THE

Chapter V

THE TEN-O'CLOCK MAN

In which the ambitious Youth is
advised against the morning Drowse

HE ten-o'clock man lies buried in the morning drowse while all the world is afoot. "A little more sleep, a little more slumber"-just the proverbial "forty winks"-and, lo, Poverty, the highwayman, is upon him! In our childhood we met with this man in the Third Reader, where Isaac Watts discoursed of him quaintly in this wise:

'Tis the voice of the sluggard; I heard him complain,
"You have wak'd me too soon, I must slumber again!"
As the door on its hinges, so he, on his bed,

Turns his sides and his shoulders, and his heavy head.

The result is inevitable. As you walk along the country road you observe his farm, distinguished in a landscape of yellow harvests by its ugly barrenness. Here are thorns and nettles instead of wheat and barley; and the specter of Indolence sits dozing on its ruined walls. The highwayman has passed this way.

This is spoken in a parable. The surface truth is plain enough, as Poor Richard says, "Plow deep while sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell and keep." But underneath is the moral lesson of which the proverbialist says, "I saw and considered it well."

It is in that border-land which lies between the Land of Nod and the World of Earnestness that men

by somnolence lose not only earthly harvests but heritages of life. The reason why a man is better than a sheep is because he lives in a larger world and is a part of it; but, oftentimes like drowsy hearers in the sanctuary, he must pinch himself to keep in touch with what is going on. Coma plays havoc with our highest hopes and aspirations. We die the death of spiritual poverty as the penalty of the morning drowse. In our oversleep the fields that should wave with barley harvests are overgrown with thorns and thistles. This is the parable: "I looked upon it," says Solomon, "and received instruction.” Mayhap, it holds a lesson for us.

The border-land of Oversleep is a region of insensibility. The world is awake, but the sleeper sleeps on. There are footfalls on the walk and the clatter of hoofs in the busy street. Shopkeepers are taking down their shutters. The air is filled with factory bells and whistles, the clink of hammers, and the rattle of machinery. The world is at work; but the sleeper does not know it.

Is it not so in the province of spiritual things? How many there are who, living within sight and hearing of great verities, do not apprehend them! God is at work in the world. His Son, the busy Carpenter of Nazareth, when going about on His itineraries of mercy, said, "My Father worketh even until now, and I work." He is making history. From his high mountain-tops He controls the destinies of nations and the children of men.

He speaks from Sinai, amid the sound of thunderings and the trumpet waxing louder and louder, say

ing ever, "Thou shalt, and thou shalt not!" And men sleep in their tents at the foot of the flaming mountain and hear Him not.

He speaks from Calvary, where He bears our sins in His own body, crying, "Look unto me all ye ends of the earth and be ye saved!" Legions of angels are hovering over Him; all heaven is on the qui vive, but drowsy men glance toward the cross and pass on. "O foolish Galatians, who did bewitch you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was openly set forth crucified?"

He speaks from Olivet, where a company of earnest souls are gathered about him: "All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations!" It is the Great Commission; and it is addrest to every man. Behold, the army is on the march! They go hither and yon, like crusaders, with the red cross on their breasts; they cross the deserts and climb the hills, and pentecostal blessings mark their progress through the ages. The gates of the nations open at their watchword, "In His name!" His kingdom of Christendom extends its borders with every passing year. All things are moving on grandly, stupendously, toward "the one far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves. But what is this to the man in the border-land of insensibility? The sleeper sleeps on.

God calls him by name, calls him to participation in great events; calls him to a place in the Kingdom. The call is as real and audible as that of the father who stood at the foot of the stairs, when we were

boys, calling, "It is high time to be up and about; the chores must be done!" But the hour of deepest slumber is that before the dawn; and the sleeper sleeps on, while thorns and thistles grow in the field that was intended for the harvests of God.

The border-land of Spiritual Torpor is the land of delusion. It is dreamland. Here is where we frame our fantasies and build our castles in the air. Reason is dormant, while imagination is alert. The sailor boy, swinging in his hammock, plays again under the old roof-tree and wakes to the roaring of the boundless deep. The convict sleeps in his death-cell, renewing the innocent joys of childhood, and wakes to the sound of the hammer that builds the gallows-tree.

It is the infirmity of our human nature that we so reluctantly, and at best imperfectly, distinguish between the real and the unreal. We live in the country of dreams. A man with a muck rake, ambitious of millions, gets and hoards with avaricious eyes and restless hands until at length he turns the key and enters his great vault to contemplate his millions; and what are they? Bonds and mortgages? gold and silver? No; dust! Dust that, as he gathers it, sifts through his fingers.

The sensualist, in pursuit of illicit pleasure, cries, "While we live, let us live!" and, sated at last, sings his miserere, for "pleasures are like poppies spread; you seize the flower, its bloom is shed"; or mourns like Koheleth, “I said of laughter, It is mad; and of mirth, What doeth it?" The fruits of his table are apples of Sodom that turn to ashes on his lips.

The best-known man in this community forty years

1

ago was a political magnate who held a thousand lines of influence in his hand.* An army of henchmen went and came at his beck. He had all that wealth

and power could give him. On a sudden he awoke in the Tombs. Then six months in prison; and after that, the dragging of the weary chain of an expatriated man; then a forced return to his native city and death in a jail. His power was all a dream, a horrid dream.

And these are the world's trinity: wealth, pleasure, and honor! They all fade like the baseless fabric of a vision. Is there anything true?

This world is all a fleeting show

For man's illusion given;
The smiles of joy, the tears of wo
Deceitful shine, deceitful flow,-

There's nothing true but Heaven.

The real things are not those which we can see with fleshly eyes or touch with finger-tips; they are the unseen and eternal. God is more real than the neighbor with whom we clasp hands. Truth is more real than a broker's coupons. Character is more real than the viands on a well-spread table. Immortality is more real than the breath in our nostrils. So said Paul, "The things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.' The same was written by Shakespeare in this verse:

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.

* William M. Tweed.