e took her up on the seat beside
him. The cold became more bitter. He noticed after a while that the
woman replied to his questions drowsily. A little later he saw that
she was asleep. Ho knew that unless awakened she would sleep the sleep
of death. So he did what at first seemed a cruel thing. He sprang
from the wagon, dragged her out into the snow and took the child from
her clinging arms. With the child he sprang into the wagon and started
his team down the road at a trot. The woman roused herself and began
to totter feebly forward. A little later she quickened her pace. At
last she broke into a run. And as she caught up with the wagon a
little later and the farmer put the baby back into her arms, life had
come back to the mother. A temporal loss was a blessing to this woman.
Let us thank God for any losses that may come to us that will keep us
from sleeping our way to ruin.

So Jonah was down in the sides of the boat asleep. Meanwhile the
tempest was raging. Meanwhile the fear-filled crew was rubbing elbows
with death. Then a hand is clapped on Jonah's shoulder and he is being
given a vigorous shaking and a voice is calling to him. And though it
is a heathen voice it is full of rebuke. "What meanest thou, O
sleeper? How is it that you can sleep amidst all the agony, amidst all
the danger that is about us? When the situation is as it is, how is it
that you are not on your knees? Else and call upon thy God."

I wish through this message that I might take some of you who are
sleeping so soundly and peacefully and shake you awake. I wish that
God might speak through my voice to my heart and yours and say to us,
"What meanest thou, O sleeper? What do you mean by sitting idly and
stupidly in the House of God Sunday after Sunday and never doing
anything? What do you mean by having children growing up about you and
not being enough interested in their spiritual welfare to even have a
family altar? How is it that amidst the tremendous issues of moral
life and moral death that you can be as complacent and as undisturbed
as the dead? Why in the name of all that is reasonable will you
continue to 'lie like huge stones across the mouth of the sepulcher
where God is trying to raise some Lazarus from the dead?'"

That shake and that message got Jonah awake. He sprang out of his
berth and rushed upon the deck. And the sight that met him there made
a new man out of him. It changed him from a provincial