What is it? What are its elements? Whence does it come? It is of God, as
being its Source, or Origin, or Author, or Giver, but it belongs to Him
in a yet deeper sense, for Himself is Peace. And in some humble but yet
real fashion our restless and anxious hearts may partake in the divine
tranquillity, and with a calm repose, kindred with that rest from which
it is derived, may enter into His rest.
If that be too high a flight, at all events the peace that may be ours
was Christ's, in the perfect and unbroken tranquillity of His perfect
Manhood. What, then, are its elements? The peace of God must, first of
all, be peace with God. Conscious friendship with Him is indispensable
to all true tranquillity. Where that is absent there may be the ignoring
of the disturbed relationship; but there will be no peace of heart. The
indispensable requisite is 'a conscience like a sea at rest.' Unless we
have made sure work of our relationship with God, and know that He and
we are friends, there is no real repose possible for us. In the whirl of
excitement we may forget, and for a time turn away from, the realities
of our relation to Him, and so get such gladness as is possible to a
life not rooted in conscious friendship with Him. But such lives will be
like some of those sunny islands in the Eastern Pacific, extinct
volcanoes, where nature smiles and all things are prodigal and life is
easy and luxuriant; but some day the clouds gather, and the earth
shakes, and fire pours forth, and the sea boils, and every living thing
dies, and darkness and desolation come. You are living, brother, upon a
volcano's side, unless the roots of your being are fixed in a God who is
your friend.
Again, the peace of God is peace within ourselves. The unrest of human
life comes largely from our being torn asunder by contending impulses.
Conscience pulls this way, passion that. Desire says, 'Do this'; reason,
judgment, prudence say, 'It is at your peril if you do!' One desire
fights against another, and so the man is rent asunder. There must be
the harmonising of all the Being if there is to be real rest of spirit.
No longer must it be like the chaos ere the creative word was spoken,
where, in gloom, contending elements strove.
Again, men have not peace, because in most of them everything is topmost
that ought to be undermost, and everything undermost that ought to be
uppermost. 'Beggars are on horseback' (and we know where they ride),
'and princes walking.' The more regal part of the man's nature is
suppressed, and trodden under foot; and the servile parts, which ought
to be under firm restraint, and guided by a wise hand, are too often
supreme, and wild work comes of that. When you put the captain and the
officers, and everybody on board that knows anything about navigation,
into irons, and fasten down the hatches on them, and let the crew and
the cabin boys take the helm and direct the ship, it is not likely that
the voyage will end anywhere but on the rocks. Multitudes are living
lives of unrestfulness, simply because they have set the lowest parts of
their nature upon the throne, and subordinated the highest to these.
Our unrest comes from yet another source. We have not peace, because we
have not found and grasped the true objects for any of our faculties.
God is the only possession that brings quiet. The heart hungers until it
feeds upon Him. The mind is satisfied with no truth until behind truth
it finds a Person who is true. The will is enslaved and wretched until
in God it recognises legitimate and absolute authority, which it is
blessing to obey. Love puts out its yearnings, like the filaments that
gossamer spiders send out into the air, seeking in vain for something to
fasten upon, until it touches God, and clings there. There is no rest
for a man until he rests in God. The reason why this world is so full of
excitement is because it is so empty of peace, and the reason why it is
so empty of peace is because it is so void of God. The peace of God
brings peace with Him, and peace within. It unites our hearts to fear
His name, and draws all the else turbulent and confusedly flowing
impulses of the great deep of the spirit after itself, in a tidal wave,
as the moon draws the waters of the gathered ocean. The peace of God is
peace with Him, and peace within.
I need not, I suppose, do more than say one word about that descriptive
clause in my text, It 'passeth understanding.' The understanding is not
the faculty by which men lay hold of the peace of God any more than you
can see a picture with your ears or hear music with your eyes. To
everything its own organ; you cannot weigh truth in a tradesman's scales
or measure thought with a yard-stick. Love is not the instrument for
apprehending Euclid, nor the brain the instrument for grasping these
divine and spiritual gifts. The peace of God transcends the
understanding, as well as belongs to another order of things than that
about which the understanding is concerned. You must experience it to
know it; you must have it in order that you may feel its sweetness. It
eludes the grasp of the wisest, though it yields itself to the patient
and loving heart.