Were Rest my subject, there are other things I should wish to say
about it, and other kinds of Rest of which I should like to speak.
But that is not my subject. My theme is that the Christian experiences
are not the work of magic, but come under the law of Cause and Effect.
I have chosen Rest only as a single illustration of the working of
that principle. If there were time I might next run over all the
Christian experiences in turn, and show the same wide law applies to
each; but I think it may serve the better purpose if I leave this
further exercise to yourselves. I know no Bible study that you will
find more full of fruit, or which will take you nearer to the ways of
God, or make the Christian life itself more solid or more sure. I
shall add only a single other illustration of what I mean, before I
close.
Where does Joy come from? I knew a Sunday scholar whose conception of
Joy was that it was a thing made in lumps and kept somewhere in
Heaven, and that when people prayed for it, pieces were somehow let
down and fitted into their souls. I am not sure that views as gross
and material are not often held by people who ought to be wiser. In
reality, Joy is as much a matter of Cause and Effect as pain. No one
can get Joy by merely asking for it. It is one of the ripest fruits of
the Christian life, and, like all fruits, must be grown. There is a
very clever trick in India called the mango trick. A seed is put in
the ground and covered up, and after diverse incantations a full-blown
mango-bush appears within five minutes. I never met any one who knew
how the thing was done, but I never met any one who believed it to be
anything else than a conjuring trick. The world is pretty unanimous
now in its belief in the orderliness of Nature. Men may not know how
fruits grow, but they do know that they cannot grow in an hour. Some
lives have not even a stalk on which fruits could hang, even if they
did grow in an hour. Some have never planted one sound seed of Joy in
all their lives; and others who may have planted a germ or two have
lived so little in sunshine that they never could come to maturity.
Whence, then, is joy? Christ put His teaching upon this subject into
one of the most exquisite of His parables. I should in any instance
have appealed to His teaching here, as in the case of Rest, for I do
not wish you to think I am speaking words of my own. But it so happens
that He has dealt with it in words of unusual fullness.
I need not recall the whole illustration. It is the parable of the
Vine. Did you ever think why Christ spoke that parable? He did not
merely throw it into space as a fine illustration of general truths.
It was not simply a statement of the mystical union, and the doctrine
of an indwelling Christ. It was that; but it was more. After He had
said it, He did what was not an unusual thing when He was teaching His
greatest lessons--He turned to the disciples and said He would tell
them why He had spoken it. It was to tell them