demands--repentance and the forsaking of every sin.

A child was once playing with a vase, and put his hand in and could
not draw it out again. His father tried to help him, but in vain. At
last he said:

"Now, make one more try. Open your fingers out straight, and let me
pull your arm."

"Oh, no, papa," said the son, "I'd drop the penny if I opened my
fingers like that!"

Of course he couldn't get his hand out when his fist was doubled. He
didn't want to give up the penny. Just so with the sinner. He won't
cut loose from his sins.

Your path and mine will perhaps never cross again. But if I have any
influence with you, I beseech and beg of you to break with sin now,
let it cost you what it will. Herod might have been associated with
Joseph of Arimathea, and with the twelve apostles of the Lamb, if he
had taken the advice of John. There might have been a fragrance
around his name all these centuries. But alas! when we speak of
Herod, we see a sneer on the faces of those who hear us. If one had
said to Herod in those days, "Do you know that you are going to
silence that great preacher, and have him beheaded?" he would have
replied, "Is thy servant a dog that he should do such a thing? I
never would take the life of such a man." He would probably have
thought he could never do it. Yet it was only a little while after
that he had the servant of God beheaded.

Do you know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ proves either a savor of
life unto life, or of death unto death? You sometimes hear people
say: "We will go and hear this man preach. If it does us no good, it
will do us no harm." Don't you believe it, my friend! Every time you
hear the Gospel and reject it, the hardening process goes on. The
same sun that melts the ice hardens the clay. The sermon that would
have moved you a few years ago would make no impression now. Do you
not recall some night when you heard some sermon that shook the
foundations of your skepticism and unbelief? But you are indifferent
now.

I believe Herod was seven times more a child of hell after his
conviction had passed away than he was before. There is not a true
minister of the Gospel who will not say that the hardest people to
reach are those who have been impressed, and whose impressions have
worn away. It is a good deal easier to commit a sin the second time
than it was to commit it the first time, but it is a good deal
harder to repent the second time than the first.

If you are