You do not sleep because you are “all replete with very Thou.” You have filled up your soul with thoughts of self, or thoughts of others from the point of view of self. You have worried when you should have cast your care on Him; “for He careth for you.” You have yielded to all sorts of foolish fears, forgetful that “perfect love casteth out fear.” You have been self-centred, though God Himself was so far centred out of self that “He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
In the silence of this quiet hour put your worries and your fears away and swing your centre out of self. Open wide the windows of your soul and let the Spirit in of wholesomeness and love, of harmony and power. Believe the Spirit will come in. Interpret in the terms of Spirit those veracious words of Revelation: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”
Wait for the incoming Spirit. Wait in faith and confidence. Remember that “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint.”
With your mind filled with the Spirit of wholesomeness and love, of harmony and power, it will be at rest; it will know the peace that passeth understanding. All nerve-strain will go. Sleep will come to-night. Sleep will come to-morrow night. Sleep will come every night. Sound sleep, re-creating sleep so long denied you, will be yours at last. The day will never know again its feverish inquietude. Work will have its zest, and play its joy. The silent night will lose its morbid fancies and its horrid nightmares, and you will each morning wake with the song upon your lips:
The dark hath many dear avails:
The dark distils divinest dews;
The dark is rich with nightingales,
With dreams, and with the heavenly muse.
You have done with sleeplessness forever. You go out from this room beneath the rooftree of God’s sanctuary, a new creature in Christ Jesus. Claim your new privilege in Jesus’ name. Act henceforth on the comforting assurance that you are to go to sleep as soon as you have gone to bed, and sleep the whole night through.
Keep by day as well as night the serenity you here have found. Awake with the morning light into the thoughts of this first treatment. Keep them in the background of your consciousness the whole day through. Take a few minutes every day to go into the silence as you now are, and think these thoughts again in proper sequence. Take them up into your heart and brood upon them all the day. Work them into the warp and woof of your inmost soul so that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature” shall be able to separate you from them. Make them yours and keep them yours forever and forever. And you shall sleep the sleep of the quiet mind and the God-filled soul in all the years to come.[14]