The rest of the soul.
"Rest in the Lord." If any age ever needed a gospel of rest, it is this in which we live. We often call it "this busy age." But it is more than busy—it is restless. Men pride themselves on "living fast." They seek excitement, not refreshment, in their very pleasures. Amusement becomes not recreation, reinvigoration, restful play, fitting you to return with fresh strength and vigour to work, but often an exhausting demand and strain. You are weary after your holiday, not rested. It was a wise as well as a gracious voice which said to the disciples, "Come ye apart, and rest" (Mark 6:31).
I. WE NEED REST.
1. Physical rest, in due amount, is a very deep need of life. At our peril we despise it. There are forms of animal ]fib which are sleepless, but they are of very low types. The child, for many years, needs to spend half his life in sleep. The strong man needs from a quarter to a third of his time for sleep; and he must not give his waking hours to unnecessary toil, or body and mind will fail under the strain. We are not to think the time spent in sleep sheer waste. The schoolboy knows his task better when he wakes than over-night. You are wiser for "sleeping over" a question. As a new building requires time to settle, so, it seems, do our thoughts. "He giveth his beloved sleep" (Psalms 27:2).
2. No less do we need mental rest—repose of soul, heart, intellect. Best from doubt in certainty of truth. From care, in trust. From life's turmoil, in the quieting presence of things unseen and eternal. From the world, in solitary converse with our Father and our Saviour. From restlessness, in peace; not insensibility, not inertness or carelessness, but inward calm.
II. GOD IS THE SOUL'S REST. God has made all creation full of delight and profit for man, but not provided full satisfaction, perfect peace, anywhere but in himself. Faith is not a sudden snatch, but an abiding hold. Like the ivy, the soul climbs by clinging close; and as the ivy cannot cling while tossed to and fro by the wind, so the soul must cease to be agitated by stormy restless desires, if it is to take close, strong, peaceful hold on God. Rest in God includes:
1. Reconciliation. It would be absurd to speak of resting in God while our heart is at enmity with him, estranged from him, or careless, ignorant, doubtful, about our personal relation to him. One or other of these must be the case unless we are what Scripture calls reconciled to God. The "glad tidings" is the "word of reconciliation" in a twofold sense:
2. The rest of absolute submission to God's will, is what he sometimes calls us to. A hard lesson, but holy, profitable, with an after-fruit of peace. Not the highest form of faith, but indispensable to its completeness. For God does not cease to be our Creator, our Sovereign, when we become "children of God by faith in Christ Jesus."
3. The rest of unlimited trust. Not mere lying still in God's hand or at the feet of Jesus; not (as the "Quietists" taught) annihilation of our own will or of personal self; the calm energy of the soul, willingly placing all in God's hand. Not the stillness of the stagnant pool, but the calm of the deep lake through which a steady current flows. Christ was not passive in Gethsemane; the whole three of his will and purpose was gathered up in "Not my will," etc.