To Hell

2 Corinthians 6:2
today is the day to be saved!
GNT

IV. But this is a dreary thought—Now IN HELL! Some of my hearers who listened to me last year and in the years that are past, are now—NOW—in Hell! Now, where no hope can come! Now, where no Gospel shall ever be preached! Now, where they bitterly regret their wasted Sabbaths and despised opportunities! Now, where memory holds a dreadful reign, reminding them of all their sins! Now, "Where their worm dies not, and the fire is not quenched"—where they gnaw their fire-tormented tongues in vain! Now, where God's fury is manifested to the full in Tophet's hideous fire!

Now, where devils, once their tempters, become their tormentors! Now, where sinners who kept jovial company, help to increase the doleful misery of sighs and groans and weeping and gnashing of teeth! Now, accursed of God, accursed forever and ever! And within a moment, that may be the lot of every sinner here! Within the twinkling of an eye, there is not a man or woman among us out of Christ who may not know this. One drop of blood goes wrong—a thousand chances, as we say—may cause it and Hell is your portion.

Every anatomist knows that hundreds of times in an hour, through the internal economy of the human frame, our life is in danger. No, there is not a second in which it is not so. "Great God! On what a feeble thread hang everlasting things!"—

"Our life contains a thousand springs, And dies if one is gone. Strange that a harp of a thousand strings Should keep in tune so long."

While we are in this danger, we are passing on to our doom—

"We nightly pitch our moving tent A day's march nearer home." But where is that home to be with you unconverted ones?

When the express trains first began to run to Scotland there was seen at the station, one evening, a gentleman tall and thin, whose cheek had the consumptive mark upon it. The porters asked him several questions about his luggage, of which there was a good deal. And when he had been asked several times by different persons, another came up and said, "Where are you going, Sir?" Being of short temper and in great haste, he said, "To Hell!" A servant of Christ passed by that moment and heard the answer. He sought to get in the same carriage and did so, but at the other end of it.

Now this gentleman was talking very freely to different persons upon common topics and the man thought, "I will get a word in if I can." So he joined in the general tenor of the conversation till they alighted at a refreshment station, when, taking the opportunity, he said to the gentleman, "When do you expect to get to the end of your journey?" "Oh," said he, "I am going to cross at such-and-such a town by the boat tonight and hope to get to my journey's end about twelve o'clock tomorrow morning."

The man said, "I think you misunderstand my question. You said when the porter asked you just now where you were going, that you were going to a very different place." "Ah, yes, I remember I did," said the gentleman, "but I am sometimes very hasty." The other said to him, "Was it true? Are you going to Hell? If so, when do you expect to get there?" And he began to talk to him about that sickness which he could see so certainly in his cheeks and warned him that unless he sought another road and fled to Christ, the only Refuge, he would certainly reach that dreadful end.

There are some in this place, who if they were labeled this morning as to where they are going, would have to be directed "to Hell." You know that this is the case! And when will you get to your journey's end? Some here may live another fifty years. I pray God that that question of mine may haunt you and if it is never blessed to you before, may it be then—"When will you yet to your journey's end? When will you arrive in Hell?"

This morning some of you may, in your hearts, say, "I am journeying there, but, by the Grace of God, I have come to a dead halt and not another inch will I go! Lord, make me ready to go to Heaven! Give me Grace now to trust the Savior that I may live." May God bless these feeble words of mine to His glory and your profit. Amen.