CHAPTER II.
The King's Table.
It was midnight in London, in the year 1665.

The houses were closed and barred, but strange lurid fires were lighted in every street, a stifling odour of burning pitch and sulphur filled the air, and from time to time came the heavy rumble of wheels, as a terrible cart, with its awful load, passed by in the darkness of the night.

With the cart came a cry; so loud, so clear, so piercing, that it could be heard in all the closed houses of the street.

'Bring out your dead, bring out your dead!' Then, one door after another was hurriedly opened, and from the plague-stricken houses one body after another was brought out, and was thrown hastily into that awful dead cart.
_Bring out your dead_! what a solemn, terribly solemn cry! How it must have filled with awe and dread all who heard it! And if that call were repeated, if the holy angels of God were to go through the length and breadth of our land, and, stopping before each house, were to cry to those within, 'Bring out your dead, bring out your dead,' not your dead bodies, but your dead souls; bring out all in your house who are not alive unto God, who are dead in trespasses and sins, how many would have to be carried out of our houses?
Should we ourselves be left behind?
Are we alive or dead?
The angels have not yet come to sever the dead from the living, but the time for that great separation is drawing daily nearer, when the Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend; all the loathsomeness of death, and decay, and impurity shall be collected by angel hands, and, we read, they shall cast them, not into a vast pit such as was dug in London in the time of the plague, but into a furnace of fire, there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Surely, then, it is worth while to find out whether our soul is alive or dead.

What test then shall we use?
How shall we settle the matter clearly and definitely?
There is one thing, and one thing only, which proves that a man has life.