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like trumpets, and spared not. Every sermon might be their last. Graves were lying open
around them; life seemed now not merely a handbreadth but a hairbreadth; death was
nearer now than ever; eternity stood out in all its vast reality; souls were felt to be
precious; opportunities were no longer to be trifled away; every hour possessed a value
beyond the wealth of kingdoms; the world was now a passing, vanishing shadow, and man's
days on earth had been cut down from threescore years and ten into the twinkling of an eye!
Oh, how they preached! No polished periods, no learned arguments, no labored paragraphs,
chilled their appeals or rendered their discourses unintelligible. No fear of man, no love of
popular applause, no ever- scrupulous dread of strong expressions, no fear of
excitement or enthusiasm, prevented them from pouring out the whole fervor of their
hearts, that yearned with tenderness unutterable over dying souls. "Old Time;" says Vincent,
"seemed to stand at the head of the pulpit with his great scythe, saying with a hoarse voice,
'Work while it is called today: at night I will mow thee down.' Grim Death seemed to stand at
the side of the pulpit, with its sharp arrow, saying, 'Do thou shoot God's arrows, and I will
shoot mine.' The grave seemed to lie open at the foot of the pulpit, with dust in her bosom,
saying:—

'Louden thy cry

To God, To men,

And now fulfill thy trust; Here thou must lie— Mouth stopped

Breath gone,

And silent in the dust.'

"Ministers now had awakening calls to seriousness and fervor in their ministerial work,
to preach on the side and brink of the pit into which thousands were tumbling. There was
such a vast concourse of people in the churches where these ministers were to be found that
they could not many times come near the pulpit doors for the press, but were forced to climb
over the pews to them; and such a face was seen in the assemblies as seldom was seen before
in London; such eager looks, such open ears, such greedy attention, as if every word would
be eaten which dropped from the mouths of the ministers."

Thus did they preach and thus did they hear in those days of terror and death. Men were in
earnest then, both in speaking and hearing. There was no coldness, no languor, no studied