For the truth of these things, I appeal, if not to yourselves, (as in many instances, I reasonably may) but if not, to those around you. How many examples have occurred, within the compass of your own experience, of extraordinary visitations having produced but a very short-lived influence upon the heart and character? How often have we seen the careless awakened by an alarming sickness, by an approach of the king of terrors, (which can hardly be supposed less convincing than an angel from heaven, or a spirit from the blest), and yet awakened only to return, on the removal of danger, to the slumbers of insensibility and sin. The solemn promises, which the terrified sinner made to his friends, his minister, and his God, were but the offspring of fear; the creatures of imagination; born only for the moment; soon disappearing, when the crisis was past.
And when the stroke of death has actually fallen upon a relative or friend, we have sometimes seen it overwhelm the soul of a heedless survivor, and bring him to himself, to serious thought and repentance; he began to sit loose to the remaining interests of life; he looked with anxiety to the world unknown, and formed resolutions of devoting his years to a constant provision for futurity; but all to no ultimate purpose; the subject had sued for his attention before, and been rejected. When his affections have had time to cool, he finds that no new importance has really been given to the truth; the evidences of it rest as they did; others have lost friends as well as he; it is the common lot of mortality; and he cannot keep alive the impression for ever; the world must be attended to; and one object after another continues to gain an ascendancy, till his new-born hopes and fears are extinct; till his principles and conduct and views return to their old level, from which they will in future become the more difficult to be raised.
It is unnecessary for me to insist, that this is no ideal picture, drawn for the mere occasion of placing the subject in a strong light; your own acquaintance with the world may furnish you with living resemblances of it; and it is unhappily the lot of Christian Ministers, who have more frequent opportunity of witnessing such impressions, to observe, in the end, their repeated and lamentable failure; to perceive how far they fall short of lasting conviction and salvation.