gorgeous palaces are but the baseless fabric of a vision, which soon shall totter into dissolution: that "it shall even be as when a hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite." Poor wretched victim of a deranged fancy, he says that he is rich,9 and increased in goods, and has need of nothing; and knows not that he is wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: a beggar, disporting himself in royal apparel; assuming the gait of majesty; and for a brief hour strutting abroad upon the shadowy scene which a deluded brain has conjured into being.

Yet, slumber as he may, time waits not for his awakening. It flits over his head as rapidly as if he were most busily engaged in the realities of life. The scholar may slumber, when he should be amassing stores of literary lore: but time waits not on his convenience: and the result of his slothfulness is ignorance and folly. The husbandman may be indolently sleeping, when he should bestir himself and sow his seed: but, nevertheless, the seed-time holds on its course, and when a rich harvest repays the industry of his

more active neighbours, thorns and briers only luxuriate in his fields. And, in like manner, the scholar may sleep in the school of Christ; but the brief hour allotted for his preparatory labours is fast flitting away: the spiritual husbandman may whisper to his soul the soothing lullaby of the sluggard," a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep :" but soon will he awake to the awful reality, that the harvest is past, the summer is ended, and he is not saved.1 The light-hearted voyager, whose bark glides serenely over the smooth surface of prosperity, may sleep in the peacefulness of security; but the stream of time is, nevertheless, hurrying him rapidly along into the ocean of eternity.

To you, then, my brethren, as many of you as are at ease in Zion, indifferent to the unseen realities of eternity, would we address the exhortation of the text, "Awake thou that sleepest;" "What meanest thou, O sleeper? Arise, call upon thy God." 2

But aptly illustrative as sleep is of the unconsciousness of the sinner, the text furnishes us with another similitude, more fully descriptive of his state. He is addressed as actually dead : "Arise from the dead."

This death of the natural man consists in 2 Jon. i. 6.

Jer. viii. 20.

his alienation3 from the life of God. He is actuated by no spiritual principle. No spark of

heavenly fire animates his breast. The Spirit of Christ has no place within his soul; and therefore of divine life he is altogether destitute. He inherits, indeed, from his first parents a natural life, adequate to the discharge of the earthly relations into which he is introduced, and capable of the enjoyment of those transitory pleasures which address themselves to the senses; but no heavenly aspiration ascends from his heart to the Father of spirits; no susceptibility does he experience of spiritual joys. By his natural life he is capable of active intercourse with the concerns of time and of sense, incapable though he be of celestial pursuits and accordingly his character is described in this epistle under the similitude of a walking corpse: "You," saith the apostle, "hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; wherein in time past ye walked, according to the course of this world.”

4

Dead, too, as he is, there are occasions on which the sinner exhibits some tokens of spiritual life. By the appliances of galvanism the corpse of the deceased may be forced to assume the activity of life. Under the influence of this process, the several members of the body will discharge 3 Eph. iv. 18.

4 ii. 1, 2.

with all energy their appropriate functions. And there are seasons, too, when, aroused as by a galvanic shock, the spiritually dead will mimic life. The loss of a relative, the terrors of hell, some threatened calamity, dispel his lethargy, and, by the urgency of the shock, arouse him to a temporary reformation. But soon does the mockery cease: the appliance is withdrawn, and the corpse has resumed the attitude of death. The spectators, amazed at the energy which they beheld, had expected a resuscitation: the operators, familiarized as they were with such sights, beheld with amazement the power of their apparatus; but the delusion is soon at an end; the animation which they beheld was the artificial display of an extraneous power.

And not more insensible to the tears of his friends and their tender solicitude is the outstretched corpse of the dead, than is the spiritually dead to the assiduous kindness of his great Benefactor. No gratitude warms his cold heart towards the Giver of all good: no response is returned for the mercy and love which encompass his daily career. "Past feeling" 5 as he is, the goadings of conscience enforce an ineffectual appeal; while of all perception of spiritual pleasures he is destitute. He discerns not the things of the Spirit of God. He beholds in Christ no beauty that he 5 Eph. iv. 19.

should desire him. In vain do the harmonious strains of the Gospel fall upon his lifeless ear; that word, which to the people of God is sweeter than honey and the honey-comb, is to his palate insipid; the name of Christ, which is as ointment poured forth, possesses no odours for him.

Marvel not, then, that, on these and other accounts, the condition of the sinner is portrayed by the emblems of sleep and of death. Not only are his faculties spell-bound by Satan, but no power short of that by which he was created can arouse his fixed torpor of soul.

Now it is into the ears of the sinner, as he lies in this abject condition, that the word of the Lord sounds forth its trumpet-note, "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." The sleeper is enjoined to dissipate the delusion which captivates his soul: the dead is exhorted to arise, and forsake the charnelhouse of corruption.

Now, how infatuated is the man who, at the announcement of this message, instead of yielding a ready compliance with the revealed will of God, pauses to dispute his ability to obey! Our natural inability is no less than our spiritual helplessness. It is in the Lord that we live, and move, and have our being; not a breath can we draw, not a step can we take, no one action can we perform, in