They must mistake who give a material
sense to the images of Heaven as a state of rest. If Christ's life
represented Heaven, its peace is not slothful ease, but intense
exertion. How He laboured in word and deed of virtue! He walked in
coarse raiment from town to town, from city to city, from the
dessert to the waves of the sea. His ministry was toil from the day
of His baptism to the scene upon Calvary. And yet His life was
peace. He expressed no wish to retire to an unoccupied ease. His
absorption in duty was His joy. He was so peaceful because so
engaged. His labours were the elements of His divine tranquillity.
And so active and earnest must we be, if we would have calmness and
peace. An appeal may here be made to every one's experience. Every
one will confess that when he had least to do, when mornings came
and went, and suns circled, and seasons rolled, and brought no
serious business, then time was a burthen; existence a weariness;
and the hungry soul, which craves some outward satisfaction, was
found fallen back upon itself and preying upon its own vitality. Are
not the idlest of men proverbially the most miserable? And is not
the young woman often to be seen passing restless from place to
place, because exempt from the necessity of industry, till vanity
and envy, growing rank in her vacant mind, makes her far more an
object of compassion than those who work hardest for a living? The
unemployed, then, are not the most peaceful.
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