Spiritual Sleeping Pills
“SPIRITUAL SLEEPING PILLS”
EASY DAYS
When your nest is well feathered you are then most likely to sleep; there is little danger of your sleeping when there is a bramble bush in the bed. When all is downy, then the most likely thing will be that thou wilt say, “Soul, soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thy
rest, eat, drink, and be merry.” Let me ask some of you, when you were more straitened in circumstances, when you had to rely upon providence each hour, and had troubles to take to the throne of grace, were you not more wakeful than you are now? Depend upon it, it is in easy places that men shut their eyes and wander into the dreamy land of forgetfulness. Old Erskine said a good thing when he remarked: “I like a roaring devil better than a sleeping devil.” There is no temptation half so bad as not being tempted. The distressed soul does not sleep; it is after we get into confidence and full assurance that we are in danger of slumbering. Take care thou who art full of gladness. There is no season in which we are so likely to fall asleep as that of high enjoyment. The disciples slept after they had seen Christ transfigured on the mountain top. Take heed, joyous Christian, good frames are very dangerous; they often lull you into a sound sleep.
EVERYDAY DAYS
Somehow we get into the routine of the thing: it is usual for us to go to the house of God; it is usual for us to belong to the church, and that of itself tends to make people sleepy. Go into some of your churches in London, and you will hear a most delicious sermon preached to a people
all sound asleep. The reason is that the service is all alike; they know when they have got to the third “Our Father which art in heaven,” when they have passed the confession general, and when they have got to the sermon which is the time to sleep for twenty minutes. If the minister should smite his fist ecclesiastic upon the Bible, or enliven his faculties with a pinch of snuff, or even use his pocket handkerchief, the people would wake up, because it would be something out of the usual course. Or, if he uttered an old sentiment they might be aroused, and would probably think that he had broken the 59th commandment, in making some of the congregation smile.
But he never violates decorum; he stands the very mirror of modesty and the picture of everything that is orderly. I have digressed, but you will see what I mean. If we are always going on the same road we are liable to sleep.
ENDING DAYS
Yet there is one more thing; and if I ever were afraid of anything, I should fear to speak before my grave and reverend fathers in the faith the fact that one of the most likely places for us to sleep in is when we get near our journey’s end. It is ill for a child to say that, and I will therefore back it up by the words of that great pilot John Bunyan: “For this enchanted ground is one of the last refuges that the enemy to pilgrims has, wherefore it is, as you see, placed almost at the end of the way, and so it standeth against us wit-in the more advantage. For when, thinks the enemy, will these fools be so desirous to sit down as when they are weary? and when so like to be
weary as when almost at their journey’s end? Therefore it is, I say, that the enchanted ground is paced so nigh to the land Beulah, and so near the end of their race. Wherefore let pilgrims look to themselves, lest it happen to them as it has done to these that, as you see, are fallen asleep, and none can awake them.” May a child speak to those who are far before him in years and experience? But I am not a child when I preach. In the pulpit we stand as ambassadors of God, and God knoweth nothing of childbood or age; he teacheth whom he willeth, and speaketh as he pleases. It is true my brethren; that those who have been years in grace are most in danger of
slumbering.
[Spurgeon, MTP, Vol. 2, p. 143-46]