neglect
of the inward thing which would glorify and exalt these--but all of us
somehow, unless we are living for God, have lulled our best, true,
central self into slumber, and lie as if dead.

Now, brethren, do not forget that this exhortation of my text, and
therefore this description, is addressed to a community of professing
Christians. I hope you will not misunderstand me as if I thought that
such a picture as I have been trying to draw applies only to men that
have no religion in them at all. It applies in varying degrees to men
that have, as--I was going to say the bulk, but perhaps that is
exaggeration, let me say a tragically large number--of professing
Christians, and a proportionate number of the professing Christians in
this audience have, a little life and a great circumference of death.
Dear brethren, you may call yourselves, and may be Christian people, and
have somewhat shaken off the torpor, and roused yourself from the
slumbering death of which I have been speaking. Remember that it still
hangs to you, and that it was of Christians that the Master said:
'Whilst the Lord was away they all slumbered and slept'; and that it was
of a Christian Church, and not of a pagan world, that the same voice
from heaven said: 'Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.' And
so I beseech you, bear with me, and do not think I am scolding, or
flinging about wild words at random, when I make a very earnest appeal
to each individual professing, and real, Christian in this congregation,
and ask them to consider, each for themselves, how much of sleep is
still in their drowsy eyes, and how far it is true that the quickening
life of Jesus Christ has penetrated, as the sunbeams into the darkness,
into the heavy mass of their natural death.

II. Secondly, let me ask you to look at the summons to awake.

It comes like the morning bugle to an army, 'Awake, thou that sleepest,
and arise from the dead.' Now, I am not going to waste your time by
talking about the old, well-worn, interminable, and unprofitable
controversy as to God's part and man's in this awaking, but I do wish to
insist upon this plain fact, that the command here presupposes upon our
parts, whether we be Christian people or not, the ability to obey. God
would not mock a man by telling him to do what he cannot do. And it is
perfectly clear that the one attitude in which we may be sure of God's
help to keep any of His commandments, and this amongst the rest,