William Law
A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life
We naturally conceive some abhorrence of a man that is in bed when he should be at his labour in his shop. We cannot tell how to think anything good of him, who is such a slave of drowsiness as to neglect his business for it. Let this therefore teach us to conceive how odious we must appear in the sight of Heaven if we are in bed, shut up in sleep and darkness, when we should be praising God; if we are such slaves to drowsiness as to neglect our devotions for it.
For he is to be blamed as a slothful drone that chooses the lazy indulgence of sleep, rather than to perform his proper share of worldly business; how much more is he to be reproached that would rather lie folded up in bed than to be raising up his heart to God in acts of praise and adoration!
Prayer is the nearest approach to God, and the highest enjoyment of Him, that we are capable of in this life. It is the noblest exercise of the soul, the most exalted use of our best faculties, and the highest imitation of the blessed inhabitants of Heaven. When our hearts are full of God, sending up holy desires to the throne of grace, we are then in our highest state, we are in the utmost heights of human greatness; we are not before kings and princes, but in the presence and audience of the Lord of all the world, and can be no higher until death is swallowed up in glory.
On the other hand, sleep is the poorest, dullest refreshment of the body, so far from being intended as an enjoyment that we are forced to receive it either in a state of insensibility, or in the folly of dreams. Sleep is such dull, stupid state of existence that even amongst mere animals, we despise them most which are most drowsy. He, therefore, chooses to enlarge the slothful indulgence of sleep rather than be early at his devotions with God, chooses the dullest refreshment of the body before the highest, noblest enjoyment of the soul; he chooses that state which is a reproach to mere animals rather than that exercise which is the glory of Angels.
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