I. First, here is A LAMENTABLE STATE: “I sleep.”
I think I can describe this state pretty well, because I experience it too often, and I am afraid many of you could also describe it with some degree of accuracy, for frequently you too fall into it. What is it for a Christian to sleep? Well, thank God, there is a sleep which the believer never knows. He can never again sleep that deadly sleep in which Christ found him while he was in his sinful state; he shall never sleep the judicial sleep into which some were cast as the result of sin; he shall not sleep, as do others, to his eternal ruin: yet he may sleep dangerously and sinfully; and this is the state in which the Christian is found when he thus sleepeth, — in a state of inaction. You are doing something for God, but you are rather doing it, as a matter of custom than as a matter of loving earnestness. You do pray; you do go up to the house of God; you do teach in the Sabbath-school; but you do these things mechanically, as a man walks who is sound asleep. You are in a sort of spiritual somnambulism. The work that you are called upon to perform, you do after a fashion; but there is none of the power of God in the work, there is no earnestness thrown into it. It is done, and there is an end of it; but your heart has been absent from it.
Coupled with this, there is a want of vigor in everything to which such a man sets his hand. If he preaches, there is no force or burning energy, no boiling, scalding periods; he just takes his text, and speaks upon it. Perhaps God’s people are edified, perhaps sinners are saved; but that man has no enjoyment, in his work during the whole time that he performs it thus sluggishly. A man, to enjoy the work of the Lord, must throw his whole strength into it. It is the same, when you come to prayer. You do pray after a sort; but it is not that wrestling with the angel which getteth the blessing from him. You do knock at the door, but not with that force which causeth it to open. You have forgotten your former vigor. Whereas, once your place of prayer was the witness of groans and tears, now you can go, into it, and come out of it, without so much as a single sob. And it is just the same when you read the Scriptures. Once, the page sparkled with promises, and your soul was satisfied with marrow and fatness; but when you read it now, it is very dull, and you no longer derive refreshing consolation from it. Like the temple out of which God has removed, you walk through it; there are the pillars, there stand all the symbols of worship; the altar is there, but God, the King, has gone; and a voice has been heard to say, “Arise, let us go hence;” and so, you go through the sacred edifice, and find nothing there. In this same sleepy state, we go up to the house of God to listen to his Word; and if our sleep has got a strong hold upon us, we cannot get any comfort. We begin to rail at the minister; because we are not edified as we used to be, we think that a change has come over him. That is possible; but it is just as likely, and more so that our want of enjoyment of God’s Word is owing to ourselves. We sit and hear as God’s people hear, and we sing as God’s people sing, and pray as they pray, after the outward form; but we go out as a man rises from his bed whereon he hath tossed all night, and we feel that we are not a whit refreshed; and the Sabbath, that was once a joy and delight to us, has perhaps become a weariness and a burden.
There is no enjoyment while a man is thus asleep; and, as there is no enjoyment, there is no consciousness of pain. Ah, beloved, I have known seasons when I would almost have given my right arm to be able to shed tears of repentance, — wherein I wished that I might again have a broken heart, — when I have longed to make my soul feel even the pains of hell rather than not feel anything; for this is one of the worst, states a Christian can be in, — to go nodding on through life, slumbering over eternal realities, dreaming over heaven, and nodding his head, and continuing still to sleep, when he is in the presence of the Most High God, and should have gathered up all his powers, and strung them to the highest pitch of intensity. Have not you been in such a state? If you have not, happy man are you! There are most holy men, some of the giant servants of God, who have fallen into this state, and have been compelled to cry out, “I sleep,” finding themselves happy indeed if they could add, “I sleep, but my heart waketh.”
Such a state as this is very sinful. Is it not sinful, O my soul, to be trifling with the eternal state, to be playing at prayer? Canst thou be so dull and heavy about eternal things, when worldlings are so thoroughly awake about their silver and gold and commercial pursuits? When souls are being hurried to eternity, how is it that I can still be indifferent? While time is speeding on, and eternity is so near, how can I still betake me to my slothful couch, and cry, “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of thy hands to sleep?” Chosen in Christ, redeemed with his precious blood, quickened by the Divine Spirit, and made partakers of the divine nature, how can it be consistent with our position and condition to sleep as do others? The light of God’s grace has shone upon us, is this a time to slumber? Let the world sleep if it will, for its object and aims are not worthy of the Christian’s high ambition; but shall you and I sleep, when heaven is before us, and hell behind us, when there is temptation everywhere surrounding us, and angels beckon us to heaven, while a glorious company of saints holds us in full survey? Come, my brethren, we must feel that such a state as this is sinful in the highest degree.
And how dangerous is it, too! A man, who sleeps in his enemy’s camp, is exposed to imminent peril. There lies Sisera asleep in Jael’s tent. Little dost thou know, O silly dreamer, when that woman’s hand lifts up the mallet to drive the nail through thy brain! If thou desirest to sleep, Christian, wait until thou gettest home; there thou shalt have rest enough for ever in thy Father’s house; but, to sleep here, is to sleep in the dragon’s jaw, to sleep on the top of the mast when the ship is driving before the storm. Nay, await thou, and bethink thee of thy position and condition, and sleep no longer. O God, have mercy upon thy people who have long prosperity! There is the pinnacle of the temple; and blessed is the man whose feet slip not when he standeth here. I do not think we sleep so much, spiritually, when we have bodily affliction; though pains of body frequently make a Christian long for his rest; nor do I think we have slumbering times when we are losing our friends. Men cannot easily sleep when the funeral knell is tolling in their ears, and when they are following dear departed ones to the grave. Nor do I think we sleep much when we are the subjects of very violent temptations, and have a great many doubts and fears; but when we are in our vessel, when the day is fine, and the sail is spread, and the wind blows softly, and the ship goes on steadily without a motion, gliding as o’er a sea of glass, then it is that the mariner, perhaps, forgets the rock and the shoal. The poet was right when he said, —
“More the treacherous calm I dread,
Than tempests lowering overhead.”
I do not like trouble; and pray God to deliver me from it. I cannot well endure bodily pain; I find myself impatient under tribulation; but I am able to say this, that if I had my choice between the severest affliction and a state of sinful slumbering, I would prefer to have the affliction. “There is no devil,” said one, “like having no devil;” that is to say, there is no temptation like the temptation of not being tempted. The worst form of danger is when a man is left to himself, when he is not much tossed about, when he is quiet and easy. It ought not to be so. The greater our prosperity, the better should we love God; and the more our spirit is at ease, the more we should serve him with both our hands, and render him hearty thanksgiving for his favor towards us: it should be so, but it is not so. In these smooth waters, we are sure to meet with mischief; and, therefore, may the Lord, in his mercy, watch over us when we are in much prosperity!
Do I hear somebody ask, “How may I know when I am asleep? “If you are a true Christian, you will soon know it by a sort of instinct, when an unutterable sense of misery comes over you. The sleep of a sinner I may compare, to the sleep produced by opium, which gives its victim dreams of the most magnificent character, carrying the soul up to heaven, and then, anon, dashing it down to the depths. All sorts of fantastic imaginings are the offspring’s of that deadly drug; yet the man enjoys himself while under its influence; but though it causes some happiness in the use of it, it will bring him to hell as surely as murder itself. The sleep of a Christian, when he falls into this state, is rather like the sleep produced by henbane: it is a kind of uneasy, short, disturbed, unreeling rest. It does a man little harm compared with the other; and his constitution recovers from the shock much more readily. Such, I say, is the Christian’s sleep: there is no pleasure in it as there is in the sinner’s sleep; but his sleep is uneasy, his conscience pricks him, his heart wakes, and he finds no peace in it. It lasts but for a little time, and it does him much damage; but, still, not the deadly damage that the world’s sleep of sin brings to its votaries. God save you from it! May he ever keep you from falling into that kind of sleep!
I think many of you will not need me to warn you of it. Still, if you do want to know, let me ask you to compare yourself with what you used to be. Are you as lively in divine things as you once were? Is prayer as fervent and refreshing to your souls as it once was? Do you find that willingness to pray that you once had? Do you find that you have to find yourself into your closet, and, when you get there, do you offer up your prayers and desires with coldness which you were wont to offer with was and loving fervor? Do you still continue to have the blessedness you had when first you knew the Lord? If not, that is a symptom of sleep. Then, compare yourself with what you ought to be. Think how you ought to have grown during the years that you have been a believer. Are you what you ought to have been? Then, if you are not, you must be asleep, or else you would have made better progress. Compare yourself with what others have been, and you will see cause for shame; and if so, my brethren, you are asleep; you are in a dangerous condition, and I pray the living God, by the demand for watchfulness when the prince of this world cometh, by the agonies of Christ in Gethsemane, yea, by the blood of him who poured out his soul unto death, to arouse you out of this deadly sleep; for it is a state that will lead to some great and grievous sin, some black and terrible fall, unless God shall prevent it by his grace. First you sleep, then you slumber, then you sin, then you sin again, then you go deeper still, and so will you continue, unless God, in his grace, steps in to deliver you from the consequences of this dreadful sleep.