V. In this “perfect peace” these rare souls rest, because they are kept in it, by God Himself: “Thou wilt keep,” &c.
1. How? (1.) By the means of the deliverances which from time to time He works for them. Memory becomes a treasury-house of Divine faithfulness and mercy, and out of it their souls are fed and sustained when a season of famine and danger has befallen them. Then they know that He who has delivered will deliver, and they wait upon Him with calm, joyful expectation. (2.) To these souls the records of God’s deliverances of His people in ancient days become prophetic of deliverances He will still work for His people right on to the end of time. By His Spirit He works in them an immovable, soul-inspiring confidence in His own unchangeableness. To them He is “the living God,” acting to-day precisely as He did in the days of old. (3.) But, above all, He produces in their souls, as the chief safeguard of their tranquillity, a childlike confidence in His personal love for them. There is nothing they are so sure of as that God loves them, and being sure of this, all the rest follows as a matter of course. They never forget what proof God has given of His love for them, and hence they reason precisely as St. Paul did (Rom. viii. 31–39). This priceless revelation He makes to many who are “babes” in this world’s wisdom (Matt. xi. 25), and to others also who know all that science has to teach them of the vastness of the universe and of their own relative insignificance.
2. Why? (1.) Because it is a state of soul in which He delights. “The God of peace” desires that in this, as in all respects, His people—His children—should be like Him. (2.) Because they trust in Him. Devoting themselves to His service, and putting themselves into His care, His honour is pledged to the defence and maintenance of their welfare. Will he forfeit it? Men are far gone in depravity when they willingly disappoint those who trust in them: guides of the blind, lawyers and their clients, doctors and their patients, widows and their business advisors.[3] What sacrifices we make to fulfil the expectations we have encouraged our children to form! Will it be otherwise with our Father in heaven? Never!
VI. What then? 1. “Trust ye in the Lord for ever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength.” There is more than “strength;” but there is the “strength to carry out His wise and loving purposes towards His people.” He can do more than pity. 2. Let us cultivate the habit of trusting in the Lord, and of doing this in all the vicissitudes of our lot, “for ever.” 3. And that this habit may become to us invariable and its exercise easy, let us accept with all simplicity the revelation which He has been pleased to make of Himself as our Father in heaven. Precisely in proportion as we do this we shall stay our mind on Him, and we shall enter into that “perfect peace” which He desires should be the inheritance of all His children.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Can we turn aside and see what light this peace of God can diffuse through the chamber of disease; how it can tranquilise the bosom of the poor widow surrounded with her helpless babes; what serenity it can shed around the tottering steps of some aged saint; and how it can irradiate the gloom even of the grave itself, and not feel that it is rightly called “perfect?” True, it might often be more folly possessed on earth, and it will be more fully possessed in heaven. But if we remember what it has actually done in ten thousand instances, when the dearest friends have died, and property has taken wings and flown away, and one pall of sadness has seemed to overspread the entire world, we shall feel that it is impossible to give it too high a name or attach to it too high a value.—Magie.
[2] In the darkest period of the American civil war, as Mr. George William Curtis was taking leave of President Lincoln, the President placed his hand on his shoulder, and said with deep feeling: “Don’t fear, my son; we shall beat them.”
[3] Sir William Napier describes, in his “History of the Peninsular War,” that at the battle of Busaco in Portugal how affecting it was to see a beautiful Portuguese orphan girl coming down the mountain, driving an ass loaded with all her property through the midst of the armies. She passed over the field of battle with a childish simplicity, scarcely understanding which were French and which were English, and no one on either side was so hard-hearted as to touch her. Sir William Napier once in his walks met with a little girl of five years old, sobbing over a pitcher she had broken. She, in her innocence, asked him to mend it. He told her that he could not mend it, but that he would meet her trouble by giving her sixpence to buy a new one, if she would meet him there at the same hour the next evening, as he had no money in his purse that day. When he returned home he found that there was an invitation waiting for him, which he particularly wished to accept. But he could not then have met the little girl at the time stated, and he gave up the invitation, saying, “I could not disappoint her; she trusted in me so implicitly.” That was the true Christian English gentleman and soldier.—Dean Stanley.
The Righteousness of God and His People.
xxvi. 7. The way of the just, &c.