354 THE WATCHFUL CHRISTIAN DYING IN PEACE. {DISC. n. comes, for this is the casewith those who are asleep ; On the other hand, watchfulness is a preparation and readiness for everyevent, and so it is expressed in some of these parables, verse 40. " Be ye therefore ready." But to enter into a few particulars. 1. There is a sleep of death, Ps. xiii. 3: Spiritual death, as well as natural, is sometimes called a sleep. Such is the case of a soul " dead in trespasses and sins,' Eph. v. 14. compared with ii. 1. " Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." Watchfulness, therefore, implies life, a principle of Spiritual life in the soul : Surely those, who are dead in sins, are not prepared to receive their Lord. He is a perfect stranger to them, they know him not, they love him not, they obey him not; and a terrible stranger he trill be, if he come upon them before they are awake. But those, who are awakened by divine grace into a spiritual life, haveseen somethingof tho glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,; they are acquainted with their Lord, they love him, and have some degree of prepa- ration to meet their Saviour, when 'ne summons them to leave this world. This is, therefore, a matter of highest consequence, that we awake from a state of sin and death, that we be made alive to God, begin the christian life, and set upon religion, i'n good earnest, according to the rules of the gospel, before Christ calls us away. It is only this divine life begun in us, that can secure us from eternal death ; though 'even Christians may be found slumbering in other respects, and expose them- selves to painful evils, if that hour surprize them at uri awares. 2. There is a sleep of indolence and thoughtlessness: When a man is insensible of his -own circumstances, and too careless of y,he things which most concern him, we say, " the m 'n, is asleep." Such a sleep seems to be upon the chug:-ch of Israel ; Isai. xxix. 10, 11: "a spirit of deep sleep, when the law, which contained the great things of 'God, and their salvation, was to them as a sealed book, they read it not, their eyes were closed, their spiritua', senses were bound up." Many a christian, who bath b' :eri raised from a death in sin, has been seized with this e r irrìinal slntrrber, and has had the `image of death CC" .te again upon him : He has grown too careless and
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