Verse 9. Much more loudly would we call to the spiritual sluggard--thou that art sleeping away the opportunities of grace; not "striving to enter in at the strait gate" (Luke xiii. 24); taking thy salvation for granted; hoping that thou shalt "reap where thou has not sown, and gather where thou hast not strawed" (Matt. xxv. 26); improve, after this pattern, the summer and harvest season--the time of youth, the present, perhaps the only moment. _The ant hath no guide._ How many guides have you?--conscience, the Bible, ministers! _She has no overseer._ You are living before Him "whose eyes are a flame of fire." _She has no ruler_ calling her to account. "Every one of us must give account of himself to God."--_Bridges._ Epaminondas, finding one of his sentinels asleep, thrust him through with his sword; and, being chidden for so great severity, replied, "I left him but as I found him." It must be our care that death serve us not in like sort, that we be not taken napping. . . . Our Saviour was up and at prayer "a great while before day" (Mark i. 45). The holy angels are styled "watchers" (Dan. iv. 10), and they are three times pronounced happy that _watch_ (Luke xii. 37, 38, 43).--_Trapp._ Verse 11. Two things are denoted in this imagery. 1. That idleness will _quickly_ bring poverty. 2. That it will come as a _destroyer._--_Stuart._ I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide, for the man is effectually destroyed, though the appetite of the brute may survive.--_Lord Chesterfield._ God will not support thee without work, but by work, that is His holy ordinance (Gen. iii. 19): Do thy part, and God will do His.--_Egard._ A most dreadful simile! One who has waited for a fight knows how slowly the armed men seem to come up. They may be hours passing the intervening space. There is no sound of them. They are not on the roads, or on the air, either in sight or echo; and yet they are _coming on!_ The intervening time is the sluggard's sleeping time; and it seems an age. But his want will come. . . . All slothfulness is, no doubt, rebuked; but especially that which has all heaven for its garnered stores; all hell for its experience of want; all time for its season of neglect; and all eternity to break upon its sleep.--_Miller._ _MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 12-19. A STUDENT OF INIQUITY.