^ Beauty consists, says Euskin, in certain external qualities of bodies which are typical of Divine attributes, and in the appear- ance of felicitous fulfilment in vital things. Every one has heard of the repose of true beauty ; why is repose beautiful ? Because it is " a type of Divine Permanence," and satisfies
The universal instinct of repose, The longing for confirmed tranquillity, Inward and outward, humble and sublime — The life where hope and memory are one.^
3. The need of taking rest in sleep is a universal law of God's providence over men here in this lower world. In respect of it there is no difference between the highest and the lowest. There- fore, as death, so sleep may be truly called a great leveller. The greatest king and the meanest of his subjects, whatever difference there is between them at any given time of their waking moments, must alike forget themselves in sleep before a great many hours are over. To every one of us, one as much as another, there will then be but one chance of safety: that is, if God should be pleased to watch over us, and be with us, when we are away from ourselves. It is one of God's ways of continually reminding us all what frail, helpless beings we are, what an absolute nothing without Him.
1 E, T. Cook, The Life of Ruskin, i. 199.
216 REST AFTER TOIL
4, Sleep is the image of death, and the slumber of every night, rightly understood, is to a Christian a kind of sacramental token of that last long sleep. These words, therefore, may well be used, and always have been understood by devout persons, as most proper for a dying Christian also. Of a dying Christian : for only such an one has a warrant from Holy Scripture to regard death as no more than a quiet sleep. Observe how these expressions, " fallen asleep," " sleeping in Jesus," and the like, are always used in the New Testament. They are constantly employed to denote the death, not of all persons, but of those who die in the Lord. Thus, our Saviour, speaking of Lazarus : " Our friend Lazarus sleepeth, but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep." Again, the word is used of Stephen : when he had prayed for his murderers, " he fell asleep." So St. Paul speaks with horror of some men's notion that there was no resurrection, because in that case it must follow that those who are " fallen asleep in Christ are perished." In another place, he assures the Thessalonians that " them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him " when He comes to raise the dead.
^ Sleep was one of the apostolic names for death, full of tenderness and peace, but it must not be understood to mean inaction. It is rest from the weariness and harassment of the present life; it is the entrance into the freedom and buoyancy of the life to come. In the sweetest letter of consolation ever written to a parent on the death of a child, Archbishop Leighton says : " And is he so quickly laid to rest ? Happy he ! . . . John is but gone an hour or two sooner to bed, as children used to do, and we are undressing to follow." Life is a long undressing, during which the frailties and faults of our imperfect nature are gradually slipped, and we enter unburdened into the unseen world. As the wrinkles are smoothed from the face of a sufferer by the gentle hand of death, so that the war-worn veteran returns to his youth, so the weariness departs from the soul, and it enters into the rest for which amid this struggle we often hunger and thirst.^
11 Sleep is that death by which we may be literally said to die daily; a death which Adam died before his mortality; a death whereby we live a middle and moderating point between life and death ; in fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers and a half adieu unto the world, and take my farewell in a colloquy with God.
1 John Watson, The Potter'' s Wheel, 156.
PSALM IV. 8 217
The night is come, like to the day, Depart not Thou, great God, away. ^ ""■■* Let not my sins, black as the night, Eclipse the lustre of Thy light : Keep still in my horizon ; for to me The sun makes not the day, but Thee. Thou, whose nature cannot sleep, On my temples sentry keep ; Guard me 'gainst those watchful foes Whose eyes are open while mine close ; Let no dreams my head infest But such as Jacob's temples blest. While I do rest, my soul advance; Make my sleep a holy trance ; That I may, my rest being wrought, Awake into some holy thought; And with as active vigour run My course as doth the nimble sun. Sleep is a death : 0 make me try, By sleeping, what it is to die; And as gently lay my head On my grave, as now my bed. Howe'er I rest, great God, let me Awake again at last with Thee; And thus assur'd, behold I lie Securely, or to awake or die. These are my drowsy days; in vain I do now wake to sleep again; 0 come that hour, when I shall never Sleep again, but wake for ever !