Moral Sleep by C. A. Osgood

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 20, 1874

Moral Sleep.

By C. A. Osgood

THERE is a state of moral stupor which persons often fall into which resembles sleep, and is sometimes called so in the Bible. Literal sleep is both necessary and useful. But this indifference to our spiritual interests is never a benefit, but always hurtful to those who indulge in it.

When people fall into a state of sound sleep they become insensible. They are not sensible of their own condition. They have no idea of what is passing around them. There may be scenes of the most joyful kind passing around them, but they know nothing of it. So there may be scenes of the deepest sorrow going on within their own dwellings which would excite their sympathies in a wonderful manner if they were awake; but they are not moved in the least, because they are in a state of profound slumber. The robber may be at their bedside ready to take their lives if they should show the least sign of awaking; but they are not at all alarmed, because they are asleep.

So when men are spiritually asleep; they have no just sense of the truths the Bible reveals; no right sense of the “exceeding sinfulness of sin,” or of the awful danger of those who live and die in their sins. They are not sensible of the goodness of God, who “daily loadeth them with benefits.” They are insensible to the amazing love of Christ. They are not really sensible of the fact that their friends and neighbors are on the high road to perdition. They do not realize that their spiritual foes are secretly lying in wait, ready at any moment to shoot them. As men in literal slumber are not aware how fast time flies, and are astonished on awaking to find that it is so far advanced, so moral sleepers have no idea how soon their day of probation will be over, and the great day of God come on.

Sleep is a state of forgetfulness. However active and earnest a man may be in the labors of life during the day, when night comes on and he has fallen into a sound sleep, he forgets all the toils of the day; he forgets his joys and sorrows and anxieties, also the success or want of success that has attended his labors during the day. These interest him no more till he awakes.

So, in a spiritual sense, when persons sleep, they forget many important things that have occurred in their past history. They forget the “wormwood and the gall” they tasted, when they felt their “iniquities going over their heads,” as a heavy burden too heavy for them to bear. They have forgotten, too, the joys they felt when first the Saviour’s pardoning blood was applied to their hearts. It may well be said to them now, “Where is the blessedness ye spoke of?”

The apostle Peter had in his mind the case of such when, writing of the Christian graces, he said, “He that lacketh these things is blind, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.” And John, writing to one of the seven churches, said, “Thou hast left thy first love. Remember from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works.” Rev. 2:4, 5. They had forgotten the high place to which they had been raised by the grace of God, and so were called upon to remember it. Many are very forgetful now. They have left their first love. They have but a feeble idea of the joys of communion with God. They walk in darkness.

Again, sleep is oftentimes a state of misapprehensiveness. This is when people dream. Them seem to themselves to see and hear and act, but really they sleep. Sometimes they think themselves rich and happy, when really they are poor and miserable.

So it is spiritually with people who are dreaming. They suppose themselves to be rich and increased in goods, having need of nothing; when in truth they are “poor and miserable and blind and naked.” They think they are in a good condition, when the True Witness threatens to spue them out of his mouth, so loathsome are they in his sight. They are not aware of their true condition, nor of the condition of their dearest friends, their children, nor of the world at large. They act as if this world was worth more than the world to come; as if the approbation of men was of more value than the approbation of God. They feel more anxious to have their children become respectable in the eyes of their fellows, and fashionable in their attire, than to have them adorned with “the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.” They are ready to invest much money in worldly enterprises, but only a little in the cause of God and humanity. As they are in this dreamy state, they seem to feel that the enjoyment of things seen by the natural eye are of more importance than the “eternal weight of glory,” which God has promised to those who love him.

Finally, persons when asleep are not prepared to engage in the active labors of life. Just so it is in the cause of God. Those who are in a sleeping or sleepy condition are unprepared to labor successfully in the cause of truth. If they talk of these things, it is with so little earnestness that it produces no feeling. If they undertake to warn the world of its coming doom, it is done so easily that no one is alarmed. God’s servants are called upon to “Cry aloud and spare not, to lift up their voice like a trumpet,” to “show the people their sins.”

It is high time now to awake out of sleep. The predicted signs of the Lord’s coming have been seen. The last message of mercy to mankind is being given. The harvest of the earth will soon be reaped. Oh! how applicable to us the words of the Saviour, “What I say unto you I say unto all, watch.” C. A. OSGOOD.

Rochester, N. Y.