2. Gifts of spiritual illumination and direction have come through sleep. When God shuts the doors of sense, He keeps open His own way into the spirit ; and many a time He gives His beloved thoughts of truth and desires for good that surprise the sleeper when he gets himself back again. He awakes to earth as » L. A. Banks, The Oreat Promises (tf the Bible, 88.
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one come from heaven, with the life of heaven still pulsing in his heart. How plain his duty is ! how sure his help ! how bright his hope ! Abraham fell into a deep sleep, and in it God gave him a vision of what we often desire, that of the future ; he told him that four hundred years hence the people of Israel would come out of Egypt and march in triumph to the Promised Land. Jacob, when he ran away from home, lay down to sleep, putting a stone beneath his head for a pillow, and as he lay there he dreamed of heaven. A ladder of light came down from the Throne of God, and on it angels ascending and descending ; what a delightful experience in sleep, a vision of Heaven, a sight of Home. But there is still more in the vision ; the ladder is a beautiful type of Jesus Christ. He has been let down from God's Throne, so that men may reach the feet of their Father in Heaven.
^ There is an advice of my old mother's which I have often acted upon, and I pass it on to you: "Before doing an action which may mean, by-and-by, a great crisis, sleep on it for a night or two. Do not act at once, or you may be foolish. After a good sleep, at least a man's nerves are steady and his brain and mind are well-balanced." God gives these to men in their sleep.^
The hours of day are like the waves That fret against the shores of sin: They touch the human everywhere. The bright-divine fades in their glare,
And God's sweet voice the spirit craves Is heard too faintly in the din.
When all the senses are awake, The mortal presses overmuch Upon the great immortal part. And God seems farther from the heart.
Must souls, like skies when day-dawns break, Lose star by star at sunlight's touch ?
But when the sun kneels in the west And gradually sinks as great hearts sink, And in his sinking flings adown Bright blessings from his fading crown, The stars begin their song of rest
And shadows make the thoughtless think. * W. K. Bryce, Appeals to the Soul, 68.
io8 THE GIFTS OF SLEEP
The human seems to fade away,
And down the starred and shadowed skies The heavenly comes, as memories come Of home to hearts afar from home,
And through the darkness after day Many a winged angel flies.
And somehow, tho' the eyes see less, Our spirits seem to see the more;
When we look thro' night's shadow-bars, The soul sees more than shining stars —
Yea, sees the very loveliness
That rests upon the golden shore.^
3. By a last sleep God leads His beloved to a perfect life and an endless day. Death is the sinking of the wearied man into the lap of Nature that she may soothe and refresh him. It is the draught that relaxes the strained energies, and smoothes the brow of care, and cools the fever of the heart ; and from its gentle sway the man emerges with his powers refitted and rebraced for the toil and endeavours of his life. And what is Death but this ? It is a sleep, no more ; a sleep in which earth's weariness is drowned for ever and care and sorrow sink into perpetual oblivion and the whole nature is finally recruited and refreshed for unending service elsewhere.
^ After forty years of indefatigable toil, Huxley retired to his home at Eastbourne on the cliffs of England's southern coasts, still to breast the storms and enjoy the love and confidence of friends and foes, who, however much they agreed with or differed from him, gave him their united and hearty esteem. He died on June 29, 1895. His gravestone bears these significant and touch- ing lines written by his wife :
Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep: For still He giveth His beloved sleep: And if an endless sleep He wills. So best.
This is beautiful resignation; but we believe that He who giveth His beloved sleep will assign to him eternal rest from earthly misgiving and fear, and also an appropriate sphere of future activity. Surely an existence so nobly filled with higher
' Father Ryan.
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forms of human effort cannot be doomed to the extinction of end- less sleep ! ^
Out yonder in the moonlight, wherein God's Acre lies, Go angels walking to and fro, singing their lullabies. Their radiant wings are folded, and their eyes are bended low, As they sing among the beds whereon the flowers delight to grow —
" Sleep, oh, sleep !
The Shepherd guardeth His sheep. Fast speedeth the night away, Soon Cometh the glorious day; Sleep, weary ones, while ye may,—
Sleep, oh, sleep ! "
The flowers within God's Acre see that fair and wondrous