If any read this narrative who are putting off the concerns of their immortal souls to a death-bed, and are deluding themselves with the notion, that the distress of a sick-bed and the fear of death will break the power of sin in their hearts, and that they will then repent and believe; while you think this, you show that you do not know what repentance and faith are; for, did you know what they are, you would already have repented and believed. You can not know them until you are in actual possession of them. Your conduct is, therefore, ignorant and presumptuous. Faith and repentance are present duties; and if you will not repent of your sins _now_, and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation, what security have you that you will do so hereafter? you may be brought to a sick-bed; and there the approach of death, and the fear of hell, and remorse of conscience, arising out of convictions of sin, may greatly alarm you; but this will not change your heart, nor save your soul. Such a state of mind is neither repentance nor conversion. How often was I in danger, and imagined I repented; and, when I was at the point of death, I thought I had repented in truth. But my conduct after I had recovered showed that I had deceived myself; and had I died in the state I then was in, I must have perished. When you are laid on a sick-bed, you may find that you have no hope of heaven if you die at present; you may wish to recover, that you may change your conduct; you may cry to God to spare you; but he may not hear you; and when you see that death is actually approaching, you may be driven to despair, and die without hope: or, in order to calm a troubled conscience, you may persuade yourselves, that you have repented, and that, as you are not allowed to live, God will accept of the sincerity of your repentance; and you may thus "go down to the grave with a lie in your right hand." But if you despise the offer of a Saviour now, and put off these things to a death-bed, which many never see, but are called suddenly out of the world, the probability is, that when you are actually laid upon it, however old you may be, and however evident the approach of your latter end may be to all who see you, you will not think you are going to die _yet_, but will still indulge the hope of longer life;--until death lays his cold hand on your heart, and closes your eyes for ever on a present world.