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justice and His mercy both demand that He abandon you at death's door as you in life abandoned Him. The salvation of the entire human race is God's first great concern; individual interests are secondary. Would it then be just or merciful to equalize at death the saint and sinner, to disgust the good with a system of salvation that allows the sinner's darkened lifeday to close with a sunburst of glory; to encourage the wicked to continue in their sin confident of God's favor at the last? Why, Christ Himself has sworn He will deny before His Father in heaven all such as have habitually denied Him before men on earth. Hence the saying that as a man lives so he dies. " They," says Scripture, " they that are converted in the evening shall suffer hunger like dogs." You treat God like a dog, for to turn to Him only in the evening of your existence is like feeding a dog with the refuse of a feast. What wonder then if at your death God fail to grant you a morsel of repentance, however much you hunger for it and entreat. But a humble and a contrite heart, you say, the merciful Lord will never despise. True, but the measure of grace He will accord you, though enough to sanctify the average man, will not suffice to save a soul with such a past as yours. Your ruling passion, be it drink, or lust, or hate, or what not, will be strong in death, because death being the crisis in the battle between the powers of light and darkness, the devil, like a skilful general, will marshal all his forces for the final struggle. That is what Christ means when, addressing such as you, He says: " Unless you do pen-