cares. Now, there is a sleep of the soul as well as of the body. And as
the soul is in worth, as the soul is in its life and in its death to the
body, so is its sleep. Many of you sitting there are quite as dead to
heaven and hell, to death and judgment, and to what a stake other people
as well as yourselves have in your sleep as that poor sleeper in the
signal-box was dead to what was coming rushing on him through the black
night. And as all his gnashing of teeth at himself, and all his sobs
before his judge and before the laid-out dead, and before distracted
widows and half-mad husbands did not bring back that fatal moment when he
fell asleep so sweetly, so will it be with you. Lazarus! come forth!
Wise and foolish virgins both: Behold the Bridegroom cometh! Awake, thou
that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light!

And, with that, Guilt with a great club that was in his hand struck
Little-Faith on the head, and with that blow felled him to the earth,
where he lay bleeding as one that would soon bleed to death. Yes, yes,
all true to the very life. A man may be the boast and the example of all
the town, and yet, unknown to them all, and all but unknown to himself
till he is struck down, he may have had guilt enough on his track all the
time to lay him half dead at the mouth of Dead-Man's-lane. Good as was
the certificate that all men in their honesty gave to Little-Faith, yet
even he had some bad enough memories behind him and within him had he
only kept them ever present with him. But, then, it was just this that
all along was the matter with Little-Faith. Till, somehow, after that
sad and yet not wholly evil sleep, all his past sins leapt out into the
light and suddenly became and remained all the rest of his life like
scarlet. So loaded, indeed, was the club of Guilt with the nails and
studs and clamps of secret aggravation, that every nail and stud left its
own bleeding bruise in the prostrate man's head. I have myself, says the
narrator of Little-Faith's story, I have myself been engaged as he was,