hin him, and leave the man dead in trespasses and
sins, while his body walks this earth.

My friends, do not fancy these are merely farfetched words out of a
book, made to sound difficult and terrible in order to frighten you.
God forbid! When Scripture says this, it speaks a plain and simple
truth, and one which I know to be a truth from experience. I speak
that which I know, and testify that which I have seen. I have seen
(and what sadder or more fearful sight?) dead men and dying walk
this earth in flesh and blood; men busy enough, shrewd enough upon
some points, priding themselves, perhaps, upon their cleverness and
knowledge of the world, of whom all one could say was, The man is
dead; the man is lost, unless God brings him to life again by His
quickening Spirit: for goodness is dead in him; the powers of his
soul are dead in him; the hope of being a better man is dead in him;
all that God wishes to see him be and do, is dead; God's likeness
and glory in him is dead: he thinks himself wise, and he is a fool
in God's sight; for he sees not God's law, which is the only wisdom:
he thinks himself strong, but he is utterly weak and helpless; for
he is the slave of his own tempers, the slave of his own foul lust,
the slave of his own pride and vanity, the slave of his own
covetousness. Oh, my friends, people are apt to be afraid of what
they call seeing a ghost--that is, a spirit without a body: they
fancy that it would be a very shocking thing to meet one; but as for
me, I know a far more dreadful sight; and that is, a careless and a
hardened sinner--a body without a spirit. Which is uglier and
ghastlier--a spirit without a body, or a body without a spirit? And
yet such one meets, I dare not think how often.

What sadder sight, if you recollect that men need not be thus; that
God hates seeing them thus; that they become thus, and die down in
sin, in spite of God, with all heaven above, and God the Lord
thereof, crying to them, Why wilt thou die? What sadder sight? How
many have I seen, living, to all intents and purposes, as if they
had no souls; as if there were no God, no Law of God, no Right, no
Wrong; caring for nothing, perhaps, but drink and bad women; or
caring for nothing but scraping together a little more money than
their neighbours; or caring for nothing but dress, and vanity, and
gossiping, and tale-bearing; and yet, when one came to know them,
one saw that _that_ was not what God intended them