"You are a respectable attendant at a place of worship; you go because others go, not because your heart is right with God.
This is your beginning. I will suppose that for the next twenty or thirty years you will be spared to go on as you do now, professing religion by an outward attendance upon the means of grace, but having no heart in the matter.
Tread softly, for
I must show you the deathbed
of such a one as yourself.
Let us gaze upon him gently.
A clammy sweat is on his brow, and he wakes up crying, "O God, it
is hard to die. Did you send for my minister?" "Yes, he is coming." The minister comes. "Sir, I fear that I am dying!" "Have you any hope?" "I cannot say that I have. I fear to stand before my God; oh! pray for me."
The prayer is offered for him with sincere earnestness, and the way of salvation is for the ten-thousandth time put before him, but before he has grasped the rope, I see him sink.
I may put my finger upon those cold eyelids, for they will never see anything here again. But where is the man, and where are the man's true eyes? .....he was so accustomed to hear the gospel that his soul slept under it. Alas! if you should lift up your eyes there, how bitter will be your wailings."
Charles Spurgeon
