y awaken to leap out of sleep into eternity. Now, we
are all in a sleep like that in our souls. There is above us, and around
us, and beneath us, and within us the eternal world, and we are all sound
asleep; we are all stone-dead in the midst of it. Devils and wicked men
are stealing our treasures for eternity, and we are sound asleep; hell is
already kindling our bed beneath us, but we smell not its flames, or we
only catch the first gasp of them before we make our everlasting bed
among them. Therefore let us not sleep as do others, but let us watch
and be sober. What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise and call upon thy God!
When the guide shook Heedless and Too-bold off their settles in that
slothful arbour, the one of them said with his eyes still shut, "I will
pay you when I take my money," and the other said, "I will fight so long
as I can hold my sword in my hand." At that one of the children laughed.
"What is the meaning of that?" asked Christiana. The guide said: "They
talk in their sleep." So they did, and so do all men. For this whole
world is full of settles on which men sleep and talk in their sleep. The
newspapers to-morrow morning will all be full to overflowing of what men
have said and written to-day and yesterday in their sleep. The shops and
the banks and the exchanges will all be full of men making promises and
settling accounts in their sleep. They will finger their purses, and
grasp their swords, and all in their sleep. And not children but devils
will laugh as they hear the folly that falls from men's lips who are
besotted with spiritual sleep and drugged with spiritual and fleshly sin.
A dream cometh through the multitude of business. I had just got this
length in this lecture the other night when I went to sleep. And in my
sleep one of my people came to me and asked me if I could make it quite
clear and plain to him what it would be for a man like him after a
communion-time to begin to walk with God. And I just wish I could make
the things of the Enchanted Ground as plain to myself and to you to-night
as I was able to make a walk with God plain to myself and to my visitor
that night in my ministerial dream. I often wish that my business mind
worked as well in my study chair and in my pulpit as it sometimes does in
my bed and in my sleep. "Now, I beheld in my dream that they talked more
in their sleep at this time than ever they did in all their journey. And
being in a muse thereabout,