^ W. Robertson Nicoll, Ian Maclaren, 21.
Rest after Toil.
Literature.
Jerdan (C), For the Lambs of the Flock, 15. ,
Jowett (J. H.), Thirsting for the Springs, 94.
Moberly (G.), Plai7i Sermons Preached at Brighstone, 34.
Power (P. B.), The "J Wills" of the Psalms, 1.
Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, xi. 353.
Vaughan (C. J.), Voices of the Prophets, 75.
„ „ The Family Prayer and Sermon Booh, i. 737.
Churchman^ Pulpit : Good Friday and Easter Even, vii. 189 (Keble). Expositor's Library : Psalms, i. 167 (Keble), 173 (Greenwood). Good Words, 1866, p. 818 (Vaughan).
Plain Sermons by Contributors to the " Tracts for the Timies" vi. 85 (Keble). Sunday Magazine, 1895, pp. 494, 496, 499 (Wells).
Rest after Toil.
In peace will I both lay me down and sleep :
For thou, Lord, alone makest me dwell in safety.— Ps. iv. 8.
1. The Psalms form the most wonderful expression of human feelings that was ever penned. Those who know the Psalms only slightly do not understand this. But those who are wise enough to know them well, to learn them by heart and use them, know that there is not any state of feeling, not any condition in life, for which that wonderful book does not furnish the most exact and well-fifcted expressions that can be conceived or desired. With joy and thankfulness the Psalms run over ; they abound in expressions of faith, and trust, and cheerful confidence in the mercy and goodness of God. Of penitential sorrow and distress for sins, of humble confession and repentance, they are so full that they almost seem to contain nothing else. For peaceful times, for anxious times, for times of affliction and grief, for reliance on God in the morning or in the evening, awake or asleep, at midnight or at midday, in solitude or in society, — none know so well as those who know the Psalms, or some of them, by heart, what a store of heavenly expressions they furnish by which Christian hearts may pour themselves out to God in strains the most beautiful, and most exactly suitable to all their various states of feeling and condition. It has been said of Holy Scripture in general, and it is more applicable to the Psalms than to any other book in it, that its eye follows us, like the eye of a picture, ever fixed upon us, turn where we will.
Eye of God's Word ! where'er we turn
Ever upon us ! Thy keen gaze Can all the depths of sin discern,
Unravel every bosom's maze:
214 REST AFTER TOIL
Who that has felt thy glance of dread Thrill through his heart's remotest cells,
About his path, about his bed,
Can doubt what Spirit in thee dwells?
2. There are two great and equal necessities of man's nature : work and rest. A man cannot be happy without either, without both, of these. We must have work ; and we must have rest. Once the two things were one ; and once again they will be one. An unfallen being finds repose in activity. In heaven there is no night. The will of God is done there, not only perfectly, but continually. Those holy spirits which behold the face of God, and are sent forth thence to minister to the heirs of salvation, could do but half, not half, of their office, if they took either night or day for rest from labour. They rest not day nor night. They rest in working. Meanwhile there is, for us, a divorce of the two things which God had joined together, work and rest. Work begins where rest ends : not until work is ended can rest begin. That is the condition of earth. Man goes forth to his work and to his labour until the evening. When night comes, no man can work.
Kest of Body and Mind.
1. This is one of those many verses in the Bible, in the Psalms especially, which must come home to every heart of man, if read with any degree of simple faith. It sets full before us the most comfortable and refreshing picture of a devout, sober, honest person, his day's work ended, his passions kept in order, his sins repented of, and his prayers seriously said, laying himself down to his night's rest, in the full consciousness that he is neither alone nor unguarded ; that as there has been a merciful Eye watching over him, a mighty Hand stretched out to guard him, through the dangers and temptations of the day, so it will be with him in the night also. His eyelids sink down with sleep ; the Eye of the Lord never becomes heavy. Therefore such an one, be he young or old, rich or poor, is able to compose liimself to sleep without fear.
PSALM IV. 8 215
2. This entire rest and tranquillity of God's faithful servants, when they lay them down on their bed at night, is beautifully expressed in the text by the words, " In peace will I both lay me down and sleep." " I will lay me down," says the Psalmist, " all together " : all my powers of mind and body, agreeing as it were «Jigwith another ; not torn by violent passions, by desire on the one hand and remorse on the other ; not in the condition of the natural man as described by St. Paul, " The good that I would I do not, but the evil that I would not that I do " ; and again, " I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind." Not so is it with him of whom the Psalmist here speaks ; rather he resembles the spiritual man, as described by the same St. Paul : " The very God of peace sanctify you wholly, and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."