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, of 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 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 find 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
How to get joy.
"These things I have spoken unto you," He said, "that My Joy might
remain in you, and that your Joy might be full." It was a purposed
and deliberate communication of His
Secret of Happiness.
Go back over these verses, then, and you will find the Causes of
this Effect, the spring, and the only spring, out of which true
Happiness comes. I am not going to analyze them in detail. I ask
you to enter into the words for yourselves.
Remember, in the first place, that the Vine was the Eastern symbol
of Joy. It was its fruit that made glad the heart of man. Yet,
however innocent that gladness--for the expressed juice of the
grape was the common drink at every peasant's board--the gladness
was only a gross and passing thing. This was not true happiness,
and the vine of the Palestine vineyards was not the true vine.
"CHRIST was the TRUE Vine." Here, then, is the ultimate source
of Joy. Through whatever media it reaches us, all true Joy and
Gladness find their source in Christ.
By this, of course, is not meant that the actual Joy experienced
is transferred from Christ's nature, or is something passed on from
Him to us. What is passed on is His method of getting it. There
is, indeed, a sense in which we can share another's joy or another's
sorrow. But that is another matter. Christ is the source of Joy
to men in the sense in which He is the source of Rest. His people
share His life, and therefore share its consequences, and one of
these is Joy. His method of living is one that in the nature of
things produces Joy. When He spoke of His Joy remaining with us
He meant in part that the causes which produced it should continue
to act. His followers, (that is to say), by REPEATING His life
would experience its accompaniments. His Joy, His kind of Joy,
would remain with them.
The medium through which this Joy comes is next explained: "He that
abideth in Me, the same bringeth forth much fruit." Fruit first,
Joy next; the one the cause or medium of the other. Fruit-bearing
is the necessary antecedent; Joy both the necessary consequent and
the necessary accompaniment. It lay partly in the bearing fruit,
partly in the fellowship which made that possible. Partly, that
is to say, Joy lay in mere constant living in Christ's presence,
with all that that implied of peace, of shelter, and of love;
partly in the influence of that Life upon mind and character and
will; and partly in the inspiration to live and work for others,
with all that that brought of self-riddance and joy in others'
gain. All these, in different ways and at different times, are
Sources of pure happiness.
Even the simplest of them--to do good to other people--is an instant
and infallible specific. There is no mystery about Happiness
whatever. Put in the right ingredients and it must come out. He
that abideth in Him will bring forth much fruit; and bringing forth
much fruit is Happiness. The infallible receipt for Happiness,
then, is to do good; and the infallible receipt for doing good
is to abide in Christ. The surest proof that all this is a plain
matter of Cause and Effect is that men may try every other conceivable
way of finding happiness, and they will fail. Only the right cause
in each case can produce the right effect.
Then the Christian experiences are our own making? In the same
sense in which grapes are our own making and no more. All fruits
GROW--whether they grow in the soil or in the soul; whether they
are the fruits of the wild grape or of the True Vine. No man can
MAKE things grow. He can GET THEM TO GROW by arranging all the
circumstances and fulfilling all the conditions. But the growing
is done by God. Causes and effects are eternal arrangements, set
in the constitution of the world; fixed beyond man's ordering.
What man can do is to place himself in the midst of a chain of
sequences. Thus he can get things to grow. But the power is the
Spirit of God.
What more need I add but this--test the method by experiment. Do
not imagine that you have got these things because you know how to
get them. As well try to feed upon a cookery book. But I think
I can promise that if you try in this simple and natural way, you
will not fail. Spend the time you have spent in sighing for fruits
in fulfilling the conditions of their growth. The fruits will come,
must come. We have hitherto paid immense attention to EFFECTS, to
the mere experiences themselves; we have described them, extolled
them, advised them, prayed for them--done everything but find out
what CAUSED them. Henceforth
Let us deal with causes.
"To be," says Lotze, "is to be in relations." About every other
method of living the Christian life there is an uncertainty. About
every other method of acquiring the Christian experiences there is
a "perhaps." But in so far as this method is the way of nature,
it cannot fail. Its guarantee is the laws of the universe--and
these are "the Hands of the Living God."
The true vine.
"I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch
in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away; and every branch that
beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide
in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself,
except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in
me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me,
and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me
ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as
a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into
the fire, and they are burned. If ye abide in me, and my word abide
in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so ye shall
be my disciples. As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved
you: continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall
abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments,
and abide in his love. These things have I spoken unto you, that
my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full."
"FIRST!" An Address to boys.
I have three heads to give you. The first is "Geography," the
second is "Arithmetic," and the third is "Grammar."