The Birmingham age-herald., 1904-07-17

Los Angeles, Cal. July 10--The preacher in this sermon shows by illustration and incident that true and enduring happiness and satisfaction are not to be found In worldly success. but in embracing the offer of salvation through Christ. The text is Mark xii. B. Thou art not far from the kingdom of God"
 What is to you the saddest word in all the English language2 Edgar Allan Poe. that brilliant genius of, American litera- ture. whose dissipations endungeoned him in chamber of horrors as ghastly as that in which Thomas De Quincey was com peled to live and whose raven of delirium tremens sounded his death knell when he had just reached forty years of age. has made the word .nevermore" awful in its significance. In 1t we hear the black bird of demoniacal despair croaking dirge. In it are heard the sobs of break ing hearts and are seen the ghostlike hor- TOTS of a living charnel house. Never more Nevermore! Nevermorer' To many that word will always be the saddest of all words.
 Thomas Carlyle, the great English es- sayist and philosopher, the master of mighty sentences and prose masterpieces, dipped his pen in the reddest of all inks when he wrote the word ought" The great author of the justly famous philo- sophical dissertation upon ''The French Revolution declared that the word ought is the saddest of all words. It has in it all the harsh and reverberating voices which run the gamut of remorse. Carlyle's conception of the imperial force of that word ought had in 1t the thun- -~GC ktx.. kfFn dor n to duty it still sounded. mingled with the taunts of the fiends of the eternal in- ferno, deriding and mocking the mi5era- ble sufferer wiLh the reminders of the bliss he might have enjoyed if he had done as he ought. Some have declared that the saddest of all words is gone, oth ITS death" others despair" But to- day l want to call your attention to an- other word which I think is the saddest word ever uttered by man. It was that which King Agrippa spake to Paul when on the Roman tribunal of Caesarea Philip pi he said: Almost Almost thou per- suadest me to be Christian" Ah. yes. King Agrippa was so near the kingdom of God that just one step forward would have placed the Roman ruler at the feet of Christ. Just one step more would have changed him fro1-. d pagan into an hum ble and repentant follower of the Naza- rene But that one step was never taken. King Agrippa was almost" persuaded to be a Christian, but his ''almost" never brought him into safety and eternal life.
 Today am going to try to help some of you to overcome that saddest of all words, almost" I am going to show some of you that, like the scribe of my text. who came to question Jesus. you are mot far from the kingdom of God" but I am also going to show you that to be "almost'' saved and yet not saved is to be lost oI.r as were the poor fellows who were im- prisoned a few years ago in the iron hulk of the steamers burning at the wharfs of Hoboken in New York harbor Frantical- ly they stood at the barred portholes. Frantically they stretched forth their arms through the iron gratings. They could see the blue waters of the harbor They could hear the calls of the would be rescuers hard at work. But they were lost, entirely lost. though there was "only one step" between them and perfect safety.
 Advantage of Christian Home.
 Almost saved! Yes, you are. How do I know it? I learn how near you have come to salvation as I look at the entries on those white pages sewed between the OId and the New Testaments of the fam fly Bible. By this record of the family births and deaths I find your father was a Cnf1Stlan. Tour mother was ChriS- tian Your sisters and rrothers were all Christians. 1 find also that your parents reconsecrated their lives for Gods ser vice when they held you before the sa- cred altar on the day yol were baptized It is a very e-.sy matter for you to be- come a Christian with such a family his- tory.
 '"Tis true,'' says some young man to me, "I was born in a Christian home. I am not near however, but very, very far from the kingdom of God Why. after I left my Christian home seemed to be