Good Friday
Daily Devotionals
Music For the Soul
"THEM THAT SLEEP"
So He giveth unto His beloved sleep. - Psalms 127:2
Sweetest, deepest, most appealing to all our hearts is that ’ emblem of death, "Them that sleep." It is used, if I count rightly, some fourteen times in the New Testament, and it carries with it large and plain lessons, on which I touch but for a moment. "What, then, does this metaphor say to us?
Well, it speaks first of rest. That is not altogether an attractive conception to some of us. If it be taken exclusively, it is by no means wholesome. I suppose that the young, and the strong, and the eager, and the ambitious, and the prosperous rather shrink from the notion of their activities being stiffened into slumber. But, dear friend, there are some of us, like tired children in a fair, who would fain have done with the weariness, who have made experience of the distractions and bewildering changes, whose backs are stiffened with toil, whose hearts are heavy with loss. And to all of us, in some moods, the prospect of shuffling off this weary coil of responsibilities and duties, and tasks and sorrows, and of passing into indisturbance and repose, appeals. I believe, for my part, that after all the deepest longing of men, though they search for it through toil and effort, the deepest longing is for repose. As the poet has taught us, " there is no joy but calm." Every heart is weary enough, and heavy laden, and laboring enough, to feel the sweetness of a promise of rest -
"Sleep, full of rest from head to foot,
Lie still, dry dust, secure of change."
Yes! But the rest of which our emblem speaks is, as I believe, only applicable to the bodily frame. The word " sleep" is a transcript of what sense enlightened by faith sees in that still form, with the folded hands and the quiet face and the closed eyes. But let us remember that this repose, deep and blessed as it is, is not, as some would say, the repose of unconsciousness. I do not believe, and I would have you not believe, that this emblem touches the vigorous spiritual life, or that the passage from out of the toil and moil of earth into the calm of the darkness beyond has any power in limiting or suspending the vital force of the man.
'Music For The Soul' daily readings for a year from the writings of the Rev. Alexander Maclaren, D.D., selected and arranged by the Rev. Geo. Coates, published by A.C. Armstrong and Son, 51 East Tenth Street, (1897). The original text is in the Public Domain and this electronic version is free for anyone without cost or obligation. This a year long daily devotional was written by the Rev. Alexander Maclaren over 100 years ago. This Scottish pastor had a heart to follow Jesus and a love for souls.