Nothing that happens in the world happens by chance. God is a God
of order. Everything is arranged upon definite principles, and
never at random. the world, even the religious world, is governed
by law. Character is governed by law. Happiness is governed by
law. The Christian experiences are governed by law. Men, forgetting
this, expect Rest, Joy, Peace, Faith to drop into their souls from
the air like snow or rain. But in point of fact they do not do so;
and if they did, they would no less have their origin in previous
activities and be controlled by natural laws. Rain and snow do
drop from the air, but not without a long previous history. They
are the mature effects of former causes. Equally so are Rest and
Peace and Joy. They, too, have each a previous history. Storms and
winds and calms are not accidents, but brought about by antecedent
circumstances. Rest and Peace are but calms in man's inward nature,
and arise through causes as definite and as inevitable.
Realize it thoroughly; it is a methodical, not an accidental world.
If a housewife turns out a good cake, it is the result of a sound
receipt, carefully applied. She cannot mix the assigned ingredients
and fire them for the appropriate time without producing the
result. It is not she who has made the cake; it is nature. She
brings related things together; sets causes at work; these causes
bring about the result. she is not a creator, but an intermediary.
She does not expect random causes to produce specific effects--random
ingredients would only produce random cakes. So it is in the making
of Christian experiences. Certain lines are followed; certain
effects are the result. These effects cannot but be the result.
But the result can never take place without the previous cause.
To expect results without antecedents is to expect cakes without
ingredients. That impossibility is precisely
The almost universal expectation.
Now what I mainly wish to do is to help you firmly to grasp this
simple principle of Cause and Effect in the spiritual world. And
instead of applying the principle generally to each of the Christian
experiences in turn, I shall examine its application to one in
some little detail. The one I shall select is Rest. And I think
any one who follows the application in this single instance will
be able to apply it for himself to the others.
Take such a sentence as this: African explorers are subject to
fevers which cause restlessness and delirium.
Note the expression, "cause restlessness." RESTLESSNESS HAS A CAUSE.
Clearly, then, any one who wished to get rid of restlessness would
proceed at once to deal with the cause. If that were not removed,
a doctor might prescribe a hundred things, and all might be taken
in turn, without producing the least effect. Things are so arranged
in the original planning of the world that certain effects must
follow certain causes, and certain causes must be abolished before
certain effects can be removed. Certain parts of Africa are
inseparably linked with the physical experience called fever; this
fever is in turn infallibly linked with a mental experience called
restlessness and delirium. To abolish the mental experience the
radical method would be to abolish the physical experience, and
the way of abolishing the physical experience would be to abolish
Africa, or to cease to go there.
Now this hold good for all other forms of Restlessness. Every other
form and kind of Restlessness in the world had a definite cause,
and the particular kind of Restlessness can only be removed by
removing the allotted cause.
All this is also true of Rest. Restlessness has a cause: must
not REST have a cause? Necessarily. If it were a chance world we
would not expect this; but, being a methodical world, it cannot be
otherwise. Rest, physical rest, moral rest, spiritual rest, every
kind of rest has a cause, as certainly as restlessness. Now causes
are discriminating. There is one kind of cause for every particular
effect and no other, and if one particular effect is desired, the
corresponding cause must be set in motion. It is no use proposing
finely devised schemes, or going through general pious exercises
in the hope that somehow Rest will come. The Christian life is
not casual, but causal. All nature is a standing protest against
the absurdity of expecting to secure spiritual effects, or any
effects, without the employment of appropriate causes. The Great
Teacher dealt what ought to have been the final blow to this infinite
irrelevancy by a single question, "Do men gather grapes of thorns
or figs of thistles?"
Why, then, did the Great Teacher not educate His followers fully?
Why did He not tell us, for example, how such a thing as Rest might
be obtained? The answer is that HE DID. But plainly, explicitly,
in so many words? Yes, plainly, explicitly, in so many words.
He assigned Rest to its cause, in words with which each of us has
been familiar from his earliest childhood.
He begins, you remember--for you at once know the passage I refer
to--almost as if Rest could be had without any cause; "Come unto
me," He says, "and I will GIVE you Rest."
Rest, apparently, was a favor to be bestowed; men had but to
come to Him; He would give it to every applicant. But the next
sentence takes that all back. The qualification, indeed, is added
instantaneously. For what the first sentence seemed to give was
next thing to an impossibility. For how, in a literal sense, can
Rest be GIVEN? One could no more give away Rest than he could
give away Laughter. We speak of "causing" laughter, which we can
do; but we can not give it away. When we speak of "giving" pain,
we know perfectly well we can not give pain away. And when we aim
at "giving" pleasure, all that we can do is to arrange a set of
circumstances in such a way as that these shall cause pleasure.
Of course there is a sense, and a very wonderful sense, in which a
Great Personality breathes upon all who come within its influence
an abiding peace and trust. Men can be to other men as the shadow
of a great rock in a weary land; much more Christ; much more Christ
as Perfect Man; much more still as Savior of the world. But it
is not this of which I speak. When Christ said He would give men
Rest, He meant simply that he would put them in the way of it. By
no act of conveyance would or could He make over His own Rest to
them. He could give them