Eternal sleep

“ That sweet and consoling designation for the dead, 'them who sleep in Jesus,' is Christ's gift to sorrowing hearts. No doubt, the idea is found in pagan thinkers, but always with the sad addition, 'an eternal sleep.' Men called death by that name in despair. The Christian calls it so because he knows that sleep implies continuous existence, repose, consciousness, and awaking. The sleepers are not dead, they will be roused to refreshed activity one day. ”

“ You must observe how pleasantly the soul wakes in the sleeping body, and, apart from the senses, sees many future events, from the principle of its relationship to the Deity. Why then do ye fear death, who love the repose of sleep, which resembles death? Surely it must be madness, through lust of a transitory life, to deny yourselves that which is eternal. ”

“ The Call Out of the nothingness of sleep, The slow dreams of Eternity, There was a thunder on the deep: I came, because you called to me. I broke the Night's primeval bars, I dared the old abysmal curse, And flashed through ranks of frightened stars Suddenly on the universe! The eternal silences were broken; Hell became Heaven as I passed. — What shall I give you as a token, A sign that we have met, at last? I'll break and forge the stars anew, Shatter the heavens with a song; Immortal in my love for you, Because I love you, very strong. ”

“ Would waken my heart from the silent sleep of years.
But loveless, lonely dreamer, who will not be comforted;
Of what avail is it to murmur, to moan, or to cry;
The peacefulest rest, I think, is the sleep of the dead,
When the day is past, and the darkness is over the sky. ”

“ These sublime words of faith were on his lips as he closed his eyes, when sleep came to him, and dreams with sleep—busy, swift-winged dreams, proving that though the body may rest, the soul must ever be awake. ”

“ I sat silently listening, a moved and hushed spectator of this poetry of the cradle, this ancient and ever new benediction of the family, this symbol of creation, sleeping under the wing of God, of our consciousness withdrawing into the shade that it may rest from the burden of thought, and of the tomb, that divine bed, where the soul in its turn rests from life. To sleep is to strain and purify our emotions, to deposit the mud of life, to calm the fever of the soul, to return into the bosom of maternal nature, thence to re-issue, healed and strong. ”

“ Were there not, after earth,
Eternity?{180}
God gives us life to keep.—
And what hath life?—
Love, faith, and care, and sleep,
Where dreams are rife.
Death’s sleep! whose shadows start
The tears in eyes
Of Love, who breaks his heart,
Despairs and dies. ”

“ Call to the soul, when man doth sleep:
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep.
If a star were confin'd into a tomb,
Her captive flames must needs burn there;
But when the hand that lock'd her up gives room,
She'll shine through all the sphere.
O Father of eternal life, and all
Created glories under Thee! ”

“ I have just come home after four and twenty sleepless hours, and yet I feel that no sleep is possible for me till my feelings are more calm and collected, and I have expressed them in these leaves. I feel like one who has been blind, and who struck by the first ray of light, is made aware of his happiness by a dazzling pain. I will try to speak connectedly, though what is the meaning of beginning, middle, end--what is the significance of these words, when eternity has mingled with time; when dying, one awakens to a new life, which is subject to time, yet still bears the impress of eternity. ”

“ At night, when going to bed, take care not to forget God, by whose favour thou hast lived through the day and thy life hitherto; and perhaps wilt not live till morning, unless this night thou make thy peace with God. Thy very bed, in fact, in which, as in the tomb, thou layest thy naked limbs to rest, in a manner reminds thee of death. And what is sleep itself but the brother and image of death? He is over rash, who, with God offended and unreconciled, ventures to commit himself to the night’s sleep. ”

“ For how many times in sleep has not the same dream come to me as a whispered message from another world, from her grave even—and on awakening I always seemed to know that her journey through life was at an end. ”

“ When all he world's asleep, and thought can fly
On tireless wings from sky to sky, when, free
From earthly chains, the soul immortal feels
Its throbbing freedom.
Bless'd night!
When God looks down from every shining star,
And breathes in every dew-gemmed flower, when faith
From her rock-bound temple on the hills
His everlasting glory sings! Oh, welcome night!
Thy beauty holds the spell that wakes to life
All things immortal. Crowned be thou with light
Eternal as the sun whose radiance wakes the day. ”

“ Rightly he said “asleep”—the long sleep that is the sweetest and happiest in that it knows no waking here; the long sweet sleep that no evil dreams disturb; the sleep after which the eyes open upon the light of immortality, and the weary heart rests upon the bosom of its God. ”

“ Might it not be that this host of angels is descending upon the sleeping world to soothe the restless, worried ones, and smooth the puckered, aching brows in quiet slumber? Lulled by their gentle music, or the rustle of their approaching footsteps, the weary one would soon find refreshing sleep. ”

“ She replied:
“Nay. Earth be a home of sorrow’s dream. For sorrow be but dream of the soul asleep. ’Tis wake (death) that setteth free.”
And after such assurance comes the cry of faith and content and peace:
279Then do I cease to clutch the emptiness,
And sleep, and sleep me unafeared! With this comforting assurance in mind one may cheerfully approach her solemn address to Death:
Who art thou,
Who tracketh ’pon the path o’ me—
O’ each turn, aye, and track?
Thou! And thou astand! ”

“ But the God of the Resurrection is awake all the time, watching his sleeping men and women, even as a mother who watches her sleeping baby, only with larger eyes and more full of love than hers; and so, you know not how, all at once you know that you are what you are; that there is a world that wants you outside of you, and a God that wants you inside of you; you rise from the death of sleep, not by your own power, for you knew nothing about it; God put his hand over your eyes, and you were dead ”

“ Hibernation has the look of a miracle. And yet, what is it but a longer sleep? Well, perhaps sleep itself is a miracle—as truly so as life or thought. Probably, the world being all of a piece, if we understood one thing we should understand everything. ”

“ Then at last a new time—the time of waking; short, sharp, and not pleasant, as wakings often are.
Sleep and dreams exist on this condition—that no one wake the dreamer.
And now life takes us up between her finger and thumb, shakes us furiously, till our poor nodding head is well-nigh rolled from our shoulders, and she sets us down a little hard on the bare earth, bruised and sore, but preternaturally wide awake.
We have said in our days of dreaming, “Injustice and wrong are a seeming; pain is a shadow. Our God, He is real, He who made all things, and He only is Love.” ”

“ THAT which for want of language more pertinent and expressive, is here termed sleep, seems to have been divine ecstasy—such influence of the holy spirit operating in the soul, as locked it up from everything earthly, and shut out worldly things, as effectually as a deep sleep, which shuts up the soul and closeth all its avenues, so that nothing terrestrial can find admittance. ”

“ Let me produce the state of sleep as a most evident demonstration of the truth of what I say; wherein souls, when the body does not distract them, have the sweetest rest depending on themselves, and conversing with God, by their alliance to him; they then go every where, and foretell many futurities beforehand. And why are we afraid of death, while we are pleased with the rest that we have in sleep? ”

“ It is as though some weary mortal of a past age laid down to rest, Death coming this way blew upon him his icy breath and froze him into perpetual silence, then gently enshrouding him in purest whiteness passed on, leaving him to the peacefulness of endless sleep. ”

“ There are several passages in Scripture which speak of Death as sleep and which taken alone might suggest a long unconsciousness, a sort of Rip Van Winkle life, sleeping for thousands of years and waking up in a moment at the Judgment Day, feeling as if there had been no interval between. But a little thought will show it is a mere figure of speech taken from the sleeping appearance of the body. "The sleep of Death" is a very natural expression to use as one looks on the calm, peaceful face after life's fitful fever and the long pain and sickness of the death-bed. ”

“ She was walking in her sleep, however: that strange act of a life apart from waking life--that mystery of mysteries, when the soul seems severed from all things on earth but the body which it inhabits--when the mind sleeps, but the spirit wakes--when the animal and the spiritual live together, yet the intellectual lies dead for the time. ”

“ I watched them, till in my eager gaze the lips seemed to move and the cheek to flush. How hard is it to believe in death! how difficult to think that “there is a sleep that knows no waking!” I knelt down beside the bed and prayed. ”

“ When on my Bed I Senseless lie,
My Soul with Heavenly thoughts supply.
Let no Ill Dreams disturb my Rest;
No Powers of Darkness me molest.
6.
Dull Sleep does me of Life deprive;
I am but half my days alive. ”

“ When I am awake, by patience, employment, effort of mind, and walking, I can keep the Fiend at arm's length, but the night is my Hell!—sleep my tormenting Angel. Three nights out of four, I fall asleep, struggling to lie awake, and my frequent night-screams have almost made me a nuisance in my own house. Dreams with me are no shadows, but the very calamities of my life. ”

“ A Prayer to Our Lord Jesus Christ
by the Monk Antiochus
As we prepare for sleep, Master, grant rest to our bodies and souls. Keep us from the dark sleep of sin and from every dark and passionate pleasure of the night. Still the impulses of passions and put out the flaming arrows which the Evil One looses deceitfully against us. ”

“ There is little more difference between sleep and death, but in continuance; whatever other difference there is, it is but a dream. This death must be but of short continuance, and therefore is but a sleep, like one night's rest. He that quickens the dead, may well call the things which be not as though they were, Rom. ”

“ When the time comes for me to depart from this life and go into what we call eternity, to pass through the vail, it is, simply, to leave the body to rest awhile, and blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for their sleep shall be sweet unto them. Death is merely a sleep to the body, and all the fear I have concerning it is what arises from my traditions. ”

“ The restlessness is allayed, and a quiet state of body and mind succeeds. It needs but a suggestion to induce him to retire for the night. After being a few minutes in bed, sleep steals over him, and his heavy breathing tells that he is in the world of dreams. ”

“ There was no relief but in the black release of sleep, of sleep without memory and without dreams; in the sleep coming brutal and heavy, like the lead that kills. To forget in annihilating sleep; to tumble headlong, as if stunned, out of daylight into the night of oblivion, was for him the only, the rare respite from this existence which he lacked the courage to endure—or to end. ”

“ Even sleep itself has its sensation and its dream; and to him who wakes while all the rest are buried in forgetfulness, there is a constant looking for something assimilating in solemnity with the hour, and the darkness, and the silence, to break the unnatural lack of busy life that seems around. Oh! how fancy then wanders through the wide unoccupied extent, and seeks for something active like itself, and, debarred all communion with beings of earth, ventures into the unsubstantial world, and perchance finds a responding voice to answer her cry for companionship. ”

“ But though natural men, who have induced secondary and figurative considerations, have found out this second, this emblematical use of sleep, that it should be a representation of death, God, who wrought and perfected his work before nature began (for nature was but his apprentice, to learn in the first seven days, and now is his foreman, and works next under him) , God, I say, intended sleep only for the refreshing of man by bodily rest, and not for a figure of death, for he intended not death itself then. ”

“ O soothest Sleep! if so it pleases thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my soul.
John Keats.
XX.
Sleep, that giv'st what Life denies,
Shadowy bounties and supreme,
Bring the dearest face that flies
Following darkness like a dream! ”

“ My sleep had been embroidered with dim dreams,
My soul had been a lawn besprinkled o'er
With flowers, and stirring shades of baffled beams.
John Keats.
XLII.
Sleep is a blessed thing. All my long life
I have known this, its value infinite
To man, its symbol of the perfect peace
That marks eternity, its marvellous
Relief from all the vanities and wounds,
The little battles and unrest of soul
That we call life.
Sleep is a blessed thing,
Doubly it has been taught me. ”

“ And just as the consuming fire of death appears in the more highly-organized beings to be somewhat subdued and restrained—mitigated or exalted into the quickening warmth of life—so also sleep is only the more than half-enlightened brother of death. And indeed as such, and the lovely messenger of hope to immortal spirits, was he ever regarded and described by the ancients; but that which for them was little more than a beautiful image of poetry is for us the profoundest of truths. ”