And the same sloth that starves
and fetters the mind at the same time casts the conscience and the heart
into a deep sleep. I often wonder as I go on working among you, if you
ever attach any meaning or make any application to yourselves of all
those commands and counsels of which the Scriptures are full,--to be up
and doing, to watch and pray, to watch and be sober, to fight the good
fight of faith, to hold the fort, to rise early, and even by night, and
to endure unto death, and never for one moment to be found off your
guard. Do you attach any real meaning to these examples of the
psalmists, to these continual commands and examples of Christ, and to
these urgent counsels of his apostles? Do you? Against whom and against
what do you thus campaign and fight? For fear of whom or of what do you
thus watch? What fort do you hold? What occupies your thoughts in night-
watches, and what inspires and compels your early prayers? It is your
stupefying life of spiritual sloth that makes it impossible for you to
answer these simple and superficial questions. Sloth is not the word for
it.
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