(2) We must labour to enter into rest. We must will the will of God. So long as the will of God, whether in the Bible or in providence, is going in one direction and our will in another, rest is impossible. Can there be rest in an earthly household when the children are ever chafing against the regulations and control of their parents ? How much less can we be at rest if we harbour
1 A. Munay, The Holiest of All, 144.
HEBREWS IV. 9, lo 331
an incessant spirit of insubordination and questioning, contra- dicting and resisting the will of God ? That will must be done on earth as it is in heaven. None can stay His hand, or say, What doest Thou ? It will be done with us, or in spite of us. If we resist it, the yoke against which we rebel will only rub a sore place on our skin ; but we must still carry it. How much wiser, then, meekly to yield to it, and submit ourselves under the mighty hand of God, saying, " Not my will, but Thine be done ! " The man who has learnt the secret of Christ in saying a perpetual " Yes " to the will of God ; whose life is a strain of rich music to the theme, " Even so. Father " ; whose will follows the current of the will of God, as the smoke from our chimneys permits itself to be wafted by the winds of autumn — that man may find rest unto his soul.
^ Eesignation sitteth down with the lowly in the dust ; it saith, " I will be simple in myself, and understand, lest my under- standing should exalt itself, and sin ; I will lie down in the courts of my God at His feet, that I may serve my Lord in that which He commandeth me : I will know nothing myself, that the com- mandment of my Lord may lead and guide me, and that I may only do what God doth through me, and will have done by me : I will sleep in myself until the Lord awaken me with His Spirit, and if He will not, then will I cry out eternally in Him in silence and wait His commands." ^
^ One of her perplexities hitherto had been a doubt whether the " mountains of difficulties " were to be taken as occasions for submission to God's will, or whether they were piled up in order to try her patience and her resolve, and were to be surmounted by some initiative of her own. She now began to interpret God's will in the latter sense. " I must talce some things," she wrote on Whitsunday 1851, " as few as I can, to enable me to live. I must take them, they will not be given me ; take them in a true spirit of doing Thy will, not of snatching them for my own will. I must do without some things, as many as I can, which I could not have without causing more suffering than I am obliged to cause any way." ^
3. This present rest of soul, realized through trust, conducts the diligent into the perfect rest wherein the Man and Leader,
^ Jacob Behmen.
" Sir Edward Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, i. 107.
332 THE SABBATH REST
Christ, already dwells. This aspect of the Divine rest is exhibited in the word used first in verse 9, and rendered in the Eevised Version by "sabbath rest." The Talmud records: "The Israelites said, Lord of all the world, show us a type of the world to come. God answered them. That type is the sabbath." Augustine notices that, in Genesis, to the seventh day, the day of God's rest, are set no limits of evening and morning. The sabbath-rest is to be perfect, endless, unchanging, indefeasible : the true and ideal rest which corresponds to what God designed for man and what man desires from God,
^ July 30^^, 1892. — ^Lord Northbrook, the Mondragones, and Mrs. Arkwright are with us. The first-named asked me after dinner whether I had ever heard the last words of Stone- wall Jackson : " Let us cross the river and rest under the shade." 1
^ Those who die in the fear of God and in the faith of Christ do not really taste death ; to them there is no death, but only a change of place, a change of state ; they pass at once into some new life, wath all their powers, all their feelings unchanged ; still the same living, thinking, active beings, which they were here on earth. I say active. . . . Kest they may : rest they will, if they need rest. But what is the true rest ? Not idleness, but peace of mind. To rest from sin, from sorrow, from fear, from doubt, from care; this is true rest. Above all, to rest from the worst weariness of all — knowing one's duty, and yet not being able to do it. That is true rest; the rest of God, who works for ever, and yet is at rest for ever ; as the stars over our heads move for ever, thousands of miles a day, and yet are at perfect rest, because they move orderly, harmoniously, fulfilling the law which God has given them. Perfect rest, in perfect work; that surely is the rest of blessed spirits, till the final consummation of all things, when Christ shall have made up the number of His elect.^