Privileges, Despised—To be Accounted for – Charles Spurgeon

THERE is a curtain, but it is lifting, it is lifting, it is lifting; and when it is lifted, what do I see? The spirit world! ‘Tis death that lifts the curtain; and when it is lifted, these present things will vanish, for they are but shadows. The world of eternity and reality will then be seen. I would summon a jury of the spirits that have passed that curtain; and they would not be long debating about the question whether Christ is worth the winning. I care not where you select them from—whether from among the condemned in Hell, or from among the beatified in Heaven. Let them sit—let even those who are in Hell sit, and judge upon the matter, and, if they could for once speak honestly, they would tell you that it is a dreadful thing to despise Christ; now that they have come to see things in a true light—now that they are lost forever, forever, forever—now that they are crushed with knowledge and feeling which have come too late to be profitable—now they wish that they had listened to the ministrations of truth, to the proclamations of the gospel. Ah! if they could have a sane mind back again, they would shriek, “Oh! for one more Sabbath. Oh! to listen once more to an honest preacher, though his words might be clumsy and uncouth! Oh! to hear a voice once more say, ‘Come to Jesus while the day of mercy lasts!’ Oh! to be once more pressed to come to the marriage-feast—once more bidden to look to Jesus and to live!” I tell you, sirs, some of you who make so light of Sundays, and think preaching is but a pastime, so that you come here to hear us as you would go to hear some fiddler on a week night—I tell you, sirs, the lost in Hell reckon these things at a very different rate, and so will you before long, when another preacher, with skeleton fingers, shall talk to you upon your death-bed. Ah! then you will see that we were in earnest and you were the players; and you will comprehend that what we said to you demanded earnest, immediate attention, though, alas! you would not give it, and so played false to your own soul, and committed spiritual suicide, and went your way like a bullock to the slaughter, to be the murderers of your own spirits!