Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1900-01-08
CAPACITY TO SLEEP.
DR.. TALMAGE EXTOLS THE POOR
MANS BLESSING.

Means of Grace.
Copyright, Louis Klopsch 1901
WASHINGTON, Jan. T. In this dis
course DR.. Talmage treats of style of
disorder not much diScoursed upon and
unfolds what must be a consolation to
many people; text Psalms lxxvii, 4.
&HThou holdest mine eyes waking"
Sleep is the vacation of the soul; it
is the mind gone into the playground of
dreams; it is the relaxation of the mus
cies and the solace of the nerves; it is
the hush Of activities; it is the soft
curtaining of the eyes; it is a trance Of
eight hours; it is a calming Of the
pulses; it is a breathing much slower,
though far deeper; it is a temporary
oblivion of all carking cares; it is the
doctor recognized by all schools Of
medicine; it is a divine narcotic; it is
a complete anasthetic; it is an angel Of
the night; it is q great mercy of God
for the human race. Lack Of it 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 it. 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 ia
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
hi Inv Of
laboring man is sweet" Peter was
calmly sleeping between the two con-
stables the night before his expected
assassination. Christ was asleep in
boat on Galilee when tossed in the
ieuroclydon. The annunciation was
made to Joseph in sleep, and death is
described as only a sleep and the resur-
rection as q glorious Weakening out of
sleep.
On the other hand, insomnia or sleep
lessness is an old disorder spoken Of
again and again in the Bible. Ahasue-
rus suffered from it, 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" ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 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, ''Thsu holdest mine eyes wax
ing"
Insomnia, which has troubled all ma
tons 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 overweight
and tangled ganglion. At some time
in life almost every one has had a
touch of it. 1t has been called Amer
icanitis." 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 claw 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
affiuent of the earth are denied and for
which some of them would give mil
lions 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 triayol to put them to
nightly Inconsistencies. 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 3 o'clock in the morning, the
body at lowest temperature and its
furnaces nearly out, what n 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 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