•[j One can give to another only what one has owned oneself, and as soon as Jesus makes His will and leaves peace to the Twelve, it comes to our mind that He has endowed them with the chiefest good, and has given what, beyond all men that ever lived. He Himself enjoyed. He had neither houses nor lands. One other thing He did not have, unrest. He had shame and suffering. One other thing He did have — rest. With evident fitness and intense conviction He could face a crowd of harassed, overdriven, hopeless people, heavy laden in soul and body, and offer them rest. Never had any one seen Jesus disturbed in soul, save in grief for a friend's death, or in pity for a doomed city, or for some other reason outside Himself. If a multitude would make Him a King, He was not exalted ; if they cried, " Crucify him," He was not cast down. It mattered nothing to Him what was said of Him, or done with Him; and through accumulated hardships, disappointments, injustices, cruelties, Jesus preserved His high serenity. Whatever storms beat on the outer coast of His life, His soul was anchored in the fair haven of peace.^
^ Two painters each painted a picture to illustrate his con- ception of rest. The first chose for his scene a still lone lake
* J. Watson, The Uprier Boom, 96.
ST. JOHN XIV. 27 171
among the far-ofif mountains. The second threw on his canvas a thundering waterfall, with a fragile birch tree bending over the foam; at the fork of a branch, almost wet with the cataract's spray, a robin sat on its nest. The first was only stagnation ; the last was rest. For in rest there are always two elements — tranquillity and energy; silence and turbulence; creation and destruction; fearlessness and fearfulness. Thus it was in Christ.i
2. How did Jesus come by this peace? By unfaltering obedience to the Father's will, and by utter self-sacrifice. His peace was the fruit of a hard-won victory.
Whatever were His peculiar natural aids of spiritual genius and sensibility, Christ attained His greatness by His own faithful- ness to the occasions and intimations which the Father gave Him. If we lose hold of this, we lose the whole value of the Christian life and doctrine. The secret means by which the Almighty Spirit prepares His instruments, the mode and the extent of His intercourse with the soul of Christ — of these we offer no explanation or theory; but the character that grew up under this culture can never by a healthy religion be separated from the personal will of Christ, or be otherwise regarded than as the result of a voluntary faithfulness to the grace of God. Even when a forced flower is made to exhibit summer's bloom on winter's bosom, the blossoming is due not to culture only but to the nature on which it was exerted, which here offers no resistance but yields up all its hidden glories to the hand that tends it; surrounded with a special atmosphere, and in special circum- stances, the fitness within, the genial nature, repaid the care and burst into beauty. And so with Christ, — if the Father was the Husbandman the Son was the spiritual Vine ; if the culture was of God, the harmonious development of all that was in that rich and blessed nature was through the willing obedience that ofiered no resistance to the heavenly tending ; if the influences were of God's holy grace, the answering faithfulness was of God's holy Child. And the true distinction of Him who, by reason of a perfect obedience, is as the only Son of God, was that through a holy will the spiritual influences of the Father did produce their righteous fruit; that no Divine soliciting was rejected because
^ Henry Drummond, Pax Vdbiscum, 263.
172 CHRIST'S GIFT OF PEACE
it involved Him in awful duties ; that to Him the only true life, life eternal, was life in and with God.^
Lord, I had chosen another lot, But then I had not chosen well; Thy choice and only Thine is good: No different lot, search heaven or hell, Had blessed me, fully understood ; None other, which Thou orderest not.^
II.
The Bestowal of Peack
Christ here shares with His people His peculiar secret. He makes a bequest, He bestows a gift.
1. " Not as the world giveth " — not the peace of ease, but of struggle ; not of self-content, but of self-sacrifice ; not of yielding to evil, but of conflict with it ; not of accommodation to the world, but by the subjugation of it. And so He adds, " I have overcome the world." It is a strange paradox, this peace of conflict ; it is the peace of an Imperial Spirit which by its own victory rises above human circumstances.
^ In one of her shorter poems Mrs. Browning asks the question, " What is the best thing in the world ? " Various answers are suggested, but the only one which the poetess regards as final and conclusive is this : " Something out of it, I think." Yes, the best thing in the world is something outside the world, something which the world does not contain, and which it cannot give.^