76 THE WORD TO COME. The next day among the rovings of her thoughts, she rehearsed all those verses of the xvii. Psalm, which are para- phrased in the same book, with very little faultering in a litre or two : " Lord, I ans thine ; but thou wilt prove My faith, my patience, and my love,' &c. The traces of her thoughts under this confusion of animal nature, retained something in them divine and heavenly. O blessed situation of soul, when we stand prepared for death, though it come with the formidable retinue of a disordered brain, and clouded reason ! It would be too long at present to represent to you the sad consequences of being round asleep when Christ comes'to call us away from this world, I shall therefore only make these three reflections : I. " None can begin too early to awake to righteousness, and prepare for the call of Christ, since no one is too young to be sent for by his messenger of death." I do not here speak of the state of infancy, when persons can hardly be said to be in a per- sonal state of trial : But when I say, none can awake too early to mind the things of religion, I mean, after reason begins its proper exercise, and this appears sometimes in early childhood. All our life in this world compared with heaven, is a sort of night, and season of darkness ; and if oar Lord summon us away in the first watch of the night, in the midst of youth and vigour, and the pleasing allurements of flesh and sense, we are in a deplorable state, if we are found sleeping, and hurried away from earth into the invisible world, in the midst of our foolish dreams of golden vanity. Dreadful indeed, to have a young thoughtless creature carried off the stage sleeping, and dead in trespasses and sins! Let those that are drunk with wine fall asleep upon.the top of a mast in the middle of the sea, where the winds and the waves are tossing and roaring all around them ; let a mad -man who has lost his reason, lie down to sleep upon the edge of a precipice, where a pit of fire and brimstone is burning beneath him, and ready to receive his fall; but let not young sinners, whose rational powers are in exercise, and whose life is every moment a mere uncertainty, venture to go on in their dangerous slumbers, while the wrath of God and eternal misery attend them, if they die before they are awake. It is granted, that no power beneath that which is divine, can effectually quicken a dead soul, and awaken it into a divine, life. It is the work of God, to quicken the dead ; Rom. iv. 17. Eph. ii. 5. It is the Son of God, who is the light and life of the world; John i. 4. to whom the Father hath given this quickening power; John v. 26. He calls sinners to awaken them trout their deadly sleep; Eph, v. 14. And they live by him, as he lives by the Father ; John Ni. 57. He awakens dead
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