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pax vobiscum also released as peace be with you by henry drummond come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy-laden and i will give you rest take my yoke upon you and learn of me for i am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden light · · · · introductory effects require causes what yokes are for how fruits grow introductory heard the other morning a sermon by a distinguished preacher upon rest it was full of delightful thoughts but when i came to ask myself how does he say i can yet rest there was no answer the sermon was sincerely meant to be practical yet it contained no experience that seemed to me to be tangible nor any advice which could help me to find the thing itself as i went about the world that afternoon yet this omission of the only important problem was not the fault of the preacher the whole popular religion is in the twilight here and when pressed for really working specifics for the experiences with which it deals it falters and seems to lose itself in mist this want of connection between the great words of religion and every-day life has bewildered and discouraged all of us christianity possesses the noblest words in the language its literature overflows with terms expressive of the greatest and happiest moods which can fill the soul of man rest joy peace faith love light these words occur with such persistency in hymns and

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prayers that an observer might think they formed the staple of christian experience but on coming to close quarters with the actual life of most of us how surely would he be disenchanted i do not think we ourselves are aware how much our religious life is made up of phrases how much of what we call christian experience is only a dialect of the churches a mere religious phraseology with almost nothing behind it in what we really feel and know for some of us indeed the christian experiences seem further away than when we took the first steps in the christian life that life has not opened out as we had hoped we do not regret our religion but we are disappointed with it there are times perhaps when wandering notes from diviner music stray into our spirits but these experiences come at few and fitful moments we have no sense of possession in them when they visit us it is a surprise when they leave us it is without explanation when we wish their return we do not know how to secure it all which points to a religion without solid base and a poor and flickering life it means a great bankruptcy in those experiences which give christianity its personal solace and make it attractive to the world and a great uncertainty as to any remedy it is as if we knew everything about health except the way to get it i am quite sure that the difficulty does not lie in the fact that men are not in earnest this is simply not the fact all around us christians are wearing themselves out in trying to be better the amount of spiritual longing in the world in the hearts of unnumbered thousands of men and women in whom we should never suspect it among the wise and thoughtful among the young and gay who seldom assuage and never betray their thirst this is one of the most wonderful and touching facts of life it is not more heat that is needed but more light not more force but a wiser direction to be given to very real energies already there what christian experience wants is thread a vertebral column method it is impossible to believe that there is no remedy for its unevenness and dishevelment or that the remedy is a secret the idea also that some few men by happy chance or happier temperament have acquired the secret as if there were some sort of knack or trick of it is wholly incredible religion must ripen its fruit for men of every temperament and the way even into its highest heights must be by a gateway through which the peoples of the world may pass i shall try to lead up to this gateway by a very familiar path but as that path is strangely unfrequented and even unknown where it passes into the religious sphere i must dwell for a moment on the commonest of commonplaces

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effects require causes nothing that happens in the world happens by chance god is a god of order everything is arranged upon definite principles and never at random the world even the religious world is governed by law character is governed by law happiness is governed by law the christian experiences are governed by law men forgetting this expect rest joy peace faith to drop into their souls from the air like snow or rain but in point of fact they do not do so and if they did they would no less have their origin in previous activities and be controlled by natural laws rain and snow do drop from the air but not without a long previous history they are the mature effects of former causes equally so are rest and peace and joy they too have each a previous history storms and winds and calms are not accidents but are brought about by antecedent circumstances rest and peace are but calms in man s inward nature and arise through causes as definite and as inevitable realize it thoroughly it is a methodical not an accidental world if a housewife turns out a good cake it is the result of a sound receipt carefully applied she cannot mix the assigned ingredients and fire them for the appropriate time without producing the result it is not she who has made the cake it is nature she brings related things together sets causes at work these causes bring about the result she is not a creator but an intermediary she does not expect random causes to produce specific effects random ingredients would only produce random cakes so it is in the making of christian experiences certain lines are followed certain effects are the result these effects cannot but be the result but the result can never take place without the previous cause to expect results without antecedents is to expect cakes without ingredients that impossibility is precisely the almost universal expectation now what i mainly wish to do is to help you to firmly grasp this simple principle of cause and effect in the spiritual world and instead of applying the principle generally to each of the christian experiences in turn i shall examine its application to one in some little detail the one i shall select is rest and i think any one who follows the application in this single instance will be able to apply it for himself to all the others take such a sentence as this african explorers are subject to fevers which cause restlessness and delirium note the expression cause restlessness restlessness has a cause clearly then any one who wished to get rid of restlessness would proceed at once to deal with the cause if that were not removed a doctor might prescribe a hundred things and all might be taken in turn without producing the least effect things are so arranged in the original

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planning of the world that certain effects must follow certain causes and certain causes must be abolished before certain effects can be removed certain parts of africa are inseparably linked with the physical experience called fever this fever is in turn infallibly linked with a mental experience called restlessness and delirium to abolish the mental experience the radical method would be to abolish the physical experience and the way of abolishing the physical experience would be to abolish africa or to cease to go there now this holds good for all other forms of restlessness every other form and kind of restlessness in the world has a definite cause and the particular kind of restlessness can only be removed by removing the allotted cause all this is also true of rest restlessness has a cause must not rest have a cause necessarily if it were a chance world we would not expect this but being a methodical world it cannot be otherwise rest physical rest moral rest spiritual rest every kind of rest has a cause as certainly as restlessness now causes are discriminating there is one kind of cause for every particular effect and no other and if one particular effect is desired the corresponding cause must be set in motion it is no use proposing finely devised schemes or going through general pious exercises in the hope that somehow rest will come the christian life is not casual but causal all nature is a standing protest against the absurdity of expecting to secure spiritual effects or any effects without the employment of appropriate causes the great teacher dealt what ought to have been the final blow to this infinite irrelevancy by a single question do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles why then did the great teacher not educate his followers fully why did he not tell us for example how such a thing as rest might be obtained the answer is that he did but plainly explicitly in so many words yes plainly explicitly in so many words he assigned rest to its cause in words with which each of us has been familiar from our earliest childhood he begins you remember for you at once know the passage i refer to-almost as if rest could be had without any cause come unto me he says and i will give you rest rest apparently was a favour to be bestowed men had but to come to him he would give it to every applicant but the next sentence takes that all back the qualification indeed is added instantaneously for what the first sentence seemed to give was next thing to an impossibility for how in a literal sense can rest be given one could no more give away rest than he could give away laughter we speak of causing laughter which we can do but we cannot give it away when we speak of giving pain we know perfectly well we cannot give pain away and when we aim at giving pleasure all that we do is to arrange a set of circumstances in such a way as that these shall cause pleasure of course there is a sense and a very wonderful sense in which a great

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personality breathes upon all who come within its influence an abiding peace and trust men can be to other men as the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land much more christ much more christ as perfect man much more still as saviour of the world but it is not this of which i speak when christ said he would give men rest he meant simply that he would put them in the way of it by no act of conveyance would or could he make over his own rest to them he could give them his receipt for it that was all but he would not make it for them for one thing it was not in his plan to make it for them for another thing men were not so planned that it could be made for them and for yet another thing it was a thousand times better that they should make it for themselves that this is the meaning becomes obvious from the wording of the second sentence learn of me and ye shall find rest rest that is to say is not a thing that can be given but a thing to be acquired it comes not by an act but by a process it is not to be found in a happy hour as one finds a treasure but slowly as one finds knowledge it could indeed be no more found in a moment than could knowledge a soil has to be prepared for it like a fine fruit it will grow in one climate and not in another at one altitude and not at another like all growths it will have an orderly development and mature by slow degrees the nature of this slow process christ clearly defines when he says we are to achieve rest by learning learn of me he says and ye shall find rest to your souls now consider the extraordinary originality of this utterance how novel the connection between these two words learn and rest how few of us have ever associated them ever thought that rest was a thing to be learned ever laid ourselves out for it as we would to learn a language ever practised it as we would practise the violin does it not show how entirely new christ s teaching still is to the world that so old and threadbare an aphorism should still be so little applied the last thing most of us would have thought of would have been to associate rest with work what must one work at what is that which if duly learned will find the soul of man in rest christ answers without the least hesitation he specifies two things meekness and lowliness learn of me he says for i am meek and lowly in heart now these two things are not chosen at random to these accomplishments in a special way rest is attached learn these in short and you have already found rest these as they stand are direct causes of rest will produce it at once cannot but produce it at once and if you think for a single moment you will see how this is necessarily so for causes are never arbitrary and the connection between antecedent and consequent here and everywhere lies deep in the nature of things what is the connection then i answer by a further question what are the chief causes of unrest if you know yourself you will answer pride,

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selfishness ambition as you look back upon the past years of your life is it not true that its unhappiness has chiefly come from the succession of personal mortifications and almost trivial disappointments which the intercourse of life has brought you great trials come at lengthened intervals and we rise to breast them but it is the petty friction of our every-day life with one another the jar of business or of work the discord of the domestic circle the collapse of our ambition the crossing of our will the taking down of our conceit which make inward peace impossible wounded vanity then disappointed hopes unsatisfied selfishness these are the old vulgar universal sources of man s unrest now it is obvious why christ pointed out as the two chief objects for attainment the exact opposites of these to meekness and lowliness these things simply do not exist they cure unrest by making it impossible these remedies do not trifle with surface symptoms they strike at once at removing causes the ceaseless chagrin of a self-centered life can be removed at once by learning meekness and lowliness of heart he who learns them is for ever proof against it he lives henceforth a charmed life christianity is a fine inoculation a transfusion of healthy blood into an anaemic or poisoned soul no fever can attack a perfectly sound body no fever of unrest can disturb a soul which has breathed the air or learned the ways of christ men sigh for the wings of a dove that they may fly away and be at rest but flying away will not help us the kingdom of god is within you we aspire to the top to look for rest it lies at the bottom water rests only when it gets to the lowest place so do men hence be lowly the man who has no opinion of himself at all can never be hurt if others do not acknowledge him hence be meek he who is without expectation cannot fret if nothing comes to him it is self-evident that these things are so the lowly man and the meek man are really above all other men above all other things they dominate the world because they do not care for it the miser does not possess gold gold possesses him but the meek possess it the meek said christ inherit the earth they do not buy it they do not conquer it but they inherit it there are people who go about the world looking out for slights and they are necessarily miserable for they find them at every turn especially the imaginary ones one has the same pity for such men as for the very poor they are the morally illiterate they have had no real education for they have never learned how to live few men know how to live we grow up at random carrying into mature life the merely animal methods and motives which we had as little children and it does not occur to us that all this must be changed that much of it must be reversed that life is the finest of the fine arts that it has to be learned with lifelong patience and that the years of our pilgrimage are all too short to master it triumphantly.

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yet this is what christianity is for to teach men the art of life and its whole curriculum lies in one word learn of me unlike most education this is almost purely personal it is not to be had from books or lectures or creeds or doctrines it is a study from the life christ never said much in mere words about the christian graces he lived them he was them yet we do not merely copy him we learn his art by living with him like the old apprentices with their masters now we understand it all christ s invitation to the weary and heavy-laden is a call to begin life over again upon a new principle upon his own principle watch my way of doing things he says follow me take life as i take it be meek and lowly and you will find rest i do not say remember that the christian life to every man or to any man can be a bed of roses no educational process can be this and perhaps if some men knew how much was involved in the simple learn of christ they would not enter his school with so irresponsible a heart for there is not only much to learn but much to unlearn many men never go to this school at all till their disposition is already half ruined and character has taken on its fatal set to learn arithmetic is difficult at fifty much more to learn christianity to learn simply what it is to be meek and lowly in the case of one who has had no lessons in that in childhood may cost him half of what he values most on earth do we realize for instance that the way of teaching humility is generally by humiliation there is probably no other school for it when a man enters himself as a pupil in such a school it means a very great thing there is much rest there but there is also much work i should be wrong even though my theme is the brighter side to ignore the cross and minimise the cost only it gives to the cross a more definite meaning and a rarer value to connect it thus directly and causally with the growth of the inner life our platitudes on the benefits of affliction are usually about as vague as our theories of christian experience somehow we believe affliction does us good but it is not a question of somehow the result is definite calculable necessary it is under the strictest law of cause and effect the first effect of losing one s fortune for instance is humiliation and the effect of humiliation as we have just seen is to make one humble and the effect of being humble is to produce rest it is a round-about way apparently of producing rest but nature generally works by circular processes and it is not certain that there is any other way of becoming humble or of finding rest if a man could make himself humble to order it might simplify matters but we do not find that this happens hence we must all go through the mill hence death death to the lower self is the nearest gate and the quickest road to life yet this is only half the truth christ s life outwardly was one of the most troubled lives that was ever lived tempest and tumult tumult and tempest the

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waves breaking over it all the time till the worn body was laid in the grave but the inner life was a sea of glass the great calm was always there at any moment you might have gone to him and found rest and even when the blood-hounds were dogging him in the streets of jerusalem he turned to his disciples and offered them as a last legacy my peace nothing ever for a moment broke the serenity of christ s life on earth misfortune could not reach him he had no fortune food raiment money-fountain-heads of half the world s weariness he simply did not care for they played no part in his life he took no thought for them it was impossible to affect him by lowering his reputation he had already made himself of no reputation he was dumb before insult when he was reviled he reviled not again in fact there was nothing that the world could do to him that could ruffle the surface of his spirit such living as mere living is altogether unique it is only when we see what it was in him that we can know what the word rest means it lies not in emotions nor in the absence of emotions it is not a hallowed feeling that comes over us in church it is not something that the preacher has in his voice it is not in nature nor in poetry nor in music though in all these there is soothing it is the mind at leisure from itself it is the perfect poise of the soul the absolute adjustment of the inward man to the stress of all outward things the preparedness against every emergency the stability of assured convictions the eternal calm of an invulnerable faith the repose of a heart set deep in god it is the mood of the man who says with browning god s in his heaven all s well with the world two painters each painted a picture to illustrate his conception of rest the first chose for his scene a still lone lake among the far-off 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 this it was in christ it is quite plain from all this that whatever else he claimed to be or to do he at least knew how to live all this is the perfection of living of living in the mere sense of passing through the world in the best way hence his anxiety to communicate his idea of life to others he came he said to give men life true life a more abundant life than they were living the life as the fine phrase in the revised version has it that is life indeed this is what he himself possessed and it was this which he offers to all mankind and hence his direct appeal for all to come to him who had not made much of life who were weary

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and heavy-laden these he would teach his secret they also should know the life that is life indeed what yokes are for there is still one doubt to clear up after the statement learn of me christ throws in the disconcerting qualification take my yoke upon you and learn of me why if all this be true does he call it a yoke why while professing to give rest does he with the next breath whisper burden is the christian life after all what its enemies take it for an additional weight to the already great woe of life some extra punctiliousness about duty some painful devotion to observances some heavy restriction and trammelling of all that is joyous and free in the world is life not hard and sorrowful enough without being fettered with yet another yoke it is astounding how so glaring a misunderstanding of this plain sentence should ever have passed into currency did you ever stop to ask what a yoke is really for is it to be a burden to the animal which wears it it is just the opposite it is to make its burden light attached to the oxen in any other way than by a yoke the plough would be intolerable worked by means of a yoke it is light a yoke is not an instrument of torture it is an instrument of mercy it is not a malicious contrivance for making work hard it is a gentle device to make hard labour light it is not meant to give pain but to save pain and yet men speak of the yoke of christ as if it were a slavery and look upon those who wear it as objects of compassion for generations we have had homilies on the yoke of christ some delighting in portraying its narrow exactions some seeking in these exactions the marks of its divinity others apologising for it and toning it down still others assuring us that although it be very bad it is not to be compared with the positive blessings of christianity how many especially among the young has this one mistaken phrase driven for ever away from the kingdom of god instead of making christ attractive it makes him out a taskmaster narrowing life by petty restrictions calling for self-denial where none is necessary making misery a virtue under the plea that it is the yoke of christ and happiness criminal because it now and then evades it according to this conception christians are at best the victims of a depressing fate their life is a penance and their hope for the next world purchased by a slow martyrdom in this the mistake has arisen from taking the word yoke here in the same sense as in the expressions under the yoke or wear the yoke in his youth but in

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christ s illustration it is not the jugum of the roman soldier but the simple harness or ox-collar of the eastern peasant it is the literal wooden yoke which he with his own hands in the carpenter s shop had probably often made he knew the difference between a smooth yoke and a rough one a bad fit and a good fit the difference also it made to the patient animal which had to wear it the rough yoke galled and the burden was heavy the smooth yoke caused no pain and the load was lightly drawn the badly fitted harness was a misery the well fitted collar was easy and what was the burden it was not some special burden laid upon the christian some unique infliction that he alone must bear it was what all men bear it was simply life human life itself the general burden of life which all must carry with them from the cradle to the grave christ saw that men took life painfully to some it was a weariness to others a failure to many a tragedy to all a struggle and a pain how to carry this burden of life had been the whole world s problem it is still the whole world s problem and here is christ s solution carry it as i do take life as i take it look at it from my point of view interpret it upon my principles take my yoke and learn of me and you will find it easy for my yoke is easy works easily sits right upon the shoulders and therefore my burden is light there is no suggestion here that religion will absolve any man from bearing burdens that would be to absolve him from living since it is life itself that is the burden what christianity does propose is to make it tolerable christ s yoke is simply his secret for the alleviation of human life his prescription for the best and happiest method of living men harness themselves to the work and stress of the world in clumsy and unnatural ways the harness they put on is antiquated a rough ill-fitted collar at the best they make its strain and friction past enduring by placing it where the neck is most sensitive and by mere continuous irritation this sensitiveness increases until the whole nature is quick and sore this is the origin among other things of a disease called touchiness a disease which in spite of its innocent name is one of the gravest sources of restlessness in the world touchiness when it becomes chronic is a morbid condition of the inward disposition it is self-love inflamed to the acute point conceit with a hair-trigger the cure is to shift the yoke to some other place to let men and things touch us through some new and perhaps as yet unused part of our nature to become meek and lowly in heart while the old nature is becoming numb from want of use it is the beautiful work of christianity everywhere to adjust the burden of life to those who bear it and them to it it has a perfectly miraculous gift of healing without doing any violence to human nature it sets it right with life harmonizing it with all surrounding things and restoring those who are jaded with the fatigue and dust of the world

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to a new grace of living in the mere matter of altering he perspective of life and changing the proportions of things its function in lightening the care of man is altogether its own the weight of a load depends upon the attraction of the earth but suppose the attraction of the earth were removed a ton on some other planet where the attraction of gravity is less does not weigh half a ton now christianity removes the attraction of the earth and this is one way in which it diminishes men s burden it makes them citizens of another world what was a ton yesterday is not half a ton today so without changing one s circumstances merely by offering a wider horizon and a different standard it alters the whole aspect of the world christianity as christ taught it is the truest philosophy of life ever spoken but let us be quite sure when we speak of christianity that we mean christ s christianity other versions are either caricatures or exaggerations or misunderstandings or short-sighted and surface readings for the most part their attainment is hopeless and the results wretched but i care not who the person is or through what vale of tears he has passed or is about to pass there is a new life for him along this path how fruits grow were rest my subject there are other things i should wish to say about it and other kinds of rest of which i should like to speak but that is not my subject my theme is that the christian experiences are not the work of magic but come under the law of cause and effect and i have chosen rest only as a single illustration of the working of that principle if there were time i might next run over all the christian experiences in turn and show how the same wide law applies to each but i think it may serve the better purpose if i leave this further exercise to yourselves i know no bible study that you will find more full of fruit or which will take you nearer to the ways of god or make the christian life itself more solid or more sure i shall add only a single other illustration of what i mean before i close where does joy come from i knew a sunday scholar whose conception of joy was that it was a thing made in lumps and kept somewhere in heaven and that when people prayed for it pieces were somehow let down and fitted into their souls i am not sure that views as gross and material are not often held by people who ought to be wiser in reality joy is as much a matter of cause and effect as pain no one can get joy by merely asking for it it is one of the ripest fruits of the christian life and like all fruits must be grown there is a very

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clever trick in india called the mango-trick a seed is put in the ground and covered up and after divers incantations a full-blown mango-bush appears within five minutes i never met any one who knew how the thing was done but i never met any one who believed it to be anything else than a conjuringtrick the world is pretty unanimous now in its belief in the orderliness of nature men may not know how fruits grow but they do know that they cannot grow in five minutes some lives have not even a stalk on which fruits could hang even if they did grow in five minutes some have never planted one sound seed of joy in all their lives and others who may have planted a germ or two have lived so little in sunshine that they never could come to maturity whence then is joy christ put his teaching upon this subject into one of the most exquisite of his parables i should in any instance have appealed to his teaching here as in the case of rest for i do not wish you to think i am speaking words of my own but it so happens that he has dealt with it in a passage of unusual fulness i need not recall the whole illustration it is the parable of the vine did you ever think why christ spoke that parable he did not merely throw it into space as a fine illustration of general truths it was not simply a statement of the mystical union and the doctrine of an indwelling christ it was that but it was more after he had said it he did what was not an unusual thing when he was teaching his greatest lessons he turned to the disciples and said he would tell them why he had spoken it it was to tell them how to get joy these things have i spoken unto you he said that my joy might remain in you and that your joy might be full it was a purposed and deliberate communication of his secret of happiness go back over these verses then and you will find the causes of this effect the spring and the only spring out of which true happiness comes i am not going to analyse them in detail i ask you to enter into the words for yourselves remember in the first place that the vine was the eastern symbol of joy it was its fruit that made glad the heart of man yet however innocent that gladness for the expressed juice of the grape was the common drink at every peasant s board the gladness was only a gross and passing thing this was not true happiness and the vine of the palestine vineyards was not the true vine christ was the true vine here then is the ultimate source of joy through whatever media it reaches us all true joy and gladness find their source in christ by this of course is not meant that the actual joy experienced is transferred from christ s nature or is something passed on from him to us what is passed on is his method of getting it there is indeed a sense in which we can share another s joy or another s sorrow but that is another matter christ is the source of joy to men in the sense in which he is the source of rest his people share his life and therefore share its consequences and one of

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these is joy his method of living is one that in the nature of things produces joy when he spoke of his joy remaining with us he meant in part that the causes which produced it should continue to act his followers that is to say by repeating his life would experience its accompaniments his joy his kind of joy would remain with them the medium through which this joy comes is next explained he that abideth in me the same bringeth forth much fruit fruit first joy next the one the cause or medium of the other fruit-bearing is the necessary antecedent joy both the necessary consequent and the necessary accompaniment it lies partly in the bearing fruit partly in the fellowship which makes that possible partly that is to say joy lies in mere constant living in christ s presence with all that that implies of peace of shelter and of love partly in the influence of that life upon mind and character and will and partly in the inspiration to live and work for others with all that that brings of self-riddance and joy in other s gain all these in different ways and at different times are sources of pure happiness even the simplest of them to do good to other people is an instant and infallible specific there is no mystery about happiness whatever put in the right ingredients and it must come out he that abideth in him will bring forth much fruit and bringing forth much fruit is happiness the infallible receipt for happiness then is to do good and the infallible receipt for doing good is to abide in christ the surest proof that all this is a plain matter of cause and effect is that men may try every other conceivable way of finding happiness and they will fail only the right cause in each case can produce the right effect then the christian experiences are our own making in the same sense in which grapes are our own making and no more all fruits grow whether they grow in the soil or in the soul whether they are the fruits of the wild grape or of the true vine no man can make things grow he can get them to grow by arranging all the circumstances and fulfilling all the conditions but the growing is done by god causes and effects are eternal arrangements set in the constitution of the world fixed beyond man s ordering what man can do is to place himself in the midst of a chain of sequences thus he can get things to grow thus he himself can grow but the grower is the spirit of god what more need i add but this test the method by experiment do not imagine that you have got these things because you know how to get them as well try to feed upon a cookery book but i think i can promise that if you try in this simple and natural way you will not fail spend the time you have spent in sighing for fruits in fulfilling the conditions of their growth the fruits will come must come we have hitherto paid immense attention to effects to the mere experiences themselves we have described them extolled them advised them prayed for them done everything but find out what caused them henceforth let us deal with causes to be says lotze is to be in relations

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about every other method of living the christian life there is an uncertainty about every other method of acquiring the christian experiences there is a perhaps but in so far as this method is the way of nature it cannot fail its guarantee is the laws of the universe and these are the hands of the living god

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