The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, The Alarm, a sermon
delivered by C.
H.
Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington, Psalm 57,
verse 8.
I myself will awake early.
The proper subject to treat upon with such
a text as this would be the propriety
and excellence of early rising, especially when we
are desirous of praising or serving God.
The dew of dawn should be consecrated to
devotion.
The text is a very remarkable expression and
might fitly be made the early riser's motto.
It is in the original a highly poetical
phrase, and Milton and others have borrowed or
imitated it.
I will awaken in the morning.
So early would the psalmist arise for the
praise of God that he would call up
the day and bid the sun arise from
the chambers of the east and proceed upon
his journey.
I will awaken the morning.
Early rising has the example of Old Testament
saints to recommend it, and many modern saints
have conscientiously practiced it, have been loud in
its praise.
It is an economy of time and an
assistance to health, and thus it doubly lengthens
life.
Late rising is too often the token of
indolence and the cause of disorder throughout the
whole day.
Be assured that the best hours are the
first.
Our city habits are to be deplored because
by late hours of retirement at night we
find early rising difficult if not impossible.
If we are able to escape the shackles
of custom and secure for devotion and contemplation
the hour when the dew is on the
grass, we may count ourselves thrice happy.
If we cannot do all we would in
this matter, at least let us do all
we can.
That is not, however, the topic upon which
I now desire to speak to you.
I come at this time not so much
to plead for the early as for the
awakening.
The hour we may speak of at another
time, the fact is our subject now.
It is bad to awake late, but what
shall be said of those who never awake
at all?
Better late than never, but with many it
is to be feared it will be never.
I would take down the trumpet and give
a blast or ring the alarm bell till
all the faculties of the sluggard's manhood are
made to bestir themselves and he cries with
newborn determination, I myself will awake, will awake.
This is a world in which most men
nowadays are alive to their temporal interests.
If in these pushing times any man goes
to his business in a sleepy listless fashion
he very soon finds himself on an ebb
tide and all his affairs aground.
The wide awake man seizes opportunities or makes
them.
And thus those who are widest awake usually
come to the front.
Years ago affairs moved like the broad wheel
wagon very sleepily with sober pause and leisurely
progression and then the son of the snail
had a chance, but now when we almost
fly if a man would succeed in trade
he must be all alive and all awake.
If it be so in temporals it is
equally so in spirituals for the world, the
flesh and the devil are all awake to
compete with us.
And there is no resolution that I would
more earnestly commend to each one of the
people of God than this one.
I will awake, I will awake at once,
I will awake early and I will pray
to God that I may be kept awake
that my Christian existence may not be dreamy
but that I may be to the fullest
degree useful in my master's service.
If this were the resolve of each what
a change would come over the Christian church.
I long to see the diligence of the
shop exceeded by the closet and the zeal
of the market excelled by the church.
Each Christian is alive, but is he also
awake?
He has eyes, but are they open?
He does not know.
He has lofty possibilities of blessing his fellow
men, but does he exercise them?
My heart's desire is that none of us
may feel the dreamy influence of this age
which is comparable to the enchanted ground, but
that each of us may be watchful, wakeful,
vigorous, intense, fervent, trusting that the Holy Spirit
may bless our meditations to our spiritual quickening.
We shall briefly turn our thoughts to the
consideration of two or three things.
Our text is connected with the duty of
praise and therefore our first point shall be
it is most necessary that our minds should
be in a state of wakefulness when we
are praising God.
Therefore, as we ought to be always praising
Him, our mind ought always to be wakeful.
It is a shame to pray with the
mind half asleep.
It is an equal shame to attempt to
praise God till all the powers of the
mind are thoroughly aroused.
David is herein a most fit example, for
he sings, My heart is fixed, O God,
my heart is fixed.
I will sing and give praise.
Awake up, my glory, awake, psaltery and harp.
I myself will awake early.
We should be fully awake when engaged in
private thanksgiving.
The song of our solitude should be full
of living joy.
I am afraid there is very little private
singing nowadays.
We often hear discourse concerning private prayer, but
very seldom of private praise.
And yet ought there not to be as
much private praise as private prayer?
I fear from the seldomness of its being
mentioned that private thanksgiving has grown to be
a sleepy affair.
Then as to public worship, how earnest ought
it to be?
Yet how seldom is it hearty and real?
How often do we hear half-awake singing?
Sometimes a sort of musical box consisting of
pipes, keys and bellows is set to do
all the adoration.
The heathens of Tibet turn the wind to
account religiously by making it turn their windmills
and pray for them, and our brethren in
England, by an ingenious adjustment of pipes, make
the same mote of power perform their praise.
Where this machinery is not adopted, still the
Lord is robbed of His praise by other
methods.
Sometimes half a dozen skilled voices of persons
who would be equally as much at home
at the opera or the theatre as in
the house of God are formed into a
choir to perform the psalmody, and it is
supposed that God accepts their formal notes as
the praise of the entire assembly.
How far different is the genuine song of
a gracious men who lift up their voices
to the Lord because their hearts adore Him?
Oh, I love to hear every voice pouring
out its note, especially if I can but
hope that with every voice there is going
forth a fervent heart.
This warm-hearted, joyful singing, why, it makes
the congregation on earth to be like the
assembly of the skies, and causes the meeting
place of the saints to be a faint
type of the gathering of the angels and
glorified spirits before the throne of God.
To drone or to whisper in such a
delightful exercise is criminal.
If ever we should exhibit the angels' wakefulness,
it should be when we are emulating their
employment.
Our praise ought to be performed with a
fully awakened mind.
First, that we may recollect what we are
praising God for.
We should have a vivid sense of the
mercies we have received, or we cannot bless
God aright for them.
You who have not yet received spiritual blessings
should not be forgetful of His temporal mercies.
It is surely sufficient cause for lively thanksgiving
that you are not upon a bed of
sickness, that you are not in a lunatic
asylum, that you are not in the workhouse,
that you are not on the borders of
the grave, that you are not in hell,
that you still have food in Raymond, and
that you are where the gospel is graciously
presented to you.
Should not all this be thought of?
Should not this be fuel for the flame
of gratitude?
And as for us who have tasted spiritual
blessings, if our minds were awake, we should
think of eternal love and its goings forth
from eternity, of redeeming love and the streams
that flow from the fount of Calvary, of
God's immutable love and His patience with our
ill manners in the wilderness, of covenant mercy,
of mercies yet to come, of heaven and
the bliss hereafter.
Such recollections should call up our whole man
to praise the Lord.
If the innumerable benefits which we receive were
thought of and dwelt upon, the contemplation would
put a force, a volume, a body into
our song and make it far more the
flaming ethereal thing which it ought to be.
We want our souls awakened next so that
we may remember to whom our praise is
offered.
Before no mean king do we bow the
knee of homage.
To praise God is to stand in the
immediate presence of the blessed and only potentate.
Do not even seraphs veil their faces in
that august presence?
With what lowliness ought we bow?
With what earnestness of spirit should we praise?
Put off thy shoes from off thy feet,
for the place whereon thou standest is holy
ground.
Courtiers are not expected to nod with drowsiness
in the presence of their king, and if
they come to present thanksgiving, it would seem
strange if they were to yawn as men
half asleep.
Surely it would be hypocritical congratulation and insulting
behavior if they should be detected in a
sleepy condition.
If we come together to praise God, let
us really do it.
If we cannot praise Him, let us know
and mourn that we cannot do it, and
let us be sure that the spirit is
willing, even if the flesh be weak.
Let all sleepiness be put away in the
presence of the ever wakeful Jehovah, before whose
eyes all things are naked and open.
He never slumbereth nor sleepeth, so as to
make a pause in His mercy to us.
Let not our slumbering spirits cause an omission
of our grateful song.
We need that we should be awake in
praise, that our whole hearts may be thoroughly
warm in the exercise.
Under Christ and the power of the Holy
Spirit, the acceptableness of our praise depends very
much upon the warmth of it.
As cold prayers virtually ask God to deny
them, so cold praises ask God to reject
them.
Cold praises are a sort of semi-blasphemy.
They do as it were say, Thou art
not worthy to be ardently praised.
O God, we bring Thee these poor thanksgivings.
They are good enough for Thee.
Surely if we treated our Heavenly Father as
we should, every sacred passion would glow in
our hearts like a furnace.
Our whole heart would catch fire, and as
Elijah went up to heaven with horses of
fire and chariots of fire, so too our
soul, as we thought upon the goodness and
the graciousness of God, would ascend to heaven
in vehement joy of adoration.
Our praises would not be like the incense
in the censer, sweet but cold, but coals
of fire would be put in with the
incense, and then, like a holy cloud of
smoke, our gratitude would ascend to heaven.
Mark with what exhilaration the psalmist rendered praise
unto God, and imitate him therein.
See him dancing before the ark, and hear
him cry aloud, Sing praises to God, sing
praises, sing praises unto our King, sing praises.
Brethren, we have need to wake up our
souls in praise, or else we shall at
times fail altogether in the duty.
Only the wakeful are praiseful, and the sleeping
birds sing not.
The very best praises God receives from earth
are from His troubled saints, but then they
are awake.
The strokes of the rod have aroused them.
When the three holy children sung in the
fire, their song was sweet indeed, yet had
they not been thoroughly in earnest, they had
poured forth no holy hymn.
When martyrs have magnified God, standing on the
burning faggot, they have given God better praise
than even the angels can.
It was the old fable that the nightingale
was made to sing by the thorn that
pricked her breast, and many a child of
God has poured forth his sweetest music when
the thorn of affliction has pierced his heart.
Wake up your souls, you that are desponding,
you that are depressed, you that have a
dead child at home, you that are expecting
soon to go to the grave with those
you love, you that have been losing your
property, you that are pinched with poverty.
Wake up your souls to praise God still,
for unless well awake you will forget to
extol Him.
Remember what Job did when he sat on
the dunghill, scraping himself with a bit of
broken pot, yet he praised God and said,
The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken
away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
It was grand of thee, O patriarch of
us, to be able thus to extol thy
Lord.
Then was thy soul fully awake.
Beloved friends, may our inmost souls be so
energetic with the power of grace that we
may spontaneously and earnestly bless the Lord at
all times and under all circumstances.
Do you believe, my brethren, that amongst all
the throng of those who see Jehovah face
to face, there is one dull, cold, careless
worshipper?
Look through the seraphim and cherubim.
They are all flaming ones, burning with intense
desire and fervent adoration.
Look through the hosts of angels.
They are all His ministers that do His
pleasure and bless Him while they do it.
Search through all those sanctified and glorified bands
of spirits, and you shall not find one
with half closed eyes, wearily praising his Maker.
Heaven consists in joyful praise.
Look at the very birds on earth, how
they shame us.
Dear little creatures, if you watch them when
they are singing, you will sometimes wonder how
so much sound can come out of such
diminutive bodies, how they throw their whole selves
into the music and seem to melt themselves
away in song, how the wing vibrates and
the throat pulsates and every part of their
body rejoices to assist the strain.
This is the way in which we ought
to praise God.
If birds that are sold at three for
two farthings yet render God such praise, how
much more heartily ought we to sing before
Him?
Let it be a resolution with us at
this hour that we will praise God more,
that we will sing to Him more at
home, about our business and in all proper
places, and that whenever we do sing, we
will do it heartily, waking up our tongue
and all the powers of our mind and
body to bless and praise the name of
God.
Now, secondly, we shall notice that wakefulness is
a great need in the entire spiritual life.
I believe it to be one of the
great wants of the Church now.
I question whether most of us are awake
spiritually.
I question whether I am.
I wish to be awakened far more to
the sensibility of the power of the world
to come and a tenderness in regard to
spiritual truth.
Slumber is so natural to us.
Well, says one, but we talk about the
things of God.
Yes, but people talk when they are asleep,
and a good deal of Christian conversation is
very much like the talk of sleepers.
There is not the force in it, the
life in it that there would be in
conversation if we were really awakened to feel
the power of eternal verities.
Yes, says one, I hope we act consistently.
I trust you do, but there are many
people who walk in their sleep, and alas,
I know some Christian professors who appear to
be trying very hazardous feats of sleepwalking just
now.
Some somnambulists have been able to walk on
places where, had they been awake, they never
would have been able to endure the dizzy
height, and I see some Christians, if indeed
they be Christians, running awful risks, which I
think they would never venture upon unless they
had fallen into the deep sleep of carnal
security.
Speak of a man slumbering at the masthead.
It is nothing to a professor of religion
at ease, while covetousness is his master, or
worldly company his delight.
If professors were awake, they would see their
danger and avoid sinful amusements and ungodly associations
as men fly from fierce tigers or deadly
cobras.
Well, but we are doing much good and
useful works, says one, teaching in Sabbath schools,
distributing religious tracts or laboring in some other
form of service.
We are spending our time in commendable engagements.
I am glad to hear it, but people
can do a great deal in their sleep.
We have heard many strange instances of how
habit at last has enabled persons to pursue
their callings, to answer signals and keep up
all the appearance of industry, and yet they
have been at the time asleep.
Oh, it is a very shocking thing that
so many of our churches in England are
in a deep sleep, dissenting churches I know
best about, and there are many where the
minister preaches in his sleep, where the people
sing in their sleep, where prayer is offered
in sleep and even the communion is celebrated
amid a profound spiritual slumber.
Have you never been at a prayer meeting
where half, if not all, both of those
who prayed vocally and those who listened were
in a lethargy as rigid as death?
Talk of sleeping women who have been in
a swoon by the month together!
The wonder may be a lying one in
the natural world, but in the spiritual world
it is as common as daisies in the
meadows.
Adam slept soundly when the taking away of
his rib did not wake him.
But what shall we say of those who
startle not though they are losing all the
strength and glory of their souls?
Alas, for some congregations it is long since
they had a revival.
They have lost the very idea of vigorous
piety and vital energy.
All the week round they are all asleep,
and if a real earnest, living, stirring sermon
were preached among them, it would be almost
as if the king of Prussia's crop guns
had dropped a live shell into their midst.
I wish a spiritual live shell could fall
into some congregations and burst among them, killing
their conventionality and wounding their self-satisfaction with
a deadly wound.
Men may attend to outward worship with unimpeachable
decorum and correctness, and yet there may be
no wakefulness in it and consequently no acceptableness
with God Most High.
Come, brethren and sisters, we must wake up,
even if we have been asleep ourselves, and
we must do so because we are in
an enemy's country.
It will not do to sleep here.
This side of heaven we are in every
place and at all hours surrounded by foes.
What did the Master say?
What I say unto you, I say unto
all, watch.
Be like sentries at your post, for otherwise
the enemy will soon betray you.
Will you not grieve the Holy Spirit if
you are lethargic?
Will you not dishonor your Master if you
fall asleep?
Remember also that the devil seeks your destruction
and can never do you so much mischief
awake as he can if he finds you
sleeping.
Let the growling of the old lion arouse
you.
If nothing else will bestir you, remember the
fiery darts of the wicked one.
Saul would not have lain so quiet if
he had known that Abishai was holding the
spear over him and longing to pin him
to the earth, yet this is the condition
of professors who are given to slumber.
Samson would have scarcely slept on Delilah's lap
if he had foreseen that his hair would
be cut and his eyes put out by
the Philistines.
Up then, ye drowsy professors, for the Philistines
are upon you.
Moreover, brethren, slumber impoverishes us.
The sluggard and the thistle and thorn always
go together, and rags and poverty follow close
behind.
You may miss, by your sleep, great spiritual
profit.
You cannot expect sleepy Christians to grow in
grace.
They will miss many instructive things in God's
word, many precious promises meant only for the
wakeful.
They will lose high enjoyments and spiritual banquetings
for the king's entertainments or not for those
who fold their arms and toss upon the
bed of indolence.
Wealth lies in the field of the wakeful,
but the lover of ease shall have want
come upon him as an armed man.
I blow the trumpet in Zion and sound
an alarm in God's holy mountain, for it
is high time to awake out of sleep.
Awaken, too, my brethren, for you are losing
opportunities for usefulness.
While you sleep, men are dying.
See how the cemeteries are becoming crowded, how
the area of them has to be enlarged.
Day by day you see, wending through the
streets, the funeral procession.
Men, gone beyond the reach of your instructions
and your warnings, are carried to their long
homes.
Awake then, awake, for death is busy everywhere.
Meanwhile, those who do not die before you
may be removed beyond the sphere of your
usefulness.
They go where at least you cannot reach
them, where perhaps no one ever will, and
their blood may lie upon your head and
that forever.
Awake, for perhaps while you are asleep another
heart that is now accessible to the gospel
may become finely hardened.
Conscience will soon become seared, and then there
is nothing for zeal and earnestness to work
upon.
It will be too late for you to
put the seal upon the wax when once
it is cool.
Quicksilver, while the wax is soft, put the
seal down.
How many opportunities for good we all miss!
But those who are asleep lose all their
opportunities, and they will be surely required of
them when the Master comes.
Awake, I pray you, because you will insensibly
lose the power, the joy of your spiritual
life.
Communion with God will become more and more
scarce with you as you become more sleepy.
Awake, lest you backslide, lest you fall by
little and little, lest after all you become
apostate and prove yourself not to be a
child of God.
Awake, for your power with others will certainly
depart from you as your wakefulness departs.
A sleepy preacher never wins the souls of
men.
A dull, formal servant of God is of
little or no use in a church of
God.
I think I said years ago, give me
half a dozen thorough, red-hot Christians, and
I will do more by God's grace with
them than with a half a dozen hundred
of ordinary professors.
I am sure it is so.
Crowds of professors are past all cure.
I would as soon hunt with dead dogs
as try to work with them.
They cannot be trained into heroes.
They are dolts both by nature and by
practice.
Much slothfulness has drained out their souls' life.
The most you can hope for them is
that they will remain decently Christianized, so as
not altogether to disgrace us.
But, O, for thoroughly wide-awake men, men
who feel the life of God in their
souls and are therefore more than ordinarily earnest,
band together half a dozen such, and the
Holy Spirit being with them, they will make
all London feel their presence before long.
O, may God awaken all of us, for
our spiritual life absolutely requires it.
Thirdly, I am going to mention certain ways
of keeping yourselves awake.
How can I be kept awake, says one?
Answer first.
Make it a matter of prayer with the
Lord to awaken you.
No one can give you spiritual power and
watchfulness but the Spirit of God.
All my fresh springs are in thee.
Where life first comes from, there more life
must be obtained.
Christ has come that we may have life
and that we may have it more abundantly.
He who first called us from the dead
must also arise us from among the slumbering.
He who brought us from the grave of
our depravity must bring us from the couch
of our indolence.
Pray about the matter.
Make it a point with God.
Ask Him to arouse you.
On your knees is the posture in which
to conquer sloth.
Next, means are to be used.
We are not to leave the matter with
God and think there is nothing to be
done by ourselves.
Act toward yourselves about your spiritual wakefulness as
you would with natural wakefulness.
Set your inventive faculties to work and devise
means for chasing away the sleep dragon.
What would you do if you required to
be awakened early?
Perhaps you would set an alarm, a good
thing, no doubt.
Take care you set a spiritual alarm.
Every Christian ought to keep one and it
should be so well set as to keep
exact time and so powerful as to arouse
the most slumbering.
A tender conscience, quick as the apple of
the eye, is a precious preservative against sinful
sleep.
But it must never be tampered with or
its usefulness will soon end.
When once the hour has come, down runs
the alarm.
The man starts up all at once and
says it is time to rise.
So should my conscience be so well regulated
that when a temptation is near or a
sinner is near me whom I ought to
warn, my soul should at once take the
alarm and say here is work to do,
a sin to be conquered or a soul
to be instructed.
Now therefore perform the doing of it with
all thy might.
I hear the alarm and I must bestare
myself.
May we always maintain and retain such a
special wakefulness that we may be at our
post of duty or in our place of
conflict with a punctuality which none can gainsay.
Oh for the alarm of a tender conscience!
Many of our friends who have to be
up early in the morning ask the policeman
to call them at the appointed hour.
I may not compare the Christian minister with
a policeman in some respects, but yet he
is one of God's officers and it is
part of his business to stir up drowsy
professors.
It is well to attend an earnest gospel
ministry where the minister's voice under God's blessing
will be likely to wake you up.
Faithful preachers are among God's best gifts.
Cherish them and be obedient to their admonitions.
I have known persons become offended when a
minister is too personal, but wise men always
prize a ministry in proportion as it is
personal to themselves.
He who never tells me of my faults
nor makes me feel uneasy is not likely
to be the means of good to my
soul.
What is the use of a dog that
never barks?
Why have a doctor and grow angry with
him if he points out the source of
your disease?
Did God send us as his messengers to
pander to your taste or flatter your vanity?
We seek not your approval if it be
not founded on right.
I have often felt pleased when I have
heard people confess after their conversion, I came
to the tabernacle and at the first I
could not endure the preaching.
I hated the preacher and raged at his
doctrine, but I could not help coming again.
Just so, conscience makes men respect the gospel
even when their depravity makes them loathe it.
They are held fast by the cords which
they feign would cast from them.
May it often be so, O my unregenerate
believers, that while my plain dealing excites your
anger, it may nevertheless have a power over
you, and may every man and woman here,
whether saved or unsaved, feel that the preaching
is the truth of God to his or
her soul, and whether liked or not liked,
may it become the permanent means of arousing
from sleep and ultimately bringing to Christ every
one of you to whom these words shall
come.
Be sure and attend an arousing ministry, and
pray God to make the ministry which you
now listen to more and more an arousing
ministry to your own soul.
Pray for the preacher, for he is in
the same danger as yourselves, for he too
is compassed with infirmity.
The Lord loves him, and what is more
sad than to see the professed messenger of
God become a traitor both to his master
and to men's souls by a lack of
zealous affection?
It is ill for the sheep if the
shepherd himself be asleep.
Woe to the camp where the sentry is
given to slumber!
May God deliver our country from being overrun
with preachers whose souls are insensible concerning their
grand work, and who love the bread of
their office better than the glory of God
or the good of their ears.
I have known some persons adopt a plan
for a waking in the morning, which I
can recommend spiritually at any rate.
They have drawn up the blinds in the
direction of the morning sun, that the sun
might shine on their face and wake them.
I know of no better way of waking
for your soul than letting the light and
the life and the love of God shine
full into your face.
When the sun of righteousness arises he brings
healing beneath his wings, and he brings awakening
too.
A man cannot think much of Christ and
love Christ much and walk much in Christ's
fellowship and yet be asleep.
The two who went to Emmaus in Emmanuel's
company, were their hearts cold?
Nay, do not think so.
Did not her heart burn within us?
Yes, and your heart will burn too, and
your whole spiritual system will flame and glow
if you walk in the company of Jesus.
I can recommend constant fellowship with God as
one of the best remedies for spiritual sloth,
the surest provocative of holy zeal.
Many times people are awakened in the morning
by the noise of the street in which
they live.
I cannot sleep after such an hour, says
one, for I hear the tramp of those
who are going into the city and the
grind of the street traffic.
At a certain time you hear the hammer
of the blacksmith, the scream of an engine
or the heaving of machinery, and after that
sleep is gone.
The activities of the world ought to awaken
Christians.
Are worldlings so active?
How active ought we to be?
Do they labour and spend their sweat for
earthly wages?
How much more ought I to put forth
my entire strength to serve so good a
master whose reward of grace is everlasting bliss?
The world is all astir today.
Let the church be all awake too.
We ought to be stimulated to supreme efforts
by the activity of our fellow Christians.
I find it does me much service to
read the biographies of eminent servants of Christ,
such as martyrs, missionaries and reformers.
I rise from reading their memorials feeling ashamed
to be of so dwarfish a stature compared
with these spiritual giants.
What a humbling effect such a reflection ought
to have on the do-nothings who swarm
in the churches!
But, alas, these are not soon moved to
judge themselves.
With this one word we leave them.
Think of what some are doing and be
ashamed that you are doing so little in
proportion to what they accomplish.
There are many ways of waking, but here
is one with which I will close my
observations on this point.
Hear the trumpet of the Second Coming.
Behold, the Bridegroom cometh.
Go ye out to meet Him, was the
cry that awakened the virgins when they all
slumbered and slept.
May it have the like arousing power at
this moment.
We know not when Christ will come, nor
is it for us to utter prophecies about
it.
The times and seasons are hidden from us.
Of that day and that hour knoweth no
man.
Whether it will be before the millennium or
after the millennium, let those judge who can.
I have no judgment upon it.
I think, as you carefully read the scriptures,
you will feel more and more convinced that
only this is clearly and certainly revealed, that
the Lord will personally come in such an
hour as we look not for Him.
Let that awaken us.
Let it keep us always watchful with loins
girt and lamps trimmed, proving our faithful love
to our blessed Master.
These are, it is clear, very many ways
by which Christians may be awakened.
God grant they may be affected to each
and all.
I think it was Sidney Smith who was
once preaching a sermon about sleeping in church,
and when he had done he said, Now,
what good have I done?
All those who sleep have been asleep through
my sermon, and only those who are wakeful
have heard me, and they did not need
my rebukes and advice.
I often feel that this is very much
the preacher's case.
Earnest people, when the congregation is exhorted to
earnestness, take it home to themselves.
But those persons who do nothing and are
most indolent are the very ones who say,
I do not see the need of it.
I do not want to be disturbed.
Of course not.
It is not only the mark of the
sluggard to sleep, but it is another characteristic
of him that he is wrath with those
who would compel him to rise.
A little more sleep, says he, a little
more slumber.
He turns his heavy head upon the pillow
once again and wishes no blessings upon those
who knock at his door so heavily.
You sleepy professors are likely to do the
same, but I will not refrain from knocking
till you refrain from dozing.
I pray God that there may be a
very few in this church of the incorrigible
order whose life is one long dream, a
dream of self-aggrandizement, meanness and littleness.
May you and I and all of us
be thoroughly earnest in the service of our
Master, and if we cannot arouse others by
our precept, at least let us not fail
to try the force of our example.
I must close with a word upon the
fourth point, which is this.
The great and urgent need that the unconverted
sinner should awake.
Hitherto I have spoken to the converted man.
Now let me address myself to the ungodly.
May the voice which shall call the dead
to judgment now awaken him.
You, you unconverted man, are asleep.
A deep and horrible sleep holds you fast.
If it were not so, you would perceive
your danger and you would be alarmed.
You have broken God's law.
The fact is certain and solemn, though you
treat it lightly.
Punishment must follow every breach of that law,
for God will not be mocked nor suffer
his government to be treated with contempt.
For every transgression there is an appointed recompense
of reward.
The retribution which is your lawful due will
not long be withheld.
It is on its road towards you.
The feet of justice are shod with wool.
You hear not its coming, but it is
as sure as it is silent.
Its steps are swift and its stroke overwhelming.
Awaken, O man, and listen to this text.
God is angry with the wicked every day.
If he turn not, he will wet his
sword.
He hath bent his bow and made it
ready.
No peril of plague, battle, shipwreck, or poison
can equal the hazard of an unpardoned soul.
Beware ye that forget God, for his tares
are past conception and his wrath burneth as
an oven.
If you were awakened, O sin-stricken transgressor,
you would also perceive that there is a
remedy for your disease, a rescue from your
present danger.
God was in Christ reconciling the world unto
himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.
And whosoever believeth in Jesus Christ hath everlasting
life.
Forgiveness of sin is guaranteed to everyone that
rests in the work of Jesus, and all
other necessary blessings are secured to him.
If thou wert awake, thou wouldst not remain
an unconverted sinner another hour, but thou wouldst
turn unto God with full purpose of heart.
If God would awaken thee, thou wouldst tremble
at the jaws of hell which are open
to receive thee.
Thou wouldst turn to Christ and say, Jesus,
save me, save me now.
You are asleep, sinner, you are asleep, or
you would not take matter so coolly.
I am afraid for you, and bowed down
with amazement and dread.
The mercy is that you may be awakened.
You are not yet among the slain that
go down into the pit.
O, that that almighty grace would awaken you
at this present moment ere your doom is
sealed and your damnation executed.
Here offer I my fervent prayers for you,
believing that he to whom I pray is
able to bring to holy sensibility the most
stolid of mankind strange ways God has of
awakening his elect ones from their deadly slumbers.
Awake them, he will, and he will shake
heaven and earth sooner than let any one
of them perish in unfeeling security.
He will strike them down as he did
Paul, or send an earthquake, or shake them
as he did the jailer at Philippi.
In his own way and time he will
make them come to themselves and then to
Christ.
Remember the story of Augustine.
To the grief of his dear mother, Monica,
he had been leading a wicked life.
But God's time had come, and as Augustine
walked in the garden, he heard a little
child say, take, read, take, read.
This induced him to take the Bible and
read it.
He no sooner read than a passage came
before his eyes which awakened him, and he
sought a savior and found him.
Perhaps it will be a death in your
house that will wake you.
Sad means, but often most effectual.
A mother's deathbed has been a soul-saving
sermon to many a family.
Some sleepers need a thunderclap to arouse them.
Pray, you dear people of God that are
awake, that the sinner may be awakened, for
there is this awful danger, that he may
sleep himself into hell.
Spiritual sleep deepens.
The slumberer becomes more heavy still, the stupor
more dense, till the conscience grows seared and
the soul is unimpressable, the flesh is turned
into stone, the heart is harder than steel.
It may be that some of those who
hear these words of warning may never wait
to think about their souls still in hell.
They lift up their eyes.
What an awful lifting up of the eyes
will that be!
O you who are now peaceful and secure,
what a change awaits you, hurled from vainglorious
security to blank despair in a moment.
You took it all so easily, you said.
Let me alone.
Do not worry me.
There is time enough.
The preacher ought not to frighten us with
these bugbears.
We have a great deal else to do
besides listening to horrible stories of hell and
damnation.
And so you wrapped it up, and so
you smoothed it over, but the end thereof,
who shall describe?
Have you never heard of the Indian in
his boat upon one of the great rivers
of America?
Somehow his moorings had broken, and his canoe
was in the power of the current.
He was asleep while his canoe was being
borne rapidly along by the stream.
He was sound asleep, and yet had good
need to have been awake, for there was
a tremendous cataract not far ahead.
Persons on shore saw the canoe, saw that
there was a man in it asleep, but
their vigilance was of no use to the
sleeper.
It needed that he himself should be aware
of his peril.
The canoe quickened its pace, for the waters
of the river grew more rapid as they
approached the cataract.
Persons on shore began to cry out and
raise alarm on all sides, and at last
the Indian was aroused.
He started up, began to use his paddle,
but his strength was altogether insufficient for the
struggle with the gigantic force of the waters
around him.
He was seen to spring upright in the
boat and disappear himself and the boat in
the fore.
He had perished, for he woke too late.
Some persons on their dying beds just wake
up in time to see their danger, but
not to escape from it.
They are carried right over the cataract of
judgment and wrath.
They are gone, forever gone, where mercy is
succeeded by justice and hope forbidden to enter.
Let much prayer go up from believing hearts
that God would awaken sinners now and begin
with those who come to the place of
worship and remain at ease in Zion.
Ask for the arm of God to be
revealed while the heavenly message is delivered, for
this is our message.
Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the
dead, and Christ shall give thee light.
There is a man before me now, asleep
in his sins, whom God means to make
a minister of Christ.
He knows not the divine purpose, but there
are lines of love in it for him.
Arise, O slumberer, for Jesus calls thee.
Awake thou, Saul of Tarsus, thou art a
chosen vessel unto the Lord.
Turn thou from thy sin, seek thou thy
Saviour.
There is one here who has been a
great sinner, but the Lord intends to wash
him in the cleansing fount and clothe him
in the righteousness of Christ.
Come thou guilty one, awake, for mercy waits
for thee.
There is a poor weeping woman here who
has gone far into sin, but Jesus says,
Neither do I condemn thee, go and sin
no more.
Sister, awake, come and receive the mercy which
Jesus Christ is ready to bestow upon thee.
God give thee waking grace and saving grace.
May you and I, beloved brethren in Christ,
awake to the most earnest and intense form
of life in Christ and life for Christ.
At once let us bestir ourselves.
We may think it early, but it will
be none too early.
May we awake now, for Jesus' sake.
Amen.