Last sermons

It has been said often that a man ought to preach as a dying man to dying men, because we do not know but what it will be the last such occasion in any of our cases. It is my privilege to have recordings of the last sermons of three ministers that I knew personally. Two of them died relatively suddenly, but the third suffered severely from respiratory disease, and when he preached, he probably knew that there was a very real possibility that it was the last time. I listened to this sermon on the way to work today, and there is a peculiar sweetness about it that is difficult to describe.