Sodom will be better off!

Excerpt from The Doomed City (1887) by John MacDuff

"I assure you, Sodom will be better off on the judgment day than you." Matthew 11:24

Alas! alas! Is it not to be feared that many are content with having "a name to live," who are spiritually dead. There are thousands who come to our churches, who hear the preacher, who assent to the message, but go back from listening to the tremendous themes of Death, Judgment, and Eternity, to plunge deep as ever into engrossing worldliness and sin.

The preacher may be heard; his words may fall like lulling music on the ear, but the gates of the soul are firmly locked and barred against admission. The preacher may thunder his rebukes, but some heart sin and life sin, will, in spite of them, be retained and caressed.

Are there none now reading these words, whom the Savior would begin to "upbraid," because they have not repented? When His scrutinizing eye looks down, Sabbath after Sabbath, upon listening audiences throughout our land, all apparently solemn, sincere, outwardly devout, does He not discern, lurking underneath this fair external guise, the signs and symptoms of loathsomeness and decay; like the pure virgin snow covering the charred and blackened ruin?

Ah! sermons will not save us!
Church going will not save us!
Orthodoxy in creed and party will not save us!

Repent! Repent! is the sharp, shrill call of the Gospel trumpet!

There must be . . .
a change of heart;
a change of life;
a crucifixion of sin;
and with full purpose of heart, a cleaving unto the Lord who died for us!