Many do not recognize the fact as they ought, that Satan has got men fast asleep in sin and that it is his great device to keep them so. He does not care what we do if he can do that. We may sing songs about the sweet by and by, preach sermons and say prayers until doomsday, and he will never concern himself about us, if we don't wake anybody up. But if we awake the sleeping sinner he will gnash on us with his teeth. This is our work - to wake people up.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of awakening individuals from their complacency in sin, highlighting the struggle against spiritual apathy.
Catherine Booth's quote speaks to the spiritual vigilance necessary in aiding others who may be unconsciously trapped in their sins. It suggests that the greatest threat comes not from external forces alone, but from a state of spiritual slumber where individuals fail to recognize their need for awakening and redemption. By illustrating that Satan thrives on this ignorance and complacency, Booth calls for active engagement and the courageous endeavor to awaken the 'sleeping sinner' to a life of awareness and spiritual awakening.
In practice
During a sermon, one might say, 'As Catherine Booth highlighted, it is crucial for us to awaken the sleeping sinner around us.'
A barracks is meant to be a place where real soldiers were to be fed and equipped for war, not a place to settle down in or as a comfortable snuggery in which to enjoy ourselves. I hope that if ever they, our soldiers, do settle down God will burn their barracks over their heads!
I consider the official Catholic attitude on divorce, birth control, and censorship exceedingly dangerous to mankind.
...True prayer is measured by weight, not by length. A single groan before God may have more fullness of prayer in it than a fine oration of great length.
In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.
How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.
Sometimes with the most intense pain a paralysis of sensibility occurs. The soul disintegrates--hence the deadly frost--the free power of the mind--the shattering, ceaseless wit of this kind of despair. There is no inclination for anything any more--the person is alone, like a baleful power--as he has no connection with the rest of the world he consumes himself gradually--and in accordance with his own principle he is--misanthropic and misotheos.
In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.
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