be lifted up to health and glory?
Your common sense says: "No! no!" In such society as that, instead of
being restored, you would go down worse and worse, plunging every hour
into deeper depths of suffering and darkness. What your common sense
says the Bible reaffirms, when it says: "These shall go away into
three months of punishment." I have quoted it wrong. "These shall go
away into ten years of punishment." I have quoted it wrong. "These
shall go into a thousand years of punishment." I have quoted it wrong.
"These shall go into _everlasting_ punishment." And now I have quoted
it right; or, if you prefer, in the words of my text: "Then a great
ransom ca