We have all enemies in our own souls that never sleep, whatever we may do.  There are no irons on their heels.  They never procrastinate.  They never say to their master, A little more slumber.  Now, could you name any hateful enemy entrenched in your own heart, of which you have of yourself said far more than that?  And, if so, what have you done, what are you at this moment doing, to cast that enemy out?  Have you any armour on, any weapons of offence and precision, against that enemy?  And what success and what defeat have you had in unearthing and casting out that enemy?  What fort do you hold?  On what virtue, on what grace are you posted by your Lord to keep for yourself and for Him?  And with what cost of meat and drink and sleep and amusement do you lose it or keep it for Him?  Alexander used to leave his tent at midnight and go round the camp, and spear to his post the sentinel he found sleeping.

There is nothing we are all so slothful in as secret, particular, importunate prayer.  We have an almighty instrument in our hand in secret and exact prayer if we would only importunately and perseveringly employ it.  But there is an utterly unaccountable restraint of secret and particularising prayer in all of us.  There is a soaking, stupefying sloth, that so fills our hearts that we forget and neglect the immense concession and privilege we have afforded us in secret prayer.  Our sloth and stupidity in prayer is surely the last proof of our fall and of the misery of our fallen state.  Our sloth with a gold mine open at our feet; a little more sleep on the top of a mast with a gulf under us that hath no bottom,—­no language of this life can adequately describe the besottedness of that man who lies with irons on his heels between Simple and Presumption.

PRESUMPTION

The greatest theologian of the Roman Catholic Church has made an induction and classification of sins that has often been borrowed by our Protestant and Puritan divines.  His classification is made, as will be seen, on an ascending scale of guilt and aggravation.  In the world of sin, he says, there are, first, sins of ignorance; next, there are sins of infirmity; and then, at the top, there are sins of presumption.  And this, it will be remembered, was the Psalmist’s inventory and estimate of sins also.  His last and his most earnest prayer was, that he might be kept back from all presumptuous sin.  Now you know quite well, without any explanation, what presumption is.  Don’t presume, you say, with rising and scarce controlled anger.  Don’t presume too far.  Take care, you say, with your heart beating so high that you can scarcely command it, take care lest you go too far.  And the word of God feels and speaks about presumptuous sin very much as you do yourself.  Now, what gave this third man who lay in fetters a little beyond the cross the name of Presumption was just this, that he had been