The man was laid out just where he was killed, in the Parker House, on the east side of the Plaza in San Francisco. Taking my stand near the corpse, I sang:
That awful day will surely come,
Th’ appointed hour makes haste,
When I must stand before my Judge,
And pass the solemn test.
What, to be banished from the Lord,
And yet forbid to die?
To linger in eternal pain,
And death forever fly?
“O, wretched state of deep despair,
To see my God remove,
And fix my doleful station where
I must not taste His love!”
The singing and the occasion drew together nearly three hundred men who stood uncovered before me. I announced as my text the last two verses of the book of Ecclesiastes: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.”
“Gentlemen,” I began, “I always endeavor, in my public discourses, to adapt my remarks to my audience. I take it for granted that the greater portion, if not all of you, are sportsmen; as such I shall address you.
“The conclusion of the whole matter, the great summary of life’s duties, what is it? ‘Fear God, and keep His commandments.’ Do you understand it? You are not a set of ignoramuses. I know from your appearance that you have had early educational advantages. Some of you have had pious mothers to instruct you, and many of you, I doubt not, have been brought up in the Sunday school, and you have all had the opportunity of reading the Word of God and of hearing it preached from your boyhood to the present.
“You cannot plead ignorance. You know your duty: to ‘keep His commandments.’ How comprehensive the commandments of God, embracing every duty growing out of the relations we sustain to God and to each other! Had you given your hearts to God, believed in Jesus Christ, received the regenerating power of His grace in your souls, and were you today consecrated to His service, what happy men you would be! What an influence you might wield for God and His holy cause in California; help to build up good society, and to make this fair land a safe and happy home for your wives and children. The boys and girls now growing up in our midst would repeat your names with grateful hearts, and call you blessed, when your bodies are beneath the ground, and your souls happy in the abode of angels and of God.
“But what are you about? What are you doing here in California? Look at that bloody corpse! What will his mother say? What will his sisters think of it? To die in a distant land, among strangers, is bad; to die unforgiven, suddenly, unexpectedly, is worse; to be shot down in a gambling-house, at the midnight hour–O, horrible! And yet this is the legitimate fruit of the excitement and dissipation, chagrin and disappointment, consequent upon your business; a business fatal to your best interests of body and soul, for time and for eternity.
“Again, look at its influence upon society. The unwary are decoyed and ruined. Little boys, charmed by your animating music, dazzled by the magnificent paraphernalia of your saloons, are enticed, corrupted, and destroyed to the hopeless grief of their mothers, whose wailings will be entered against you in the book of God. Remember that for all these things God will bring you into judgment. ‘For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil.'”
Every gambler listened with profound attention, and then formed the largest funeral procession I believe that I had, up to that time, ever witnessed in San Francisco. They returned, I presume, to their cards.
One of them afterward said to a friend of mine: “That Plaza preacher is the strangest man I ever saw. He preached B.’s funeral, and said everything in this world he could think of against us, and yet he did not give us any chance to get hold of him.” He then paused a few moments, and, turning on his heel, said, “Didn’t he give it to us?”
Five years afterward, when I was travelling in the mountains, I was informed of two of the same gamblers, who had recently asserted that they never had been able to forget nor to shake off the impressions of truth made on their minds at B’s funeral.