Notes:
Sermon 93: On Redeeming the Time
Here Wesley turns abruptly from his praise of love to a moralistic admonition against ‘sleeping overmuch’. The unobvious notion of grounding such a counsel on Eph. 5:16 may have come to Wesley from Richard Baxter who, in his Christian Directory (1673), Pt. I, ch. 5, ‘Directions for Redeeming or Well Improving Time’, had taken Eph. 5:15, 16 for his text; but Baxter’s comments range over all the different ways in which time may be ‘redeemed’ or wasted. In Title 4 (‘The Thieves or Time-wasters to be watchfully avoided’), the second ‘thief’ or ‘time-waster’ is ‘excess of sleep’. Here Baxter makes Wesley’s point one hundred years before him, although without the same specific references to a proper daily ration of sleep.
There is no hint of the idea in the extensive comments of Matthew Poole’s Annotations on this verse or Matthew Henry’s Exposition of it. The discussion, or course, is part of Wesley’s insistence upon the Christian stewardship of time as an aspect of the Christian ethic which aims at ‘universal self-denial…in a full pursuit of…inward and outward holiness’ (III.7).
Wesley had already spoken to this same point in his earlier sermon, No. 89, ‘The More Excellent Way’, I.1 (see n.). We know of eleven usages of Eph. 5:16 as a sermon text between 1750 and 1788. In 1782 (January 20) in London, he undertook to summarize the idea in writing. The result appeared shortly thereafter in the Arminian Magazine, March and April 1782 (V.117-22, 173-79), numbered as ‘Sermon VIII’. The following year it was reprinted in Cambridge by an anonymous editor who had been ‘much struck with the force and propriety of its reasoning’. This unknown admirer abridged the original (the great abridger abridged!), supplied it ‘with small additions from Law’s Serious Call and two or three notes’, and entitled his pamphlet The Duty and Advantage of Early Rising. In apparent approval, Wesley reissued this edited pamphlet under its title in four separate editions in his lifetime (and there were many subsequent editions thereafter). When, however, he decided to include the sermon in SOSO 03:323(VII.277-94), he reverted to the original text and gave it the ambiguous title it has carried ever since. (Actually the half-title [p.(277)], is ‘On Redeeming Time’, while the opening page (p. 279) is headed by the title ‘Ephesians V.16’, below which is the scriptural text, ‘Redeeming the Time’.)
For a stemma illustrating its publishing history and all substantive variant readings, see Appendix, Vol. 4; see also Bibliog, No. 375.i.
On Redeeming the TimeEphesians 5:16
Redeeming the time.
11. ‘See that ye walk circumspectly’, says the Apostle in the preceding verse, ‘not as fools, but as wise men: redeeming the time;’
Cf. Henry’s comment here: ‘“Redeeming the time”, literally “buying the opportunity”. It is a metaphor taken from merchants and traders who diligently observe and improve the seasons for merchandise and trade, etc.’; see also Poole, Annotations, loc. cit.
22. This seems to be the general meaning of the words. But I purpose at present to consider only one particular way of ‘redeeming the time’, namely, from sleep.
33. This appears to have been exceeding little considered, even by pious men. Many that have been eminently conscientious in other respects have not been so in this. They seemed to think it an indifferent thing whether they slept more or less, and never saw it in the true point of view, as an important branch of Christian temperance.
That we may have a more just conception hereof, I will endeavour to show,
I. What it is to ‘redeem the time’ from sleep;
II. The evil of not redeeming it; and
III. The most effectual manner of doing it.
03:324 11I. 1. And, first, what is it to ‘redeem the time’ from sleep? It is, in general, to take that measure of sleep every night which nature requires, and no more; that measure which is the most conducive to the health and vigour both of the body and mind.
22. But it is objected, ‘One measure will not suit all men: some require considerably more than others. Neither will the same measure suffice even the same persons at one time as at another. When a person is sick, or if not actually so, yet weakened by preceding sickness, he certainly wants more of this natural restorative than he did when in perfect health. And so he will when his strength and spirits are exhausted by hard or long-continued labour.’
33. All this is unquestionably true, and confirmed by a thousand experiments. Whoever therefore they are that have attempted to fix one measure of sleep for all persons did not understand the nature of the human body, so widely different in different persons; as neither did they who imagined that the same measure would suit even the same person at all times. One would wonder therefore that so great a man as Bishop Taylor should have formed this strange imagination; much more that the measure which he has assigned for the general standard should be only three hours in four and twenty.
In his Holy Living, which greatly influenced Wesley’s devotional discipline, including the maintaining of a diary and early rising, Taylor urged: ‘Let your sleep be necessary and healthful, not idle and expensive of time, beyond the needs and convenience of nature…’, which Wesley summarized for himself as, ‘sleep not immoderately’, but the restriction to three hours only is not found in this context (Jeremy Taylor, Works, Heber, ed. (1844), III.10; cf. Heitzenrater, p. 60).
In Christian Directory, Pt. I, ch. viii (Works, I.228-41), Richard Baxter has a set of ‘Directions Against Sinful Excess of Sleep’: ‘To some five hours is enough; to the ordinary sort of beautiful persons six hours is enough; to many weak, valetudinary persons seven hours is needful; to sick persons I am not to give directions.’
Cf. No. 89, ‘The More Excellent Way’, I.1.
44. And I have long observed that women in general want a little more sleep than men; perhaps because they are in common of a weaker as well as a moister habit of body.
An echo of the distinctions in medieval physiology between the ‘temperaments’ or ‘humours’ of the body; cf. Chambers’s Cyclopaedia, ‘Temperament’ and ‘Humours’ for comments that seemed commonplace in Wesley’s time.
55. If anyone desires to know exactly what quantity of sleep his own constitution requires, he may very easily make the experiment which I made about sixty years ago.
I.e., about 1722, in his undergraduate days in Christ Church.
A conveniently oversimplified recollection. The early diaries, however, show that Wesley was still experimenting with various diurnal patterns as late as 1729; it was in Aug. 1730 that he seems to have settled on a regular awakening hour between 4:00 and 5:00 a.m. What is not mentioned here is the fact that Wesley often took daytime cat naps whenever it was convenient; cf. A. H. S. Pask, in WHS, XXIX.95-96 (1953). In John Foster’s Life and Correspondence (posthumously in Bohn’s Library, 1846, I.301) there is a report from Samuel Bradburn, (but possibly Joseph Bradford is intended, who was one of Wesley’s frequent travelling companions), that in addition to his six hours of regular sleep, ‘Wesley slept several hours in the course of the day’ (i.e., after he switched from riding horseback to carriage); see also J. C. Adlard, ‘Notes’, in WHS, XI.96 (1917).
1II. 1. ‘But why should anyone be at so much pains? What need is there of being so scrupulous? Why should we make ourselves so particular? What harm is there in doing as our neighbours do?—suppose in lying from ten till six or seven in summer, and till eight or nine in winter?’
22. If you would consider this question fairly you will need a good deal of candour and impartiality, as what I am about to say will probably be quite new; different from anything you ever heard in your life; different from the judgment, at least from the example, of your parents and your nearest relations; nay, and perhaps of the most religious persons you ever were acquainted with. Lift up therefore your heart to the Spirit of truth,
John 14:17.
See Eph. 4:21.
33. Do you really desire to know what harm there is in not redeeming all the time you can from sleep? Suppose in spending therein an hour a day more than nature requires? Why, first, it hurts your substance. It is throwing away six hours a week which might turn to some temporal account. If you can do any work, you might earn something in that time, were it ever so small. And you have no need to throw even this away. If you do not want it yourself, give it to them that do: you know some of them that are not far off. If you are of no trade, still you may so employ the time that it will bring money, or money’s worth, to yourself or others.
44. The not redeeming all the time you can from sleep, the spending more time therein than your constitution necessarily requires, in the second place, hurts your health. Nothing can be more certain than this, though it is not commonly observed. It is not commonly observed because the evil steals on you by slow and insensible degrees. In this gradual and almost imperceptible manner it lays the foundation of many diseases. It is the chief, real (though unsuspected) cause of all nervous diseases in particular. Many inquiries have been made why nervous disorders are so much more common among us than among our ancestors. Other causes may frequently concur; but the chief is, we lie longer in 03:327bed. Instead of rising at four, most of us who are not obliged to work for our bread lie till seven, eight, or nine. We need inquire no farther. This sufficiently accounts for the large increase of these painful disorders.
Cf. ‘Thoughts on Nervous Disorders’, AM (1786), IX.52-54, 94-97. For other references to intemperance in sleep, cf. Notes on Luke 21:38, and Wesley’s letter to his niece, Sarah Wesley, July 17, 1781. See also No. 89, ‘The More Excellent Way’, I.1.
55. It may be observed that most of these arise, not barely from sleeping too long, but even from what we imagine to be quite harmless—the lying too long in bed. By soaking (as it is emphatically called) so long between warm sheets the flesh is, as it were, parboiled, and becomes soft and flabby.
Cf. Steele, The Spectator, No. 65 (May 15, 1771): ‘Because it is vulgar to lie and soak together, we have each of us separate settle-beds.’
66. One common effect of either sleeping too long, or lying in bed, is weakness of sight, particularly that weakness which is of the nervous kind. When I was young my sight was remarkably weak. Why is it stronger now than it was forty years ago?
Cf. the memoir of Sophie de la Roche, Sophie in London, 1786, Eng. trans, by Clare Williams (1933), p. 78. See above, Vol. 1 (this edn.), pp. 71-72.
77. A still greater objection to the not rising early, the not redeeming all the time we can from sleep, is, it hurts the soul as well as the body; it is a sin against God. And this indeed it must necessarily be, on both the preceding accounts. For we cannot waste or (which comes to the same thing) not improve any part of our worldly substance, neither can we impair our own health, without sinning against him.
88. But this fashionable intemperance does also hurt the soul in a more direct manner. It sows the seeds of foolish and hurtful desires:
1 Tim. 6:9 (Notes).
Cf. Matt. 11:12 (Notes).
Cf. 2 Tim. 2:3.
Cf. 1 Tim. 6:12.
99. In how beautiful a manner does that great man, Mr. Law, treat this important subject! Part of his words I cannot but here subjoin for the use of every sensible reader:
“I take it for granted that every Christian who is in health is up early in the morning; for it is much more reasonable to suppose a person is up early because he is a Christian, than because he is a labourer or a tradesman or a servant.
We conceive an abhorrence of a man that is in bed when he should be at his labour. We cannot think good of him who is such a slave to drowsiness as to neglect his business for it.
Let this therefore teach us to conceive how odious we must appear to God if we are in bed, shut up in sleep, when we should be praising God; and are such slaves to drowsiness as to neglect our devotions for it.
Sleep is such a dull, stupid state of existence that even among mere animals we despise them most which are most drowsy. He therefore that chooses to enlarge the slothful indolence of sleep rather than be early at his devotions, chooses the dullest refreshment of the body before the noblest employment
Law’s term; Wesley or his printer had misread this as ‘enjoyments’.
1010. Besides, he that cannot deny himself this drowsy indulgence is no more prepared for prayer when he is up than he is prepared for fasting or any other act of self-denial. He may indeed more easily read over a form of prayer than he can perform these duties; but he is no more disposed for the spirit of prayer than he is disposed for fasting. For sleep, thus indulged, gives a softness to all our tempers, and makes us unable to relish anything but what suits an idle state of mind, as sleep does. So that a person who is a slave to this idleness is in the same temper when he is up. Everything that is idle or sensual pleases him. And everything that requires trouble or self-denial is hateful to him, for the same reason that he hates to rise.
1111. It is not possible for an epicure to be truly devout. He must renounce his sensuality before he can relish the happiness of devotion. Now he that turns sleep into an idle indulgence does as much to corrupt his soul, to make it a slave to bodily appetites, as an epicure does. It does not disorder his life,
Again, Law’s term; Wesley’s text in AM reads ‘life’; SOSO (1788), VII.288, has it ‘health’.
Self-denial of all kinds is the very life and soul of piety; but he that has not so much of it as to be able to be early at his prayers cannot think that he has taken up his cross, and is following Christ.
What conquest has he got over himself? What right hand has he cut off? What trials is he prepared for? What sacrifice is he ready to offer to God, who cannot be so cruel to himself as to rise to prayer at such a time as the drudging part of the world are content to rise to their labour?
1212. Some people will not scruple to tell you that they indulge themselves in sleep because they have nothing to do; and that if they had any business to rise to they would not lose so much of their time in sleep. But they must be told that they mistake the matter; that they have a great deal of business to do; they have a hardened heart to change; they have the whole spirit of religion to get. For surely he that thinks he has nothing to do because nothing but his prayers want him, may justly be said to have the whole spirit of religion to seek.
You must not therefore consider how small a fault it is to rise late, but how great a misery it is to want the spirit of religion; and to live in such softness and idleness as makes you incapable of the fundamental duties of Christianity.
If I was to desire you not to study the gratification of your palate I would not insist upon the sin of wasting your money, though it is a great one, but I would desire you to renounce such a way of life because it supports you in such a state of sensuality as renders you incapable of relishing the most essential doctrines of religion.
For the same reason I do not insist much upon the sin of wasting your time in sleep, though it be a great one; but I desire you to renounce this indulgence because it gives a softness and idleness to your soul, and is so contrary to that lively, zealous, watchful, self-denying spirit, which was not only the spirit of Christ and his apostles, and the spirit of all the saints and martyrs that have ever been among men, but must be the spirit of all those who would not sink in the common corruption of the world.
1313. Here therefore we must fix our charge against this practice. We must blame it, not as having this or that particular evil, but as a general habit that extends itself through our whole spirit, and supports a state of mind that is wholly wrong.
It is contrary to piety; not as accidental slips or mistakes in life are contrary to it, but in such a manner as an ill state of body is contrary to health.
On the other hand, if you was to rise early every morning as an instance of self-denial, as a method of renouncing indulgence, as a means of redeeming your time and fitting your spirit for prayer, you would soon find the advantage. This method, though it seems but a small circumstance, might be a means of great piety. It would constantly keep it in your mind that softness and idleness are the bane of religion. It would teach you to exercise power over yourself, and to renounce other pleasures and tempers that war against the soul. And what is so planted and watered, will certainty have an increase from God.
An untypically long quotation; it is from Law’s Serious Call (Works, IV.128-34), which Wesley had extracted and published in 1744 (Bibliog, No. 86), pp. 118-22, and is here still further revised. One remembers that in the early days of the Revival Wesley had turned against Law with severe reproaches which Law, in turn, had shrugged off; cf. Wesley’s letter to Law, May 14, 1738, and Law’s reply in the same month and year (see 25:540-46 in this edn.). In later years Wesley’s references to Law are mixed. For example, cf. his letter to Law, Jan. 6, 1756. But in 1770 and the years following, there are several letters in which he speaks of Law approvingly; cf. the letters to Mrs. Marston, Aug. 26, 1770; to Richard Locke, Sept. 14, 1770; to Philothea Briggs, May 2, 1771; to Elizabeth Ritchie, Nov. 29, 1774; and to Ann Taylor, Mar. 8, 1787. See also the letter to Ann Bolton, Jan. 9, 1789. In No. 79, ‘On Dissipation’, §19, Wesley speaks of Law as ‘an excellent writer’; and in No. 125, ‘On a Single Eye’, §1, as ‘the strong and elegant writer, Mr. Law’.
1III. 1. It now only remains to inquire, in the third place, how we may redeem the time, how we may proceed in this important affair. In what manner shall we most effectually practise this important branch of temperance?
I advise all of you who are thoroughly convinced of the unspeakable importance of it, suffer not that conviction to die away, but instantly begin to act suitably to it. Only do not depend on your own strength. If you do, you will be utterly baffled. Be deeply sensible that as you are not able to do anything good of yourselves, so here in particular all your strength, all your resolution, will avail nothing. Whoever trusts in himself will be confounded. I never found an exception. I never knew one who trusted in his own strength that could keep this resolution for a twelvemonth.
22. I advise you, secondly, cry to the Strong for strength.
See Job 9: 19; see also No. 48, ‘Self-denial’, III.4 and n.
Ps. 17:1.
See 2 Cor. 12:9.
33. I advise you, thirdly, add to your faith, prudence: use the most rational means to attain your purpose. Particularly begin at the right end, otherwise you will lose your labour.
Cf. No. 65, ‘The Duty of Reproving our Neighbour’, I.3 and n.
Cf. No. 89, ‘The More Excellent Way’, I.1.
44. I advise you, fourthly, be steady. Keep your hour of rising, without intermission. Do not rise two mornings, and lie in bed the third; but what you do once, do always. ‘But my head aches.’ Do not regard that. It will soon be over. ‘But I am uncommonly drowsy; my eyes are quite heavy.’ Then you must not parley—otherwise it is a lost case—but start up at once.
Is there a possible echo here of a once familiar satire of the difficulties of early rising in Edward Ward, The Wooden World Dissected… (1707)? In ‘character No. 14’ (a sailor) much is made of this, and on p. 76 there is a reference to the effect of the boatswain’s ‘whistling…, and you have a hundred or more Cartesian Puppets pop up upon deck…’.
55. Perhaps you will say: ‘The advice is good; but it comes too late: I have made a breach already. I did rise constantly, and for a season nothing hindered me. But I gave way by little and little, and I have now left it off for a considerable time!’ Then in the name of God begin again! Begin tomorrow; or rather tonight, by going to bed early, in spite of either company or business. Begin with more self-diffidence than before, but with more confidence in God. Only follow these few rules, and—my soul for yours—God will give you the victory. In a little time the difficulty will be over; but the benefit will last for ever.
66. If you say: ‘But I cannot do now as I did then; for I am not what I was. I have many disorders, my spirits are low, my hands shake: I am all relaxed.’
I.e., ‘enfeebled’; cf. OED for instances.
See Mal. 4:2.
77. But do not imagine that this single point, rising early, will suffice to make you a Christian. No: although that single point, the not rising, may keep you a heathen, void of the whole Christian spirit; although this alone (especially if you had once conquered it) will keep you cold, formal, heartless, dead, and make it impossible for you to get one step forward in vital holiness: yet this alone will go but a little way to make you a real Christian. It is but one step out of many; but it is one. And having taken this, go forward. Go on to universal self-denial, to temperance in all things,
See 1 Cor. 9:25.
See Luke 9:23.
See Phil. 2:5.
See No. 2, The Almost Christian, on Acts 26:28.
See Acts 20:24.
See Ps. 17:16 (BCP); cf. also No. 3, ‘Awake, Thou That Steepest’.
London
, Jan. 20, 1782Place and date as in AM.
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Entry Title: Sermon 93: On Redeeming the Time