The Wicked Man's Life, Funeral, and Epitaph

Spurgeon takes as his subject the person who regularly attends church, sits in judgment of others, or even stands in the pulpit — yet has no genuine faith — walking his listeners through the life, funeral, and epitaph of this "wicked man" to expose how hollow and ultimately tragic such a life turns out to be. He observes that repeated exposure to the gospel without a changed heart only hardens a person further, and that when such a person dies, all the pomp of their funeral is a dark joke — their hopes, pretensions, and reputation are buried with them, and they are quickly forgotten even by those who knew them. Spurgeon closes with a pointed challenge: if you are going to attend church without truly belonging to God, you are living in the most pitiful kind of hypocrisy, earning more scorn than open sinners, and the only fitting epitaph for such a life is "vanity" — urging every listener to stop pretending and instead turn to Jesus Christ in genuine faith.Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on June 13, 1858.