Death is a mighty leveller. He spares none, he waits for none, and stands on no ceremony. He will not tarry till you are ready. He will not be kept out by moats, and doors, and bars, and bolts. The Englishman boasts that his home is his castle, but with all his boasting, he cannot exclude death. An Austrian nobleman forbade death and the smallpox to be named in his presence. But, named or not named, it matters little, in God's appointed hour death will come. One man rolls easily along the road in the easiest and handsomest carriage that money can procure. Another toils wearily along the path on foot. Yet both are sure to meet at last in the same home. One man, like Absalom, has fifty servants to wait upon him and do his bidding. Another has none to lift a finger to do him a service. But both are travelling to a place where they must lie down alone. One man is the owner of hundreds of thousands. Another has scarce a shilling that he can call his own property. Yet neither one nor the other can carry one farthing with him into the unseen world. One man is the possessor of half a county. Another has not so much as a garden of herbs. And yet two paces of the vilest earth will be amply sufficient for either of them at the last. One man pampers his body with every possible delicacy, and clothes it in the richest and softest apparel. Another has scarce enough to eat, and seldom enough to put on. Yet both alike are hurrying on to a day when "ashes to ashes, and dust to dust," shall be proclaimed over them, and fifty years hence none shall be able to say, "This was the rich man's bone, and this the bone of the poor." I know that these are ancient things. I do not deny it for a moment. I am writing stale old things that all men _know_. But I am also writing things that all men do not _feel_. Oh, no! if they did feel them they would not speak and act as they do. You wonder sometimes at the tone and language of ministers of the Gospel. You marvel that we press upon you immediate decision. You think us extreme, and extravagant, and ultra in our views, because we urge upon you to close with Christ,--to leave nothing uncertain,--to make sure that you are born again and ready for heaven. You hear, but do not approve. You go away, and say to one another,--"The man means well, but he goes too far." But do you not see that the reality of death is continually forbidding us to use other language? We see him gradually thinning our congregations. We miss face after face in our assemblies. We know not whose turn may come next. We only know that as the tree falls there it will lie, and that "after death comes the judgment." We _must_ be bold and decided, and uncompromising in our language. We would rather run the risk of offending some, than of losing any. We would aim at the standard set up by old Baxter:-- "I'll preach as though I ne'er should preach again, And as a dying man to dying men!"