Make Haste to Sleep
A Reflection from "Lilith" by George MacDonald
“‘But surely sleep is not the first thing! Surely, surely, action takes precedent of repose!’
‘A man can do nothing he is not fit to do … How should such eyes tell which have never slept? … Come; come! He who cannot act must make haste to sleep.’”
— George MacDonald, Lilith
Have you ever followed a mysterious raven from your seemingly haunted library and into a part of your home that you’ve never seen before, and then followed this raven through a mirror into another world?
I’m going to assume no.
This is the story of Mr. Vane in George MacDonald’s Lilith. He steps into a world of fantasy, paradoxes, and oddities. He gets to know the raven that led him here—who turns out to be both a man and a raven. He works as a sexton (a church officer tends the church property and holds responsibilities such as ringing the bell for services and digging graves) in this strange world, watching over those who come to die in his home and awaits their resurrection. This raven man invites Mr. Vane sleep among his dead so that he might rise to newness of life, but he flees from the raven and goes his own way.
In his fleeing, Mr. Vane also meets the Little Ones, a group of joyous children who seem to never age. He loves their energy and unending happiness, but as he seeks to understand these sweet children better, he learns they are in great danger from a leopardess who desires to kill them.
As he meets up with the raven again, he tells the raven what he has learned and that he must go and save the Little Ones. But the raven has other plans.
“Not that way at night,” answered the raven; “the road is difficult. But come; loss now will be gain then! To wait is harder than to run, and its meed is the fuller. Go on, my son—straight to the cottage. I shall be there as soon as you. It will rejoice my wife’s heart to see a son of hers on that horse!” (p. 134)
To Mr. Vane’s surprise, the raven tells him that the reason he must sleep among their dead is because Mr. Vane is dead—not in appearance, but within. “Yes, and you will be dead, so long as you refuse to die,” the raven told him.
Back during the first invitation to rest among the dead, the raven told Mr. Vane, “None of those you see are in truth quite dead yet, and some have just begun to come alive and die. Others had begun to die, that is to come alive, long before they came to us; and when such are indeed dead, that instant they will wake and leave us. Almost every night some rise and go.”
In case, like Mr. Vane, you are confused as to what this raven could possibly mean by “dead,” he explained further: “In your world, [the sexton] lays huge stones on [the dead], as if to keep them down; I watch for the hour to ring the resurrection-bell, and wake those that are still asleep. Your sexton looks at the clock to know when to ring the dead-alive to church; I hearken for the cock on the spire to crow; ‘Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead! ’” (p. 31).
In the raven’s world, deadness isn’t just when the breath of life leaves your body, but when a person continues in their wayward ways and never turns from them. Deadness is trusting your own way and disregarding the call to find your rest in Someone greater.
Sound familiar? “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph. 2:1–3 ESV).
Mr. Vane, however, disregards the raven’s advice.
[Mr. Vane said,] “My debt to the Little Ones appears, I confess, a greater thing than my bond to you.”
“Yield to the temptation and you will bring mischief upon them—and on yourself also.”
“What matters it for me? I love them; and love works no evil. I will go.”
I love them, and love works no evil. Have those words ever crossed your own mind? You sacrifice your rest and Sabbath by volunteering at church every single Sunday—but how could you be doing harm by such a sacrifice of love? You put off napping again while the baby sleeps because you must get the living room dusted and the chicken stew cooked, despite how much your mind is fraying from exhaustion—but it’s all for your family, so how could any evil come of it?
This is Mr. Vane’s rationale. He has not renewed his soul, and he’s made countless errors during his time in this world, the greatest being reviving the leopardess herself and aiding her evil work of killing the Little Ones. If he had rejected his own exhausted, faulty wisdom, and trusted the guidance of the raven, none of this may have happened.
… “Mr. Vane,” croaked the raven, “think what you are doing! Twice already has evil befallen you—once from fear, and once from heedlessness …”
“The Little Ones are in frightful peril, and I brought it upon them!” I cried. “—But indeed I will not break my word to you. I will return, and spend in your house what nights—what days—what years you please.”
“I tell you once more you will do them other than good if you go tonight,” he insisted.
But a false sense of power, a sense which had no root and was merely vibrated into me from the strength of the horse, had, alas, rendered me too stupid to listen to anything he said!
“Would you take from me my last chance of reparation?” I cried. “This time there shall be no shirking! It is my duty, and I will go—if I perish for it!”
“Go, then, foolish boy!” he returned, with anger in his croak. “Take the horse, and ride to failure! May it be to humility!”
The raven was not wrong. Mr. Vane did bring more trouble upon himself and the Little Ones—the young children he was attempting to save from the leopardess. Mr. Vane was supposed to return with the raven to his cottage, where he would lie down among the dead to rest. He had already run from the raven once when this offer was given, and now this was the second time he fled from him.
Yet in his attempt to save the Little Ones by his own strength and wisdom, he brought much grief upon them.
How often do we try to save the world in our own power? How often do we run to rescue every struggling person we see when we ourselves are the ones in need of saving? If I don’t, who will? we reason. Through texts, social media posts, and listening to prayer requests at church, we can begin to feel the heavy weight of responsibility upon our shoulders. We want to carry the sorrows of the world—but our hands and hearts can only hold so much.
We forget that in order to guide others to rest in Christ, we likewise need to be resting in Christ. We are unable to preach the gospel to another if we aren’t preaching it to ourselves. We can’t teach another from Scripture unless we are immersed in Scripture as well.
When we are resting in this knowledge, it’s much easier to remember that Jesus alone can carry all the grief of this world—he alone can heal, change, and renew. We must entrust those we love and ourselves to him before we can come alongside and rightly help those in need.
Mr. Vane set out to save the Little Ones from the leopardess. Instead, he brought them straight to her, and she caused great heartache. He thought he could save them on his own and trusted in his own wisdom, rather than receiving the rest and renewal he needed and putting his faith in the raven’s guidance. May we not have such a “a false sense of power” that “render[s] [us] too stupid to listen to anything.” May we trust in God enough to rest and renew our own souls—and may we put our faith in God to be the hero rather than ourselves.