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in which, whosoever indulges, may possibly sleep on till he wake no more. It may be a fatal sleep; the sleep of death; the stupor of a lethargy; the numbness of a spiritual palsy; the insensibility of mortification.

They who fall into this deep sleep, like those who indulge the sleep of nature, commonly lie in darkness; the darkness of voluntary ignorance. Indolence smooths their pillow, and silences their pavilion. Their eyes are closed by prejudice, and the curtains drawn around them by pride and presumption. The opiates of vanity, of worldly ease and pleasure, superinduce a kind of trance. Sealed are their eye-lids, but their sleep is not a quiet sleep; it is not sweet and refreshing, like the sleep of virtue, the balmy repose of health, wearied, at the close of day, with the exertions of beneficence.

It is a sleep interrupted by dreams. Shadowy, fantastic forms, of a thousand shades and hues, flit before their fancy. Ambition has her dreams, avarice her spectres, and pleasure her visions of ideal bliss, painted with a glow of colouring, which the pencil cannot emulate.

Crowns and sceptres, purple robes, crimson banners, with titles of honour, and armorial bearings, pass, like a pageant, before the courtier, the statesman, the senator, the lawyer, the warrior. He fixes his eye upon them devoutly. He catches at them eagerly, as the glittering train moves on. They elude his grasp. He catches again. The air-drawn baubles vanish. Again he is disappointed. Still he perseveres; and with aching heart, and trembling knees, and palsied hand, he reaches, at last, with great difficulty, a coronet, a

star, a ribband, and places it on his shaking head, or his throbbing bosom; then, stumbling on the dark mountains, down he falls, stripped of all his blushing honours and his gorgeous robes. Clad in a shrowd, and with a few vain words engraved on his coffin-plate, he is thrust, lest he should become noisome, into a mouldy vault, to rot and be forgotten here, where alone he sought distinction; and to appear all shivering and naked, before Christ, his judge; of whom he never once thought seriously, during the deep sleep and the long daydreams of a vain, worldly, irreligious life.

Behold another dreamer, with a hoary head, lying down to rest, not on soft pillows, but on bags of gold. It is the miser: he dreams that the pale spectre of haggard poverty is pursuing hard after him; a cold sweat bedews his emaciated cheeks, and his teeth shake; but he is cheered again by dreaming of bargains, usurious contracts, of joining house to house, and laying field to field; of saving all he gains, of taking advantage of the wants of one, and the ignorance of another, to fill his enormous chest. And lo! it is now full. Is he happy? and does he use it? Does he enjoy it, for the purposes it was designed? Does he think of God, the giver of all good things? Does he distribute it to the poor? No; his joy consists in telling it o'er and o'er, weighing it with shaking hands, and viewing it with a dim spectacled eye, which can scarcely distinguish a counterfeit from a true coin. At some future period, when he shall have completed a certain sum, he dreams that he shall build, plant, do good, and be whatever a man ought to be. But the sleep of death comes on before the dream of life is over, and he is gone. And

lo! his heir thrusts him into the ground, with the face of affected grief, that can hardly hide his real joy. Down sinks the dreaming dotard, into the bosom of that earth to which his mind was prone; his very name rots with his emaciated body; and his spirit, all poor, naked, and beggarly, moans and bewails that he laid up no treasure in heaven; that, in his earthly visions, he never thought of his soul; never felt a desire for the riches of grace.

And now behold his heir. Possessed of wealth which he never knew the toil of earning, he becomes a man of pleasure; and he also dreameth a dream. The banquet is prepared. The wine giveth its colour in the cup. The gaming-table is before him. Noise and riot drive away thought and care. The singing men and the singing women enter. Money is lavished on horses, dogs, sharpers, buffoons; and no debts regarded but those of false honour. His heart dances to the melody of the harp and the vial; he pampers every bodily sense, till pleasure itself is converted into pain or insensibility. He dreams on, and soon sees phantoms of pleasure, the ghosts of departed joys, dancing, in mockery, before his eyes. His powers of perception decay, his youth and health are departed, and he droops like a hyacinth, broken down by a hasty shower, before it has expanded its beauty. Down he sinks to the earth, into an untimely grave, and mourns, as he retires from the shadowy scene, that a greediness of pleasure surfeited his senses, and robbed him, not only of longer life, but of real enjoyment during its continuance. What preparation did he make to relish the pleasures which flow at God's right

hand; the pleasures of reason, the sweets of benevolence, all-pure, all-spiritual, as exquisite in the enjoyment, as exalted and durable in their nature? Alas! none. He had neither time nor inclination. His soul slept, while his body waked with a fever; the fine sensibilities of the spiritual nature were enveloped in slumber, while his bodily senses were unnaturally jaded, and prematurely worn out by constant vigilance and activity. He drank the cup of pleasure to the dregs, and the dregs were to his palate wormwood, and to his vitals poison.

Similar to such slumbers and such dreams are the slumbers and the dreams of many whom we meet walking in their sleep, in the streets of the city; whom we behold all lively and active in the gaily-illuminated theatres of pleasure, in the crowded emporiums of commerce, in the courts of princes, in the senate-house, in the forum, and at the tribunal. Deeply do they drink the draughts of worldly vanity, which, like doses of opium, lay them indeed asleep; but at the same time fill them with self-conceit and pride, and disturb them with dreams, wild as the scenes of fairy land. It is not a sweet sleep; it is the sleep of disease, and resembles what the physicians call the coma vigil, a walking slumber, a dangerous symptom. Then let no man indulge the first tendencies to the sleep of the soul; but rather shake off dull sloth, and hear the voice which calls him like the cheerful herald of the morning: Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.' Cheerful, pleasant, merciful warning! But many, it is feared, are too fast asleep to hear it. They are, in their torpid state,

like the swallows in the winter; but even the swallows, when the spring calls them forth, rise from their temporary death in unknown regions, to soar with joy and triumph in the fields of æther. The primroses and violets sleep on their banks for many months; but when the bland voice of the zephyrs whispers" arise," you see them spring forth, lift up their heads, and drink the sun-beams, and the dew of heaven. And shall the cold ear of man be deaf to the still small voice of conscience, and shall his eyes be impenetrable to the beams of grace? Many seem to have little in their nature of a religious disposition; yet let us not conclude that any of the sons of Adam, any of the redeemed of Christ, are destitute of that living principle, which is to be fostered and cherished even to immortal life. There is in every man a spark, perhaps a latent spark, which only requires to be gently blown by the aspiration of the Holy Ghost, to become a clear light, and afford a vital warmth, to guide to all evangelical truth, and to invigorate the mind with faith and hope. There is in every man a seed of virtue, goodness, and piety, which only requires the divine grace to shine upon it, in order to become a flourishing plant, exuberant in its fine foliage, beautiful in its blossom, abundant in its delicious fruit, striking root deeply in the heart, reaching the heavens with its branches, and vegetating in beautiful verdure to all eternity.

To excite this spark, to cherish this little tender seed of grace, this, O sons of men, is the work, this the labour. Arise, therefore, and be doing, and the Lord be with you.

Let us, then, take an impartial view of our own

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