^ We cannot underrate the enormous importance of discipline and training in childhood and youth, nor the enormous importance of teaching children to help themselves; but how much of the influence which goes to mould our human nature in its early days, and to build it up, is of the silent sort — subtle influences from nature with which children have an inborn kinship; subtle influences from the impalpable atmosphere of home — nay, whisperings to the child's soul, we know not from whence ; voices coming to them in their pure slumbers while they are still in the temple of first intuitions and innocence, and have not yet gone out to mingle in the deafening din of the busy world ? " Samuel, Samuel": and Samuel, knowing not who calls, answered in his dreams, " Here am I." ^
^ You cast an acorn into the ground and for a time it lies as dead. But nature's hidden ministries gather round it. The humours of the earth begin to soften its dry husk; the gentle rain sets the sap aflowing ; heaven's sunshine tempts the tender shoot above the ground ; and by-and-by a noble tree stands there, tossing its arms in defiance of the tempest through a thousand winters. And the roots of all true life and character are planted as deep as this, and nourished in ways as subtle and unknown. Long before men are alive to His presence with them in their life, long before they have learned to resist temptation and to cultivate
* E. B. Speirs, A Present Advent, 285.
PSALM cxxvii. 2 103
the love of His will, long before they know to choose the good and refuse the evil, God has begun His wonderful ministry to their souls. Already His good Spirit is putting the seed of a true man- hood in them, and straightway it springeth and groweth up, a man knoweth not how. So in the opening of their days He may bless His children while they reck not of it — giving to them, so to say, in sleep.^
2. The same gracious ministry accompanies us in our pursuit of happiness. If anywhere in life, it is just there that it is vain to rise up early and to sit up late. Not when we are determined, come what may, to have a pleasant and a happy life ; not then, as the reward of that insistence, does God bestow the music of the heart. He gives us when there is forgetfulness of self, and the struggle to be true to what is highest, though the morning break without a glimpse of blue, and the path be through the valley of the shadow. The one sure way to miss the gift of happiness is to rise early and to sit up late for it. To be bent at every cost on a good time is the sure harbinger of dreary days. It is when we have the courage to forget all that, and to lift up our hearts to do the will of God, that, like a swallow flashing from the eaves, happiness glances out with glad surprise.
^ In spite of his depressed condition, John Stuart Mill was able to do his usual work at the India Office. But it was done mechanically. He felt no interest in it. Melancholy ruled him. He began to ask whether life was worth living on such terms. " I generally answered to myself," he says, " that I did not think I could possibly bear it beyond a year." At length relief came to him. It came in a curious way. He was reading some biography, in which the pathos of an incident in the story so overcame him that he gave way to tears. The discovery that emotion was still within him, and that he had the power to feel for others, was salvation to him. " From this moment my burden grew lighter. The oppression of the thought that all feeling was dead within me was gone. I was no longer hopeless. I was not a stock or a stone. I had still, it seemed, some of the material out of which all worth of character, and all capacity for happiness, are made." His old interests now revived. The cloud which had so darkened his life withdrew, and existence became to him once again pleasant and useful. He still believed that " happiness is the test of all rules of conduct," but he had learned that " this
^ A. Martin, Winning the Soul, 69.
104 THE GIFTS OF SLEEP
end was to be attained only by not making it the direct end. Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness ; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way." ^
3. All through our life God's secret ministry is at work, and we owe much to it when we are called to lift the burden off our shoulders and rest a little. Less or more these grateful interrup- tions of our toil occur in the lives of all men, and, living at the pressure most of us do, they are as necessary as they are welcome. And it would be a pity if any one failed to reap from such a season the full benefit it was meant to bring him. Leisure is a good gift, and to be used wisely ; and for leisure also we shall give account. Therefore let a man use it even earnestly if he will. Let him take advantage of it to pass his life's affairs heedfully in review. Let him ask how things stand with him in God's sight. Let him examine carefully his works and ways, and mend his plans for the future. But let him not forget the wisdom of " a wise passive- ness." Besides this conscious rearrangement of the life with all its interests and duties there is another benefit conceivable. Simply to have escaped from the crush and din of the life we have been living, and to breathe a freer, calmer atmosphere — this alone may mean much for us. While the mind lies fallow it may gather to itself fresh life and power. The finest invigoration of the soul's whole faculties may come to it in the profoundest rest. For God blesses His beloved while they sleep.