Connecticut western news., 1900-01-11
CAPACITY TO SLEEP.
DR. TAlMAGE ExTOlS THE POOR
 MANS BLESSING.
He Has Words of Comfort Also For the Victims of Insomnfa-The Law of Compensation - wakefulness a Means of Grace.

or Compensation - -"akefulness a
 Means of Grace.
 Copyright, Louis Klopsch 19OO.l
 WASHINGTON, Jan. I'm this dis course pr. Talmage treats of style of disorder not much discoursed upon and unfolds what must be a consolation to many people; text, Psalms lxxvii, 4, "Thou holdest mine eyes waking"
 Sleep Is the vacation of the soul; it Is the mind gone into the playground of dreams; 1t is the relaxation of the mus cles and the solace of the nerves; 1t is the hush of activities; it Is the soft curtaining of the eyes; 1t Is a trance of eight hours; it Is a calming of the pulses; 1t is breathing much slower, though far deeper; 1t is a temporary oblivion of all carking cares; 1t is the doctor recognized by all schools of medicine; it is divine narcotic; it is . complete an@sthetic; it is an angel of the night; 1t is a great mercy of God for the human race. Lack of 1t puts patients on the rack of torture, or in the madhouse, or in the grave. o blessed sleep! No wonder the Bible makes much of 1t. Through sleep so sound that a surgical incision of the side of Adam did not waken him came the best temporal blessing ever afford ed to man-wifely companionship. While in sleep on pillow of rock Ja- cob saw a ladder set up, with angels coming down and climbing. So "he giveth his beloved sleep" soliloquized the psalmist. Solomon listens at the door of tired workman and eulogizes his pillow by saying, "The sleep of a laboring man is sweet" Peter was calmly sleeping between the two con- stables the night before his expected assassination. Christ was asleep in a boat on Galilee when tossed in the euroclydon. The annunciation was made to Joseph in sleep, and death is described as only sleep and the resur- rection as glorious wakening out of sleep.
 On the other hand, insomhia or sleep lessness is an old disorder spoken of again and again in the Bible. Ahasue- rus suffered from 1t, and we read, 'In that night could not the king sleep" Joseph Hall said of that ruler, "He that could command a hundred and seven and twenty provinces could not command sleep" Nebuchadnezzar had insomnia, and the record is, His sleep brake from him." Solomon describes this trouble and says, Neither day nor night seeth he sleep with his eyes," Asaph was its victim, for he complains in my text that his eyes are open at midnight, some mysterious power keep ing the upper and lower lids from join ing, 'Thou holdest mine eyes walk ing"
 Insomnia, which has troubled all na- tions and all ages, has it's widest swing in our land because of the push and speed of all styles of activities as in no other land. Where there Is one man or woman with equipoise of nerve there are a dozen with overwrought and tangled ganglion. At some time in life almost every one has had a touch of it. It has been called "Amer- ieanitis." Last night there were, as there will be tonight, millions of peo- pie to whom the words of the text are appropriate utterance, 'Thou holdest mine eyes waking"
 Law of Compensation.
 Wonderful is that law which Ralph Waldo Emerson called the Flaw of compensation" and it has been so ar ranged that while the hard working populations of the earth are denied many of the luxuries they have at least one luxury which many of the affluent of the earth are denied and for which some of them would give mil Hons of dollars in cash down-namely. capacity to sleep. The most of those who toll with hand and foot do not have to send out invitations to sleep They require no bromide or valerian or sulphonal or triavol to put them to nightly unconsciousness. In five min utes after their head touches their pill low they are as far off from the wall they were building, or the ditch they were digging, or the anvil they were pounding, or the wheels they were controlling as heaven is from earth. About o'clock in the morning, the body at lowest temperature and its furnaces nearly out, what 8 complete quietude for the entire physical and mental structure! All night long, for such, sleep is busy with its enchanted amounting of every corpuscle of the arteries and every molecule of the en- tire physical organism, and the morn Ing finds the subjects of such sleep re- built, reconstructed and touched of God into a new life.
 Of course there is an unrighteous sleep, as when Jonah, trying to escape from duty, slept in the sides of the ship while the Mediterranean was in wrath because of that prophetic pas senger; as when Columbus In his first voyage, exhausted from being up many nights, gave the ship in charge of the steersman and the crew, who, leaving the management of the vessel to boys, went asleep and allowed the ship to strike sn the sand banks of St. Thom- IS; as when the sentinel goes to sleep at his post, endangering the whole army; as when the sluggard, who ac- complishes nothing the day before he went to sleep and will accomplish noth- ing the day after he wakes, fills up Solomon's picture of him as he yawns out, "A little sleep and a little slumber and a little folding of the hands to 6lccP. put Sitcp dt tue TlSuL tllue and amid the right circumstances, can you imagine anything more blessed? If sleep, according to sacred and pro- fane literature, is an emblem of death, the morning to all refreshed slumber- CTS Is a resurrection.
 Remark the first: If you have escap- ed the insomnia spoken of In the text, thank God. Here and there one can command sleep, and it comes the min- ute he orders it and departs at the min ute he wishes 1t to go, as Napoleon when he wrote: Different affairs are arranged in my head as in drawers When I wish to interrupt one train of thought, I close the drawer which con- koipo fbot c,,hiaot md oror, fhot xubioh