Peace is promised to those whose hearts are stayed on God — “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee” (Isaiah 26, 3). What then is the nature of this possession so wonderfully bestowed and preserved to us by God Himself? Peace is that settled, calm happiness which is more quiet and lasting than joy — more noble and worthy than pleasure. Pleasure may make us for a time forget pain, and a passing joy may take for a moment the place of a passing sorrow, but peace is deeper than these. Search the heart in which true peace dwells, and you will find it reaching down to the centre of life itself; pleasure, pain, joy, sorrow, may come and go, but peace abides through all.
It is remarkable, that in the books and in the talk of the men of this world you rarely find the word peace. They seem to have found the thing itself beyond their reach; the life of peace appears to them an possible condition here. You sometimes hear them speak of a tranquil life, but that only means a freedom from external disturbances. Now, the peaceful life of a faithful Christian is not one always of outward quietness. It may be one of constant, busy employment; we have each of us our work to do, and much of this work may be fatiguing, troublesome, full of interruptions, distasteful in itself; and so we may lead anything but what the world means by a tranquil life, and yet it may be full of peace. When our Lord said, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you,” He added, “not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” And indeed, the peace of His bestowing is as mysterious as the Giver. He who might have exempted the lot of the righteous from all suffering and sorrow has not done so; “Many are the afflictions of the righteous.” Take such trouble as sore sickness, or the death of those we love. The Christian soldier is no stoic — his heart is full of deepest grief by the grave of the lost; but grief and peace may dwell together; he sees the earthly hope blighted, but he has a hope full of immortality; he is not forbidden to grieve, but he cannot sorrow as others who have no hope. The hand of God is plain to him, directing this as all other things; and if he has been enabled, as a sinner reconciled through Christ Jesus, to place himself in His care and keeping, as unto a faithful Creator, he knows it shall be well with him; his heaviness may endure for a night, yea, it may not be wholly removed through all the night of his life; but the dawning of a better day is at hand, and joy cometh in that morning.
Peace, then, such as God gives, is not destroyed even amidst the heaviest storms; and see how it avails under the common circumstances of life! What is it that gives real abiding cheerfulness to the day? What is it that makes the task so easy, the labour so light? What is it that spreads itself all round as a tranquil atmosphere, but the influence of peace? And it has a blessed effect upon others; there is nothing that wins men, nothing that sooner leads them to inquire into the nature and power of the gospel of peace, than seeing peace manifested in the life, peace written on the very countenance of the righteous. What good it does, too, to beginners, to those just setting out on their Christian course, when they thus learn how great a present blessing is within their own reach? And yet, as none can quite penetrate those depths of the heart where peace dwells, none can see in others a thousandth part of the blessing as it lies there; or perceive, if they have not themselves experienced it, how truly it is called “the peace that passeth all understanding.” Indeed, how can it be understood? Is it not a mystery to a man’s own self? In the midst of the many hopes and fears, doubts and distresses, that are often in the heart, how wonderful it is, that, on the whole there is peace there, peace, like some rock that the heaving and surging waves hide, for a moment from the eye, but which yet abides, fixed and unshaken for ever.
“They in the Lord that firmly trust,
Shall be like Zion hill,
Which at no time can be removed,
But standeth ever still.”(From “Voices of Comfort,” T. V. Fosbery, 1875)