199. Insomnia
Insomnia
Psa_77:4 : ’93Thou holdest mine eyes waking.’94
Sleep is the vacation of the soul; it is the mind gone into the playground of dreams; it is the relaxation of muscles and the solace of the nerves; it is the hush of activities; it is the soft curtaining of the eyes; it is a trance of eight hours; it is a calming of the pulses; it is a breathing much slower though far deeper; it is a temporary oblivion of all carking cares; it is the doctor recognized by all schools of medicine; it is a divine narcotic; it is a complete an’e6sthetic; it is an angel of the night; it is a great mercy of God for the human race. Lack of it puts patients on the rack of torture or in the madhouse or in the grave. Oh, blessed sleep! No wonder the Bible makes much of it. Through sleep so sound, that a surgical incision of the side of Adam did not waken him, came the best temporal blessing ever afforded to man’97wifely companionship. While in sleep on a pillow of rock Jacob saw a ladder set up, with angels coming down and climbing. So ’93He giveth his beloved sleep,’94 soliloquized the Psalmist. Solomon listens at the door of a tired workman, and eulogizes his pillow by saying: ’93The sleep of a laboring man is sweet.’94 Peter was calmly sleeping between the two constables the night before his expected assassination. Christ was asleep in a boat on Galilee when tossed in the Euroclydon. The annunciation was made to Joseph in sleep, and death is described as only a sleep, and the Resurrection as a glorious wakening out of sleep.
On the other hand, insomnia or sleeplessness is an old disorder spoken of again and again in the Bible. Ahasuerus suffered from it, and we read: ’93In that night could not the king sleep.’94 Joseph Hall said of that ruler: ’93He that could command a hundred and seven and twenty provinces could not command sleep.’94 Nebuchadnezzar had insomnia, and the record is: ’93His sleep brake from him.’94 Solomon describes this trouble, and says: ’93Neither day nor night seeth he sleep with his eyes.’94 Asaph was its victim, for he complains in my text that his eyes are wide open at midnight, some mysterious power keeping the upper and lower lids from joining: ’93Thou holdest mine eyes waking.’94
Insomnia, which has troubled all nations and all ages, has its widest swing in our land, because of the push and speed of all styles of activities as in no other land. Where there is one man or woman with equipoise of nerves, there are a dozen with overwrought and tangled ganglion. At some time in life almost every one has had a touch of it. It has been called ’93Americanitis.’94 Last night there were, as there will be to-night, millions of people to whom the words of the text are appropriate utterance: ’93Thou holdest mine eyes waking.’94
Wonderful is that law which Ralph Waldo Emerson called the ’93law of compensation,’94 and it has been so arranged that while the hard-working populations of the earth are denied many of the luxuries, they have at least one luxury which many of the affluent of the earth are denied, and for which some of them would give millions of dollars in cash down, namely, capacity to sleep. The most of those who toil with hand and foot do not have to send out invitations to sleep. They require no bromide or valerian or sulphonal or triavol to put them to nightly unconsciousness. In five minutes after their head touches their pillow they are as far off from the wall they were building or the ditch they were digging or the anvil they were pounding or the wheels they were controlling, as heaven is from earth. About three o’92clock in the morning, the body at lowest temperature and its furnaces nearly out, what a complete quietude for the entire physical and mental structure! All night long, for such, sleep is busy with its enchanted anointing of every corpuscle of the arteries and every molecule of the entire physical organism, and the morning finds the subjects of such sleep rebuilt, reconstructed, and touched of God into a new life.
Of course, there is an unrighteous sleep, as when Jonah, trying to escape from duty, slept in the sides of the ship while the Mediterranean was in wrath because of that prophetic passenger; as when Columbus in his first voyage, exhausted from being up many nights, gave the ship in charge of the steersman and the crew, who, leaving the management of the vessel to boys, went asleep and allowed the ship to strike on the sandbanks of Saint Thomas; as when the sentinel goes to sleep at his post, endangering the whole army; as when the sluggard, who accomplishes nothing the day before he went to sleep, and will accomplish nothing the day after he wakes, fills up Solomon’92s picture of him, as he yawns out: ’93A little sleep, and a little slumber, and a little folding of the hands to sleep.’94 But sleep at the right time and amid the right circumstances, can you imagine anything more blessed? If sleep, according to sacred and profane literature, is an emblem of death, the morning to all refreshed slumberers is a resurrection.
Remark the first: if you have escaped the insomnia spoken of in the text, thank God. Here and there one can command sleep, and it comes the minute he orders it and departs at the minute he wishes it to go: as Napoleon, when he wrote: ’93Different affairs are arranged in my head as in drawers. When I wish to interrupt one train of thought, I close the drawer which contains that subject and open that which contains another. They do not mix together or inconvenience me. I have never been kept awake by an involuntary preoccupation of mind. When I wish for repose I shut up all the drawers and I am asleep. I have always slept when I wanted rest, and almost at will.’94 But I think in most cases we feel that sleep is not the result of a resolution, but a direct gift from God. You cannot purchase it. A great French financier cried out: ’93Alas! why is there no sleep to be sold?’94
Do not take this divine gift as a matter of course. Your seven or eight hours of healthful unconsciousness is a blessing worthy of continuous and emphatic recognition. Praise the Lord for three hundred and sixty-five resurrections in a year! Artificial slumber can be made up by the apothecaries; but natural sleep is a balm, a panacea, a catholicon that no one but God can mix. With it he bathes your eyes and brain and nerve and bone. It is a soft robe woven in heaven, with which he wraps your body, mind, and soul. The more scientists explore this mystery of sleep the more profound it seems. God tells us many things, but that is a secret he keeps to himself. We philosophize and guess about this phenomenon, but will never know just what sleep is until we are told about it when we get through the last sleep. Thank God morning, noon and night for this strange quietude, this refreshing dismissal, this recuperating absence, this re-enforcement of energies, this mighty benediction.
Remark the second: consider among the worst crimes, the robbery of ourselves or others of this mercy of slumber. Much ruinous doctrine has been inculcated on this subject. Thomas Moore gave poor advice when he said: ’93The best way to lengthen our days is to steal a few hours from the night.’94 We are told that though they did their work at night, Copernicus lived to be seventy-three years of age and Galileo seventy-eight years, and Herschel eighty-four years. Yes; but the reason was they were all star-hunters, and the only time for hunting stars is at night. Probably they slept by day. The night was made for slumber. The worst lamp a student can have is ’93the midnight lamp.’94 Lord Brougham never passed more than four hours of the night abed, and Justinian, after one hour of sleep, would rise from his couch. But you are neither a Justinian nor a Lord Brougham. Let not the absurd apotheosis of early rising induce you to the abbreviation of sleep. Get up when you are slept out, unless circumstances compel otherwise. Have no alarm-clock making its nerve-tearing racket at four o’92clock in the morning, unless special reasons demand the forsaking of your pillow at that hour. Most of the theories about early rising we inherited from times when people retired at eight or nine o’92clock in the evening. Such early retirement is impossible in our own times for those who are taking part in the great activities of life. There is no virtue in the mere act of early rising. It all depends upon what you do after you get up. It would be better for the world if some people never wakened at all.
But most Americans do not get sleep enough. The sin of late retiring is one most widespread and ruinous. What is much needed is that in all our cities those who are leaders in social life turn back the hour of drawing-room assemblage from ten and eleven o’92clock to eight or half-past seven, so that the guests at ten or half-past ten may meet sleep at the right hour in their own dormitories. Two or three social heroines could do that in all the towns and cities. Thousands of men and women are slain each year by late hours. Five years is more than the average of endurance. The vitality of men and women is depleted, and they go into chronic ailments, if they do not die of dyspepsia or consumption or nervous prostration, and the beauty goes out of the cheek beyond all restoration of cosmetics. Late retiring is the mother of premature wrinkles. Lack of sleep assassinates social life. A reformation is needed, and if the customs of the world could be changed in this matter, and the curtains of social life could be rung down at a reasonable hour of the night, twenty per cent. would be added to the world’92s longevity.
Remark the third: all those ought to be comforted who by overwork in right directions have come to insomnia. In all occupations and professions there are times when a special draft is made upon the nervous energy. There are thousands of men and women who cannot sleep because they were injured by overwork in some time of domestic or political or religious exigency. Mothers who, after taking a whole family of children through the disorders that are sure to strike the nursery, have been left physical wrecks, and one entire night of slumber is to them a rarity, if not an impossibility. The attorney-at-law who, through a long trial in poorly ventilated courtroom, has stood for weeks battling for the rights of widows and orphans, or for the life of a client in whose innocence he is confident, though all the circumstances are unfavorable. In his room he tries the case all night long, and every night, when he would like to be slumbering. The physician, in time of epidemic, worn out in saving the lives of whole families, and failing in his attempts to sleep at night between the janglings of his door-bell. The merchant who has experienced panics, when the banks went down, and Wall Street became a pandemonium, and there was a possibility that the next day he would be penniless’97that night with no more possibility of gaining sleep than if such a blessing had never touched our planet. Ministers of the Gospel, in time of great revival, all their powers of endurance drawn upon day by day and week by week and month by month’97sermonic preparation, neighborhood visitation, heart-breaking obsequies, sympathetic help for the anxious, the despairing, and the dying. It is a wonder that ministers of the Gospel have any nerves left, and that the angel of sleep does not quit their presence forever.
But I hear and now pronounce highest consolation for all those who in any department have sacrificed their health to duty. Your sleeplessness is as much a wound as you can find on any battle-field, and is an honorable wound. We all look with reverence and admiration upon one who has lost an eye or an arm in the service of his country, and we ought to look with admiration upon those who through extreme fidelity to their lifework have lost capacity for slumber. Remember glorious Albert Barnes going along the streets of Philadelphia at four o’92clock in the morning for many years to his church study, writing all his commentaries before breakfast, and keeping on until he was stone-blind. Will not the Lord reward such sacrifices? and if, through your fidelity, you have lost capacity to sleep, God, who never slumbers nor sleeps, will look after you. When you hear the clock strike twelve and one and two and three and four without your going into slumber, let it remind you that you have not been a sluggard or a do-nothing. You are suffering in a good cause. Paul got sore eyes in the Lord’92s service, and had many a scar, but so far from complaining about it, he exults in those scars, saying’97in the only inspired letter we know that he wrote with his own hand, for the other letters were dictated to amanuenses’97in that letter to the Galatians: ’93I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.’94
It is high time that we enlarge the scroll of martyrs. We are accustomed to put in that scroll only those who have gone down under headman’92s ax or have been wrapped in fires at the stake or torn apart with the machinery of persecution. But the world is full of martyrs who were never touched by any such instruments of torture. Many of our public men in this capital, and indeed in all the capitals, have their life beaten out of them by interruptions, annoyances, and unreasonable demands added to their straightforward duties. Washington sends many of the public men back to their different States worn-out and incapacitated. Why is it that in all our land there are but two ex-Presidents and two ex-Vice-Presidents? The others were slain by the exhaustions of public life or by hand of assassin. Our public men cannot control their time, cannot regulate their hours, cannot escape the imploration of constituents. All who go down to invalidism through the service of God or their country are martyrs.
Remark the fourth: insomnia is no sign of divine displeasure. Martin Luther had distressing insomnia, and wrote: ’93When I wake up in the night, the devil immediately comes and disputes with me and gives me strange thoughts, until at last I grow enraged beyond endurance and give him ill words.’94 That consecrated champion of everything good, Dr. Stephen H. Tyng, sr., in his autobiography, says that the only encouragement he had to think he would sleep at night, was the fact that he had not slept the night before. One of the greatest English clergymen had a gas jet on each side of his bed, so that he might read nights when he could not sleep. Horace Greeley told me he had not had a sound sleep in fifteen years. Charles Dickens understood London by night better than any other writer, because not being able to sleep, he spent that time in exploring the city.
Perhaps this wakefulness may come to you as an opportunity to think over the mercies of the past and lay out plans for the future. David occupied the hours of wakefulness in music. He speaks of ’93songs in the night.’94 We could hardly recommend such a solo for most people, for it would disturb the slumbers of others, and you have no right, because you cannot sleep yourself, to keep others awake. But the cheerful endurance suggested by that midnight music of the Psalmist we can commend.
Wakefulness may be an opportunity for prayer, opportunity for profitable reflection, opportunity for kindling bright expectations of the world, where there is no night and where slumber will have no uses. God thinks just as much of you when you get but three or four hours of sleep as when at night you get eight or nine hours. One of the greatest prayer-meetings ever held was in a penitentiary at twelve o’92clock at night, where Paul and Silas could not sleep. The record says they prayed and sang praises to God. They had cured an idiotic girl of her trouble, and for that they were imprisoned. They were robbed of their liberty, but not of their psalmody. Have you ever thought that sleeplessness may be turned into a rapture, a communion with God, a preparation for heaven?
Remark the fifth: let all insomnists know for their consolation, that some people sleep more rapidly than others, as much in one hour as others do in two, and hence do not require as long a time in unconsciousness. In a book on the subject of health years ago, I saw this fact stated by a celebrated medical scientist. Some people do everything quick’97they eat quick; they walk quick; they think quick; and, of course, they sleep quick. An express train can go as far in thirty minutes as a way train in sixty minutes. People of rapid temperaments ought not to expect a whole night to do the work of recuperation, which slow temperaments require. Instead of making it a matter of irritation and alarm, be a Christian philosopher, and set down this abbreviation of somnolence as a matter of temperament. An antelope ought not to complain because it was not an ox; nor an eagle because it can go faster than a barnyard fowl.
Remark the sixth: the aged insomnists should understand that if their eyes are held waking, they do not require as much sleep as once they did. Solomon, who in knowledge was thousands of years ahead of his time, in his wondrous description of old age, recognizes this fact. He not only speaks of the difficulty of mastication on the part of the aged when he says: ’93The grinders cease because they are few;’94 and of the octogenarian’92s caution in getting up a ladder or standing on a scaffolding, saying: ’93They shall be afraid of that which is high;’94 and speaks of the whiteness of the hair, by comparing it to a tree that has white blossoms, saying: ’93The almond tree shall flourish;’94 and speaks of the spinal cord, which is of the color of silver, and which relaxes in old age, giving the tremor to the head, saying: ’93The silver cord be loosed;’94 but he says of the aged: ’93He shall rise up at the voice of the bird;’94 that is about half-past four in the summer-time, an appropriate hour for the bird to rise, for he goes to his nest or bough at half-past seven in the evening. But the human mechanism has been so arranged that after it has been running a good while a change takes place, and instead of the almost perpetual sleep of the babe, and the nine hours requisite in mid-life, six hours will do for the aged, and ’93He shall rise up at the voice of the bird.’94 Let all aged men and women remember that they have been permitted to do a great deal of sleeping in their time, and that if they do not sleep so well now as they used to, it is because they do not require so much sleep.
Remark the seventh: insomnia is probably a warning that you had better moderate your work. Most of those engaged in employments that pull on nerve and brain are tempted to omit necessary rest, and sleeplessness calls a halt. Even their pleasuring turns to work, as Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great painter, taking a walk with a friend, met a sun-browned peasant boy, and said: ’93I must go home and deepen the coloring of my infant Hercules.’94 The sun-browned boy suggested an improvement in a great picture. By the time most people have reached mid-life, if they have behaved well, more doors of opportunity open before them than they ought to enter. Power to decline, power to say ’93No,’94 they should now cultivate. When a man is determined to be useful and Satan cannot dissuade him from that course, the great deceiver induces him to overwork and in that way get rid of him. We have thermometers to tell the heat and barometers to tell the air and ’91ometers hung in the engine-room to tell the pressure of steam and ’91ometers to gage and measure almost everything. Would that some genius would invent an ’91ometer which, being hung around the neck and dropped over heart and lung, would, by the pulsation and respiration, tell whether one is under too great pressure or might carry more. All brain workers would want such an ’91ometer and want it right away. For the lack of it how many are dying, and how many have died of overwork? A prominent financier who recently departed this life, was an officer in over a hundred financial and charitable institutions. Thousands of editors, of lawyers, of physicians, of merchants, of clergymen, are now dying of overwork. Do not be in the board of directors of more than three banks and two trust companies and five life and fire insurance establishments. Do not as pastor, preach more than three sermons a Sunday and superintend your own Sabbath-school and conduct a Bible class the same day. Do not edit a paper and write for three magazines and go to four public dinners where you will be called to make a speech, more than four times a week. Do not go so deep into the real-estate business that before spring all the real estate you will really possess will be a piece of ground about six feet long and three feet wide. Your insomnia is the voice of nature, the voice of God, saying, ’93Better slow up!’94 Stop that long, swift train, the wheels of which are taking fire from the velocity and smoking with the hot-box. Do not burn the candle at both ends. Do not under too many burdens sweat like a camel trudging from Aleppo to Damascus. Do not commit suicide.
Remark the eighth: all the victims of insomnia ought to be consoled with the fact that they will have a good long sleep after a while. Sacred and profane literature again and again speak of that last sleep. God knew that the human race would be disposed to make a great ado about exit from this world, and so he inspires Job and David and Daniel and John and Paul to call that condition ’93sleep.’94 When at Bethany the brother, who was the support of his sisters after their father and mother were gone, had himself expired, Christ cried out in regard to him: ’93He is not dead but sleepeth.’94
Cheering thought to all poor sleepers, for that will be a pleasant sleep, induced by no narcotic, disturbed by no frightful dream, interrupted by no harsh sound. Better than any sleep you ever took, O child of God, will be the last sleep. In your other slumbers your home may be invaded by burglars and your treasures carried off, but while here and there, in one case out of millions, the resurrectionist may disturb the pillow of dust, the last sleep is almost sure to be kept from invasion. There will be no burglary of the tomb. And it will be a refreshing sleep. You have sometimes risen in the morning more weary than when you laid down at night, but waking from the sleep of which I speak, the last fatigue, the last ache, the last worriment will be forever gone. Oh, what a refreshing sleep!
Most people are tired. The nights do not repair the day. Scientists, by minute calculation, say that every night comes a little short of restoring the body to where it was the day before, and so every seventh day was put in for entire rest, to make up in reparation for what the nights could not do. But so restful will be the last sleep that you will rise from it without one tired limb’97rested, forever rested, as only God can rest you. O ye tired folks all up and down the world! tired with work or tired with persecutions or tired with ailments or tired with bereavements or tired in the struggle against temptation, clap your hands with eternal glee in expectation of that sleep from which you will wake up so rested that you will never need another sleep or even another night. ’93There shall be no night there,’94 because there will be no need of its quieting influences. No lengthening of the shadows of tower and wall and gate. No evening mist rising from the river. No sundown. ’93Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall the moon withdraw itself; for the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.’94 So, my hearer, my reader, ’93Goodnight!’94 May God give you such sleep to-night as is best for you, and if you wake too soon, may he fill your soul with reminiscences and expectations that will be better than slumber. Goodnight! Having in prayer, kneeling at the bedside, committed yourself and all yours to the keeping of the slumberless God, fear nothing. The pestilence that walketh in darkness will not cross your doorsill, and you need not be afraid of evil tidings. Goodnight! May you have no such experiences as Job had when he said: ’93Thou scarest me with dreams and terrifiest me through visions.’94 If you dream at all, may it be a vision of reunions and congratulations, and, waking, may you find some of them true. Goodnight! And when you come to the best sleep, the blissful sleep, the last sleep, may you be able to turn and say to all the cares and fatigues and bereavements and pangs of a lifetime, ’93Goodnight!’94 and your kindred, standing around your illumined pillow, give you hopeful though sorrowful farewell as you move out from their loving embrace into the bosom of a welcoming God. Goodnight! Goodnight!
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage