XVI. REST IN THE SAVIOUR.* "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden ; and I will give you rest."-St MATT. xi. 28. I' T is a beautiful text: too beautiful almost to preach from. What sermon but will be a sad falling-off, coming after these words: who shall worthily sustain their music, or interpret all their meaning? The famous verse, which will not pass away till heaven and earth pass away, is rather for the meditation of devout hearts. But this is our Communion-Sunday: and for that reason, among others, the text is fit to-day. It is best, to-day, that our Saviour speak to His people, and they to Him: with not much intermeddling on the part of any human being. The most I desire is somewhat to guide your own meditations. I do not claim your attention, as I do on other Sundays. And I shall not be vexed, though now and then you should withdraw your attention from me and what I say,-feeling that you can better discourse from this text to yourselves. God, by His Blessed Spirit, guide us all! "Rest." "I will give you rest." Let us have no cheap * On a Communion-Sunday. scholarship: but some present know that the very word Rest was not said by Christ. "I will give you rest," as Christ said it, is just two words: "I will give rest," is just one word. But it is rightly rendered in your New Testaments: you have exactly what Christ meant. And who durst have said that, but God Almighty! Who, that had a heart at all, would have mocked poor, weary humanity, by holding out this offer, unless knowing that he could give and do what man never could! Which of you, the wisest and kindest of you, would undertake certainly to calm one anxious spirit, or take the load off just one weary heart? And what must He have been, who could promise to do that to all! Never the soul to come so weary that He could not revive it: never the human creature to come who had made such a ravelled misery of this life as to be beyond His setting it all right again: never the mortal to come so worried and over-driven and beaten down, that He would need to confess that here was a case beyond His power to aid. Ay: the Man that said that text was God Almighty! No one less. There was an old philosopher * long ago, they held him the wisest man of his time, who summed up his experience of man's life and toils and cares, by saying that "The end of work is to enjoy rest." And, truly, there is no pleasanter word or thing. We * Aristotle. The liking, the longing for come to feel that at last. it, must come at length. young heart pants for larger excitement: when the strong arm is eager for earnest toil: when we are ambitious, and would fain do something which might be the talk of men. But the sobering years go forward. We grow wearied in the greatness of the way. The heart does not beat high for praise any more. We understand the Psalmist's vague aspiration,"Oh, that I had wings like a dove: then would I fly away and be at rest!" Now, when we would find true rest for our souls, we can find it only in Christ. He can give rest. He does give rest. Many have found it so. It is not a perfect rest in this world, nor a uniform rest, unless in the experience of a few saintly ones, very highly privileged both in grace and nature. And it is not freedom from labour and burden,—the active and the passive endurance, the doing and the bearing,-it is rest carried into the soul: a rest in the soul which takes much if not all the weight from burdens and toils without the central peace which may subsist at the heart of endless agitation. There is a yoke to be borne, and not a light yoke: though He can make us so strong that the yoke grows easy to our feeling. There is worry: there is the irritable constitution: there are provocations: there is temptation: and sin will not be gone till we die. And yet, when we think what are the main sources of the soul's unrest, we shall see that Christ, even in this life, is ready to deliver His people from them. Beyond that blessed, all-pervading quietness and confidence which are permitted to some, specially dwelt in by the Holy Ghost, and which must needs appear mystical to such as do not know them by experience, there comes a rest, there might come a rest, for which we can render a reason. I desire to show you that it is our own lack of living faith in Christ, if we have not, even in this world, found rest in Him. There are three things which are chief and weighty causes of disquiet and distress. I mention first what ought to be the chiefest, though in fact it is not: the burden of sin. And I mean by this not merely the jarring and degradation of our whole being which come of evil in us, but the actual sense that God is angry with the wicked: that God has said He must punish the unforgiven sin, we do not know where or how, but very awfully. God "hates" sin: that is certain. Misery and utter loss, the spoiling and ruin of our very existence in consciousness, must follow unrepented and presumptuous sin that is certain. Now, if we really took that in, and did not know of that precious Blood which takes sin away, did not know God as the compassionate Father in Christ, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin: what an hourly, awful, crushing burden that would be! Of course, it cannot strike us as it would strike a stranger: we are so familiar with the Old Story, And if, here and we think it a mat the blessed Gospel of mercy through the Cross, that we cannot, unless in some moment of special illumination, realise how Christ has taken the worst burden and disquiet from weary and lost humanity. And the upshot is, that I daresay many of us cannot really say that we ever felt our sins, and what follows of our sins, as a very heavy load. As for the wrath of God on account of sin, we should get on pretty well if that were our only cause of anxiety and unrest. If you see a man very depressed and overweighted, whatever it may be about, it is not likely to be about his sins and the terrors of God's law. there, it be so, we call it morbid ter of the nerves; we talk of change of scene and air. It is all reasonable that a man be very anxious about the risk of losing his fortune: but it is fanciful, as some think, that he should be very anxious about the risk of losing his soul. Dear friends, if we saw things rightly, and as they really are, we should feel that of all the burdens which can oppress us in this world, this is the weightiest and when the Holy Spirit "convinces us of our sin and misery," as the Catechism says, what does that mean, but just making the soul see what an overwhelming weight our sins and the woe that follows on them make up together; and how inexpressible is our need that the great Sin-Bearer should take that load away! I mention, secondly, what we can all understand |