Many years ago, there was in Glasgow, a club of gentlemen of the first rank. They met professedly for card playing, but the members were distinguished by such a fearless lack of decency as to obtain the name of "The Hell Club."

Besides their nightly or weekly meetings, they had a grand annual festival, at which each member endeavoured to out-do his comrade in drunkenness, blasphemy, and immorality. Of all who shone on these occasions, none shone half so brightly as Archibald Boyle.

He had been at one time a youth of the richest promise, being possessed of dazzling talent and fascinating manners. No acquirement was too high for his ability; but, unfortunately, there was none too low for his ambition! Long before he was twenty-five years old he was one of the most accomplished blackguards the club could number on its lists.

One night on retiring to sleep, after returning from one of the annual meetings, Boyle dreamed that he was still riding, as usual, upon his famous black horse, toward his own house, and that he was suddenly accosted by someone, whose personal appearance he could not, in the dark of the night, distinctly discern, but who, seizing the reins, said in a voice apparently accustomed to command:

"You must go with me."

"And who are you?" exclaimed Boyle, with a volley of blasphemous curses, while he struggled to disengage his reins from the intruder's grasp.

"That you will see by and by," replied the same voice, in a cold, sneering voice that pierced through his very heart.

Boyle plunged his spurs into the panting sides of his horse. It reared and plunged - he lost his seat, and expected at the moment to feel himself dashed to the earth. But not so, for he continued to fall - fall - fall - with an ever-increasing velocity.

At length this terrific speed abated and, to his amazement and horror, he perceived that his mysterious attendant was close by his side.

"Where," he exclaimed, in frantic despair, "where are you taking me - where am I - where am I going?"

"To Hell," replied the same iron voice, and from the depths below, the sound so familiar to his lips was re-echoed.

Onward they hurried in darkness until they reached it. Multitudes were there, gnashing their teeth in the hopelessness of mad despair, cursing the day that gave them birth.

There sat his former friend, Mrs. D--, with her eyes fixed in intense earnestness, as she was accustomed to on earth, apparently absorbed in her favourite card game.

Boyle addressed her, "Come now, my dear, for old times' sake, do just stop for a moment's rest."

With a shriek that seemed to cleave through his very soul, she exclaimed: "Rest! There is no rest in Hell!" and from interminable vaults, voices as loud as thunder repeated the awful, the heart-rending sound, "There is no rest in Hell!"

"Take me," shrieked Boyle, "take me from this place. By the living God, whose Name I have so often outraged, I adjure you, take me from this place."

"Can you still name His Name?" said the fiend with a hideous sneer; "go then, but - in a year and a day we meet to part no more!"

Boyle awoke, and he felt as if the last words of the fiend were traced in letters of living fire upon his heart and brain.

He resolved, utterly and forever, to forsake "The Club," especially the annual meeting.

Well aware of this resolve, his tempters determined he should have no choice, and so Boyle found himself, he could not tell how, seated at that table, on that very day, where he had sworn to himself a thousand times, nothing on earth would make him sit.

His ears tingled as he listened to the opening sentence of the president's address: "Gentlemen, this is leap year, therefore it is a year and a day since our last annual meeting."

Boyle started at the ominous, the well-remembered words. His first impulse was to rise and flee, but then ..... the sneers.

The night was gloomy, with frequent and fitful gusts of chilly and howling winds, as Boyle with fevered nerves and a reeling brain, mounted his horse to return home.

The following morning the well-known black horse was found with saddle and bridle on, quietly grazing by the roadside, about halfway to Boyle's country house, and a few yards from it lay the stiffened corpse of its master.

My friend, although this is but a dream, it is nevertheless a well-authenticated fact. And God, who spoke by it to Archibald Boyle, now speaks to you.

The dream is terrible - yet not half so terrible as the reality. No dream can picture the full, long misery of the worm that dieth not, the fire that is not quenched, the woe that never ends. That which is bottomless can never be fathomed; that which is infinite can never be measured.

There is a Hell, a REAL HELL - of torment, of woe. There is a Heaven of glory, bright and eternal. Christ died to save you from that Hell - to bring you to that Heaven. Have you received Him as your Saviour, or are you slighting and rejecting Him? Beware, lest you trifle too often with God.

"He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy." (Proverbs 29 v.1).

Oh, then, take Christ and take Him - now as your Saviour and Lord.