New Park Street Pulpit · Sermon No. 244
Delivered on Sabbath Evening, January 9th, 1859.
“For the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it: and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it.”—Isaiah 28:20.
GOD HAS SO made men, that there are two things essential for their comfort, if not for their very existence, namely, sleep and clothing. Had God so pleased it, he might have made man an everlasting watcher, upon whose eyes the mists of night never should descend, and upon whose eyelids the fingers of sleep never should be placed. Perhaps angelic spirits never sleep. Day without night they circle God’s throne rejoicing, and ceaselessly they chant his praise. Perhaps their unflagging wings are always stretched for duty, and their untiring voices are ever occupied with song. But manifestly it is not so with man. We need “kind nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep.” If we could not sleep, should we not even wish for death? Let sleep be long withholder from our eyelids, if we had no other disease our strength must become prostrate, and the fire of life would smoulder into the ashes of death. Sleep, therefore, is essential even to the very existence of our bodies on earth. Clothing also is needful for our comfort, and, at least in some climates, absolutely necessary for our very existence. God has made the animal creation of such a kind, that they grow their clothing upon their own backs. For the horse and for the sheep no loom works, nor cloth the shuttle hasten in its course. Their backs are their own webs, and they fashion their own garments, as if to teach us, that man alone is imperfect, and needs to long beyond himself: Other creatures can readily find their own habitations, and produce for themselves out of themselves; but man feels his nakedness, and must either seek for the fig leaf of his own righteousness, or else the Lord God must make for him a dress with which he may array himself and stand completely covered. Dress, I say, is essential to man—dress and sleep.
Now, I think it may be readily granted, that man’s body is, after all, only a picture of his inner being: just what the body needs materially, that the soul needs spiritually. The soul, then, needs two things. It requires rest, which is pictured to us in sleep. The soul needs a bed upon which it may repose quietly and take its ease. And, again, the soul needs covering, for as a naked body would be both uncomfortable, unseemly, and dangerous; much more would the naked soul be unhappy, noxious to the eye of God, and utterly miserable in itself.
Now, our text tells us that men have sought for rest and for clothing where they are not to be found; that they have gone about to make a bed for themselves which is shorter than that they can stretch themselves upon it; and that they have also sought to make coverings for themselves which have turned out to be narrower than that they can wrap themselves in them.
We shall speak, first, of *what man has done, and of his vain and futile attempts to find rest and clothing for his soul;*and then, afterward, we shall briefly attempt to show how God has accomplished this, and has given to the believer a couch upon which he can to his utmost length and yet find that the bed is long enough, and how the Lord has given him a garment in which he may grow, but he shall always find that, broad as he shall become in the magnitude of his experience or of his sin, yet shall this covering be always broad enough to cover him.
I. Well, then, let us take the first figure. The bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it. MEN TRY, THEN, TO MAKE BEDS ON WHICH THEIR SOULS MAY REST. One of the most uncomfortable things in the world, I should think, would be a spare bed—a bed so spare that a man should not have room stretch himself on it. I cannot conceive how miserable a poor wretch must be who would be condemned to seek an unresting rest, an uneasy ease on a couch shorter than his body. But that is just the condition of all men while they are seeking a rest anywhere else but in the “rest that remaineth for the people of God.” With reference to a man’s present aims, and present attainments, all that he can ever get on earth is a bed shorter than that he can stretch himself on it. Then, in the next place, we shall notice as to the future world, that all that man can do, if we come to consider it, is too little to give ease to the heart.
First then as to the present world, how many beds are there of marks own invention. One man has made himself a bedstead of gold; the pillars thereof are of silver, the covering thereof is of Tyrian purple, the pillows are filled with down, such as only much fine gold could buy him; the hangings he hath embroidered with threads of gold and silver, and the curtains are drawn upon rings of ivory. Lo, this man hath ransacked creation for luxuries, and invented to himself all manner of sumptuous delights. He gets unto himself broad acres and many lands; he adds house to house, and field to field; he digs, he toils, he labors, he is in hopes that he shall get enough, a sufficiency, a satisfactory inheritance. He proceeds from enterprise to enterprise, he invests his money in one sphere of labor, and then another. He attempts to multiply his gold, until it gets beyond all reckoning. He becomes a merchant prince, a millionaire, and he says unto himself; ‘Soul, take thine ease; eat, drink, and be merry; thou hast much goods laid up for many years.” Do you mat envy this man his bed? Are there not some of you, whose only object in life is to get such a couch for yourselves? You say, “He has well-feathered his nest; would to God that I could do the same for myself!” Ah, but do you know that this bed is shorter than that he can stretch himself upon it? If you cast yourself upon it for a moment, the bed is long enough for you, but it is not long enough for him. I have often thought that many a man’s riches would be sufficient for me, but they are not sufficient for him. If he makes them his God, and seeks in in them his happiness, you never find the man has money enough, his lands are still too narrow and his estate too small. When he begins to stretch himself, he finds there is something wanted; if the bed could only be made a little longer, then, he thinks, he could be quiet and have room enough. But when the bed is lengthened, he finds he has grown longer, too, and when his fortune has grown as big as the bedstead of Og, king of Bashan, even then he finds he cannot lie upon it easily. Nay, we read of one man who stretched himself along the whole world which he had conquered; but he found there was me room, and he began to weep because there were not other worlds to conquer. One would have thought a little province would have been enough for him to rest in. Oh, no; so big is man when he stretches himself, that the whole world does not suffice him. Nay, if God should give to the avaricious all the mines of Peru, all the glittering diamonds of Golconda, all the wealth of worlds, and if he were then to transmute the stars into gold and silver, and make us emperors of an entire universe till we should talk of constellations as men talk of hundreds, yea, and talk of universes as often talk of thousands, even then the bed would not be long enough whereon we might stretch our ever-lengthening desires. The soul is wider than creation, broader than space; give it all, it would be still unsatisfied, and man would not find rest. You say, “That is strange: if I had a little more I should be very well satisfied.” You make a mistake: if you are not content with what you have you would not be satisfied if it were doubled. “Nay,” says one, “I should be.” You do not know yourself. If you have fixed your affection on the things of this world, that affection is like a horse-leech; it cries, “Give! give!” It will suck, suck, suck to all eternity, and still cry, “Give, give!” and though you give it all, it has not gotten enough. The bed, in fact, “is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it.”