Bring out your dead! what a solemn, terribly solemn cry!  How it must have filled with awe and dread all who heard it!  And if that call were repeated, if the holy angels of God were to go through the length and breadth of our land, and, stopping before each house, were to cry to those within, ‘Bring out your dead, bring out your dead,’ not your dead bodies, but your dead souls; bring out all in your house who are not alive unto God, who are dead in trespasses and sins, how many would have to be carried out of our houses?  Should we ourselves be left behind?  Are we alive or dead?

The angels have not yet come to sever the dead from the living, but the time for that great separation is drawing daily nearer, when the Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend; all the loathsomeness of death, and decay, and impurity shall be collected by angel hands, and, we read, they shall cast them, not into a vast pit such as was dug in London in the time of the plague, but into a furnace of fire, there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Surely, then, it is worth while to find out whether our soul is alive or dead.  What test then shall we use?  How shall we settle the matter clearly and definitely?

There is one thing, and one thing only, which proves that a man has life.  A man apparently drowned is brought out of the water.  He does not speak, or see, or move, or feel.  He is rubbed and warmed, but no sign of life can be perceived.  Can we therefore conclude that the man is dead?  Nay, we will put him to the test.  Bring a feather, hold it before his mouth, watch it carefully, does it move?  A crowd of anxious bystanders gather round to see.  Soon a cry of joy is heard, the feather moves.  The man lives, for he breathes, and the breath in him is the unmistakable sign of life.

How then shall I know if my soul lives?  Does it breathe?  That is the all-important question.  But what is the breath of the soul?  The breath of the soul is prayer.  As the old hymn says—­

    ’Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath,
    The Christian’s native air.’

Saul of Tarsus, with all his outward religion, was a dead soul, till the Lord met him and gave him life.  What then is the first thing we find Saul doing?  ‘Behold he prayeth.’  As soon as he is alive, he breathes, he prays.

Here then is the test for us to apply to our own souls.  Do I know anything of real prayer?  Do I love to hold communion with my God?  Am I ever lifting up my heart to Him?  If I live in the atmosphere of prayer, then I am alive unto God; if, on the other hand, I feel prayer a weariness, and know not what it is for my heart to hold unseen intercourse with my Lord, then indeed I am dead in sin, having no breath, and I have consequently no life.

Nehemiah, the great Rab-shakeh, was a living soul, for he loved to pray.  No sooner had he heard the sad news about Jerusalem, than he went to his private apartments in the palace, and began to plead with God.  He feels that all the trouble that has come upon his nation has been richly deserved, so he begins with a humble confession of sin.