John was the uncompromising, the faithful, the affectionate witness. We want a practical religion. If not practical, we had better throw it behind our backs; it will not profit us in the last day. What is the use of our religion if it is not to influence our life, if it is not to make you, dear children, better children, more obedient children, keeping your tongues from evil words, making you kind and gentle, your father’s joy and your mother’s darling, because they can trust you? As a dear little grandchild of mine said, “I don’t know what papa would do without me; I’m his right hand, he says,” and she added, “Oh, I don’t know what I should do without him!” Yes, we want practical religion. If we are not honest-hearted, faithful to our trust, if we do not to others as we would they should do to us, when we get to the gate of heaven and begin _then_ to look for our religion, to hunt for our certificate, it will not be found. The man without the wedding garment was speechless. I remember an account of a ship that struck on rocks; they rose sheer and precipitous—not a chance of escape. All at once a ladder was let down from the top of the rock, and the poor sailors, who had given up hope, escaped all safe to land. You are on the edge of the sea of eternity. The tide is coming in, the waves rolling up one after another; but there is a Rock. You must reach it, you must cling to it. How are you going to do it? You are not flies, children, that you can walk up a perpendicular wall. We have got something far more difficult to do—to live to God, to glorify God in our daily walk and conversation. In other words, you want “a ladder set up” (Gen. xxviii. 12). What is that Ladder? John the Baptist preached holiness, practice. He was a practical man, because he did not teach men to make bricks without straw—he pointed them to Christ. Standing by the river Jordan, and seeing Jesus coming, he directed all the people to Him with the words, “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.” That was his ladder. There is no godliness without Christ: “Without Me ye can do nothing.” The man who seeks safety on any other raft—lifeboat he may call it—is venturing on the ocean of Eternity in an unseaworthy craft. We must rest simply and wholly on Him, the Lamb of God, the Alpha and Omega—trust and know and love, as well as serve, the Lord Jesus. Now, time fails me, brethren, and I want very much to speak to you about the closing scene. I must do so as briefly as I can. 3. The closing scene of his life.