Bunyan Characters (2nd Series) eBook

Alexander Whyte
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 314 pages of information about Bunyan Characters (2nd Series).

Bunyan Characters (2nd Series) eBook

Alexander Whyte
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 314 pages of information about Bunyan Characters (2nd Series).

3.  The Slothful Man’s Arbour has been already described.  It was a warm arbour, and it promised much refreshing to the pilgrims.  It also had in it a soft couch on which the weary might lean.  “Let us lie down here and take just one nap; we shall be refreshed if we take a nap!” “Do you not remember,” said the other, “that one of the shepherds bid us beware of the Enchanted Ground?  And he meant by that that we should beware of sleeping; wherefore let us not sleep as do others, but let us watch and be sober.”  Now, what is a nap?  And what is it to take a nap in our religion?  The New Testament is full of warnings to those who read it and go by it—­most solemn and most fearful warnings—­against sleep.  Now, have you any clear idea in your minds as to what this divinely denounced sleep is?  Sleep is good and necessary in our bodily life.  We would not live long if we did not sleep; we would soon go out of our mind; we would soon lose our senses if we did not sleep.  Insomnia is one of the worst symptoms of our eager, restless, over-worked age.  “He giveth His beloved sleep”; and while they sleep their corn grows they know not how.  But sleep in the great exhortation-passages of the Holy Scriptures does not mean rest and restoration; it means in all those passages insensibility, stupidity, danger, and death.  In our nightly sleep, and in the measure of its soundness, we are utterly dead to the world around us.  Men may come into our house and rob us of our most precious possessions; they may even come up to our bed and murder us; our whole house may be in a blaze about us; we may only awaken to leap out of sleep into eternity.  Now, we are all in a sleep like that in our souls.  There is above us, and around us, and beneath us, and within us the eternal world, and we are all sound asleep; we are all stone-dead in the midst of it.  Devils and wicked men are stealing our treasures for eternity, and we are sound asleep; hell is already kindling our bed beneath us, but we smell not its flames, or we only catch the first gasp of them before we make our everlasting bed among them.  Therefore let us not sleep as do others, but let us watch and be sober.  What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise and call upon thy God!  When the guide shook Heedless and Too-bold off their settles in that slothful arbour, the one of them said with his eyes still shut, “I will pay you when I take my money,” and the other said, “I will fight so long as I can hold my sword in my hand.”  At that one of the children laughed.  “What is the meaning of that?” asked Christiana.  The guide said:  “They talk in their sleep.”  So they did, and so do all men.  For this whole world is full of settles on which men sleep and talk in their sleep.  The newspapers to-morrow morning will all be full to overflowing of what men have said and written to-day and yesterday in their sleep.  The shops and the banks and the exchanges will all be full of men making promises and settling accounts

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Project Gutenberg
Bunyan Characters (2nd Series) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.