April 11

So He giveth unto His beloved sleep. — Psalm cxxvii. 2.

Sweetest, deepest, most appealing to all our hearts is that

’ emblem of death, “Them that sleep.” It is used, if I count

rightly, some fourteen times in the New Testament, and it carries with it

large and plain lessons, on which I touch but for a moment. “What, then,

does this metaphor say to us?

Well, it speaks first of rest. That is not altogether an attractive conception to some of us. If it be taken exclusively, it is by no means wholesome. I suppose that the young, and the strong, and the eager, and the ambitious, and the prosperous rather shrink from the notion of their activities being stiffened into slumber. But, dear friend, there are some of us, like tired children in a fair, who would fain have done with the weariness, who have made experience of the distractions and bewildering changes, whose backs are stiffened with toil, whose hearts are heavy with loss. And to all of us, in some moods, the prospect of shuffling off this weary coil of responsibilities and duties, and tasks and sorrows, and of passing into indisturbance and repose, appeals. I believe, for my part, that after all the deepest longing of men, though they search for it through toil and effort, the deepest longing is for repose. As the poet has taught us, “there is no joy but calm.” Every heart is weary enough, and heavy laden, and labouring enough, to feel the sweetness of a promise of rest —

“Sleep, full of rest from head to foot,
Lie still, dry dust, secure of change.”

Yes 1 But the rest of which our emblem speaks is, as I believe, only applicable to the bodily frame. The word “sleep” is a transcript of what sense enlightened by faith sees in that still form, with the folded hands and the quiet face and the closed eyes. But let us remember that this repose, deep and blessed as it is, is not, as some would say, the repose of unconsciousness. I do not believe, and I would have you not believe, that this emblem touches the vigorous spiritual life, or that the passage from out of the toil and moil of earth into the calm of the darkness beyond has any power in limiting or suspending the vital force of the man.