prayed daily on the street corners, and saw no need for repentance; the
youth and the maiden, with their lips to the brimming cup of worldly
pleasures, saying to the faithful monitor, yet a little while longer and
we will hear thee; the man and woman grown, fighting the battle for
bread, living toilfully for time and the things that perish, and hearing
the warning voice faintly and ever more faintly as the years pass; the
aged, steeped and sodden in sin unrepented of, and with the spiritual
senses all dulled and blunted by lifelong rebellion, willing now to hear
and obey, it might be, but calling in vain on the merciful and
long-suffering God they had so long rejected.

Then, suddenly, he passed from pleading to denunciation. The setting of
The Great White Throne and the awful terrors of the Judgment Day were
depicted in words that fell from the thin lips like the sentence of an
inexorable judge.

"'Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the
devil and his angels!'" he thundered, and a shudder ran through the
crowded church as if an earthquake had shaken the valley. "There is your
end, impenitent soul; and, alas! for you, it is only the beginning of a
fearful eternity! Think of it, you who have time to think of everything
but the salvation of your soul, your sins, and the awful doom which is
awaiting you! Think of it, you who are throwing your lives away in the
pleasures of this world; you who have broken God's commands; you who
have stolen when you thought no eye was on you; you who have so often
committed murder in your hating hearts! Think not that you will be
suffered to escape! Every servant of the most high God who has ever
declared His message to you will be there to denounce you: I, Silas
Crafts, will meet you at the judgment-seat of Christ to bear my witness
against you!"