PAX VOBISCUM BY HENRY DRUMMOND, F. R. S. E. , F. G. S. , LL. D. 1890 "PAX VOBISCUM, " prepared for publication by the Author, is now publishedfor the first time, being the second of a series of which "The GreatestThing in the World" was the first. Nov. 1, 1890. "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, andI will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I ammeek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For myyoke is easy, and my burden is light. " CONTENTS PREFACE PAX VOBISCUM EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES WHAT YOKES ARE FOR HOW FRUITS GROW PAX VOBISCUM I heard the other morning a sermon by a distinguished preacher upon"Rest. " It was full of beautiful thoughts; but when I came to askmyself, "How does he say I can get Rest?" there was no answer. Thesermon was sincerely meant to be practical, yet it contained noexperience that seemed to me to be tangible, nor any advice whichcould help me to find the thing itself as I went about the world thatafternoon. Yet this omission of the only important problem was not thefault of the preacher. The whole popular religion is in the twilighthere. And when pressed for really working specifics for the experienceswith which it deals, it falters, and seems to lose itself in mist. The want of connection between the great words of religion and every-daylife has bewildered and discouraged all of us. Christianity possessesthe noblest words in the language; its literature overflows with termsexpressive of the greatest and happiest moods which can fill the soul ofman. Rest, Joy, Peace, Faith, Love, Light--these words occur with suchpersistency in hymns and prayers that an observer might think theyformed the staple of Christian experience. But on coming to closequarters with the actual life of most of us, how surely would he bedisenchanted. I do not think we ourselves are aware how much ourreligious life is made up of phrases; how much of what we call Christianexperience is only a dialect of the Churches, a mere religiousphraseology with almost nothing behind it in what we really feel andknow. To some of us, indeed, the Christian experiences seem further away thanwhen we took the first steps in the Christian life. That life has notopened out as we had hoped; we do not regret our religion, but we aredisappointed with it. There are times, perhaps, when wandering notesfrom a diviner music stray into our spirits; but these experiences comeat few and fitful moments. We have no sense of possession in them. Whenthey visit us, it is a surprise. When they leave us, it is withoutexplanation. When we wish their return, we do not know how to secureit. All which points to a religion without solid base, and a poor andflickering life. It means a great bankruptcy in those experiences whichgive Christianity its personal solace and make it attractive to theworld, and a great uncertainty as to any remedy. It is as if we kneweverything about health--except the way to get it. I am quite sure that the difficulty does not lie in the fact thatmen are not in earnest. This is simply not the fact. All around usChristians are wearing themselves out in trying to be better. The amountof spiritual longing in the world--in the hearts of unnumbered thousandsof men and women in whom we should never suspect it; among the wise andthoughtful; among the young and gay, who seldom assuage and never betraytheir thirst--this is one of the most wonderful and touching facts oflife. It is not more heat that is needed, but more light; not moreforce, but a wiser direction to be given to very real energies alreadythere. The Address which follows is offered as a humble contribution to thisproblem, and in the hope that it may help some who are "seeking Rest andfinding none" to a firmer footing on one great, solid, simpleprinciple which underlies not the Christian experiences alone, but allexperiences, and all life. What Christian experience wants is _thread_, a vertebral column, method. It is impossible to believe that there is no remedy for its unevennessand dishevelment, or that the remedy is a secret. The idea, also, thatsome few men, by happy chance or happier temperament, have been giventhe secret--as if there were some sort of knack or trick of it--iswholly incredible. Religion must ripen its fruit for every temperament;and the way even into its highest heights must be by a gateway throughwhich the peoples of the world may pass. I shall try to lead up to this gateway by a very familiar path. But asthat path is strangely unfrequented, and even unknown, where it passesinto the religious sphere, I must dwell for a moment on the commonest ofcommonplaces. EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES Nothing that happens in the world happens by chance. God is a God oforder. Everything is arranged upon definite principles, and neverat random. The world, even the religious world, is governed by law. Character is governed by law. Happiness is governed by law. TheChristian experiences are governed by law. Men, forgetting this, expectRest, Joy, Peace, Faith to drop into their souls from the air like snowor rain. But in point of fact they do not do so; and if they did theywould no less have their origin in previous activities and be controlledby natural laws. Rain and snow do drop from the air, but not without along previous history. They are the mature effects of former causes. Equally so are Rest, and Peace, and Joy. They, too, have each a previoushistory. Storms and winds and calms are not accidents, but are broughtabout by antecedent circumstances. Rest and Peace are but calms in man'sinward nature, and arise through causes as definite and as inevitable. Realize it thoroughly: it is a methodical not an accidental world. If ahousewife turns out a good cake, it is the result of a sound receipt, carefully applied. She cannot mix the assigned ingredients and fire themfor the appropriate time without producing the result. It is not she whohas made the cake; it is nature. She brings related things together;sets causes at work; these causes bring about the result. She is nota creator, but an intermediary. She does not expect random causes toproduce specific effects--random ingredients would only produce randomcakes. So it is in the making of Christian experiences. Certain linesare followed; certain effects are the result. These effects cannot butbe the result. But the result can never take place without the previouscause. To expect results without antecedents is to expect cakes withoutingredients. That impossibility is precisely the almost universalexpectation. Now what I mainly wish to do is to help you firmly to grasp this simpleprinciple of Cause and Effect in the spiritual world. And instead ofapplying the principle generally to each of the Christian experiences inturn, 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 theapplication in this single instance will be able to apply it for himselfto all the others. Take such a sentence as this: African explorers are subject to feverswhich cause restlessness and delirium. Note the expression, "causerestlessness. " _Restlessness has a cause_. Clearly, then, any one whowished to get rid of restlessness would proceed at once to deal withthe cause. If that were not removed, a doctor might prescribe a hundredthings, and all might be taken in turn, without producing the leasteffect. Things are so arranged in the original planning of the worldthat certain effects must follow certain causes, and certain causes mustbe abolished before certain effects can be removed. Certain parts ofAfrica are inseparably linked with the physical experience called fever;this fever is in turn infallibly linked with a mental experience calledrestlessness and delirium. To abolish the mental experience the radicalmethod would be to abolish the physical experience, and the way ofabolishing the physical experience would be to abolish Africa, orto cease to go there. Now this holds good for all other forms ofRestlessness. Every other form and kind of Restlessness in the world hasa definite cause, and the particular kind of Restlessness can only beremoved 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 expectthis; but, being a methodical world, it cannot be otherwise. Rest, physical rest, moral rest, spiritual rest, every kind of rest has acause, 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 beset in motion. It is no use proposing finely devised schemes, or goingthrough general pious exercises in the hope that somehow Rest will come. The Christian life is not casual but causal. All nature is a standingprotest against the absurdity of expecting to secure spiritual effects, or any effects, without the employment of appropriate causes. The GreatTeacher dealt what ought to have been the final blow to this infiniteirrelevancy by a single question, "Do men gather grapes of thorns orfigs of thistles?" Why, then, did the Great Teacher not educate Hisfollowers fully? Why did He not tell us, for example, how such a thingas Rest might be obtained? The answer is, that _He did_. But plainly, explicitly, in so many words? Yes, plainly, explicitly, in so manywords. He assigned Rest to its cause, in words with which each of us hasbeen familiar from his earliest childhood. He begins, you remember--for you at once know the passage I referto--almost as if Rest could be had without any cause: "Come unto me, " Hesays, "and I will _give_ you Rest. " Rest, apparently, was a favour to be bestowed; men had but to come toHim; He would give it to every applicant. But the next sentence takesthat all back. The qualification, indeed, is added instantaneously. For what the first sentence seemed to give was next thing to animpossibility. For how, in a literal sense, can Rest be _given_? Onecould no more give away Rest than he could give away Laughter. We speakof "causing" laughter, which we can do; but we cannot give it away. Whenwe speak of giving pain, we know perfectly well we cannot give painaway. And when we aim at giving pleasure, all that we do is to arrange aset 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 GreatPersonality breathes upon all who come within its influence an abidingpeace and trust. Men can be to other men as the shadow of a great rockin 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 Ispeak. When Christ said He would give men Rest, He meant simply thatHe would put them in the way of it. By no act of conveyance would, orcould, He make over His own Rest to them. He could give them His receiptfor 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 werenot so planned that it could be made for them; and for yet anotherthing, it was a thousand times better that they should make it forthemselves. That this is the meaning becomes obvious from the wording of the secondsentence: "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 comesnot 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 couldindeed be no more found in a moment than could knowledge. A soil has tobe prepared for it. Like a fine fruit, it will grow in one climate andnot in another; at one altitude and not at another. Like all growths itwill have an orderly development and mature by slow degrees. The nature of this slow process Christ clearly defines when He says weare to achieve Rest by _learning_. "Learn of Me, " He says, "and ye shallfind rest to your souls. " Now consider the extraordinary originalityof this utterance. How novel the connection between these two words, "Learn" and "Rest"? How few of us have ever associated them--everthought that Rest was a thing to be learned; ever laid ourselves outfor it as we would to learn a language; ever practised it as we wouldpractise the violin? Does it not show how entirely new Christ's teachingstill is to the world, that so old and threadbare an aphorism shouldstill be so little applied? The last thing most of us would have thoughtof would have been to associate _Rest_ with _Work_. What must one work at? What is that which if duly learned will find thesoul of man in Rest? Christ answers without the least hesitation. Hespecifies two things--Meekness and Lowliness. "Learn of Me, " He says, "for I am _meek_ and _lowly_ in heart. " Now these two things are notchosen at random. To these accomplishments, in a special way, Rest isattached. Learn these, in short, and you have already found Rest. Theseas they stand are direct causes of Rest; will produce it at once; cannotbut produce it at once. And if you think for a single moment, you willsee how this is necessarily so, for causes are never arbitrary, and theconnection between antecedent and consequent here and everywhere liesdeep in the nature of things. What is the connection, then? I answer by a further question. What arethe chief causes of _Unrest_? If you know yourself, you will answerPride, Selfishness, Ambition. As you look back upon the past years ofyour life, is it not true that its unhappiness has chiefly come from thesuccession of personal mortifications and almost trivial disappointmentswhich the intercourse of life has brought you? Great trials come atlengthened intervals, and we rise to breast them; but it is the pettyfriction of our every-day life with one another, the jar of businessor of work, the discord of the domestic circle, the collapse of ourambition, the crossing of our will or the taking down of our conceit, which make inward peace impossible. Wounded vanity, then, disappointedhopes, unsatisfied selfishness--these are the old, vulgar, universalsources of man's unrest. Now it is obvious why Christ pointed out as the two chief objects forattainment the exact opposites of these. To Meekness and Lowliness thesethings simply do not exist. They cure unrest by making it impossible. These remedies do not trifle with surface symptoms; they strike at onceat removing causes. The ceaseless chagrin of a self-centred life canbe removed at once by learning Meekness and Lowliness of heart. He wholearns them is forever proof against it. He lives henceforth a charmedlife. Christianity is a fine inoculation, a transfusion of healthy bloodinto an anĉmic or poisoned soul. No fever can attack a perfectly soundbody; no fever of unrest can disturb a soul which has breathed the airor learned the ways of Christ. Men sigh for the wings of a dove thatthey may fly away and be at Rest. But flying away will not help us. "TheKingdom 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 lowestplace. So do men. Hence, be lowly. The man who has no opinion of himselfat all can never be hurt if others do not acknowledge him. Hence, bemeek. 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 themeek man are really above all other men, above all other things. Theydominate the world because they do not care for it. The miser doesnot possess gold, gold possesses him. But the meek possess it. "Themeek, " said Christ, "inherit the earth. " They do not buy it; they do notconquer 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 everyturn--especially the imaginary ones. One has the same pity for such menas for the very poor. They are the morally illiterate. They have had noreal education, for they have never learned how to live. Few men knowhow to live. We grow up at random, carrying into mature life the merelyanimal methods and motives which we had as little children. And it doesnot occur to us that all this must be changed; that much of it must bereversed, that life is the finest of the Fine Arts, that it has to belearned with lifelong patience, and that the years of our pilgrimage areall too short to master it triumphantly. 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 mosteducation, this is almost purely personal; it is not to be had frombooks or lectures or creeds or doctrines. It is a study from the life. Christ never said much in mere words about the Christian graces. Helived them, He was them. Yet we do not merely copy Him. We learn His artby living with Him, like the old apprentices with their masters. Now we understand it all? Christ's invitation to the wearyand heavy-laden is a call to begin life over again upon a newprinciple--upon His own principle. "Watch My way of doing things, " Hesays. "Follow Me. Take life as I take it. Be meek and lowly and you willfind Rest. " I do not say, remember, that the Christian life to every man, or to anyman, can be a bed of roses. No educational process can be this. Andperhaps if some men knew how much was involved in the simple "learn" ofChrist, 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 nevergo to this school at all till their disposition is already half ruinedand character has taken on its fatal set. To learn arithmetic isdifficult at fifty--much more to learn Christianity. To learn simplywhat it is to be meek and lowly, in the case of one who has had nolessons in that in childhood, may cost him half of what he values moston earth. Do we realize, for instance, that the way of teaching humilityis 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 verygreat 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 ignorethe cross and minimise the cost. Only it gives to the cross a moredefinite 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 ofChristian Experience. "Somehow, " we believe affliction does us good. Butit is not a question of "Somehow. " The result is definite, calculable, necessary. It is under the strictest law of cause and effect. The firsteffect of losing one's fortune, for instance, is humiliation; and theeffect of humiliation, as we have just seen, is to make one humble; andthe effect of being humble is to produce Rest. It is a roundabout way, apparently, of producing Rest; but Nature generally works by circularprocesses; and it is not certain that there is any other way of becominghumble, 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. Hencewe 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 themost troubled lives that was ever lived: Tempest and tumult, tumult andtempest, the waves breaking over it all the time till the worn body waslaid in the grave. But the inner life was a sea of glass. The great calmwas always there. At any moment you might have gone to Him and foundRest. And even when the bloodhounds were dogging him in the streetsof Jerusalem, He turned to His disciples and offered them, as a lastlegacy, "My peace. " Nothing ever for a moment broke the serenity ofChrist's life on earth. Misfortune could not reach Him; He had nofortune. Food, raiment, money--fountain-heads of half the world'sweariness--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 bylowering His reputation; He had already made Himself of no reputation. He was dumb before insult. When He was reviled He reviled not-again. Infact, there was nothing that the world could do to Him that could rufflethe surface of His spirit. Such living, as mere living, is altogether unique. It is only when wesee what it was in Him that we can know what the word Rest means. Itlies not in emotions, nor in the absence of emotions. It is not ahallowed feeling that comes over us in church. It is not something thatthe preacher has in his voice. It is not in nature, or in poetry, or inmusic--though in all these there is soothing. It is the mind atleisure from itself. It is the perfect poise of the soul; the absoluteadjustment of the inward man to the stress of all outward things;the preparedness against every emergency; the stability of assuredconvictions; the eternal calm of an invulnerable faith; the repose ofa heart set deep in God. It is the mood of the man who says, withBrowning, "God's in His Heaven, all's well with the world. " Two painters each painted a picture to illustrate his conception ofrest. The first chose for his scene a still, lone lake among the far-offmountains. The second threw on his canvas a thundering waterfall, witha 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 firstwas only _Stagnation_; the last was _Rest_. For in Rest there are alwaystwo elements--tranquillity and energy; silence and turbulence; creationand destruction; fearlessness and fearfulness. This it was in Christ. It is quite plain from all this that whatever else He claimed to beor to do, He at least knew how to live. All this is the perfection ofliving, of living in the mere sense of passing through the world in thebest 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 thanthey were living; "the life, " as the fine phrase in the Revised Versionhas it, "that is life indeed. " This is what He himself possessed, and itwas this which He offers to all mankind. And hence His direct appeal forall to come to Him who had not made much of life, who were weary andheavy-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 ofMe, " 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 breathwhisper "_burden_"? Is the Christian life, after all, what its enemiestake it for--an additional weight to the already great woe of life, someextra punctiliousness about duty, some painful devotion to observances, some heavy restriction and trammelling of all that is joyous and free inthe world? Is life not hard and sorrowful enough without being fetteredwith yet another yoke? It is astounding how so glaring a misunderstanding of this plainsentence should ever have passed into currency. Did you ever stop toask what a yoke is really for? Is it to be a burden to the animal whichwears 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 wouldbe intolerable. Worked by means of a yoke, it is light. A yoke is notan instrument of torture; it is an instrument of mercy. It is not amalicious contrivance for making work hard; it is a gentle device tomake 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, andlook upon those who wear it as objects of compassion. For generations wehave had homilies on "The Yoke of Christ, " some delighting in portrayingits narrow exactions; some seeking in these exactions the marks of itsdivinity; others apologising for it, and toning it down; still othersassuring us that, although it be very bad, it is not to be compared withthe positive blessings of Christianity. How many, especially among theyoung, has this one mistaken phrase driven forever away from thekingdom of God? Instead of making Christ attractive, it makes Him outa taskmaster, narrowing life by petty restrictions, calling forself-denial where none is necessary, making misery a virtue under theplea that it is the yoke of Christ, and happiness criminal because itnow and then evades it. According to this conception, Christians areat best the victims of a depressing fate; their life is a penance; andtheir hope for the next world purchased by a slow martyrdom in this. The mistake has arisen from taking the word "yoke" here in the samesense as in the expressions "under the yoke, " or "wear the yoke in hisyouth. " But in Christ's illustration it is not _jugum_ of the Romansoldier, but the simple "harness" or "ox-collar" of the Eastern peasant. It is the literal wooden yoke which He, with His own hands in thecarpenter shop, had probably often made. He knew the difference betweena smooth yoke and a rough one, a bad fit and a good fit; the differencealso it made to the patient animal which had to wear it. The rough yokegalled, and the burden was heavy; the smooth yoke caused no pain, andthe load was lightly drawn. The badly fitted harness was a misery; thewell-fitted collar was "easy. " And what was the "burden"? It was notsome special burden laid upon the Christian, some unique infliction thatthey alone must bear. It was what all men bear. It was simply life, human life itself, the general burden of life which all must carrywith them from the cradle to the grave. Christ saw that men took lifepainfully. To some it was a weariness, to others a failure, to many atragedy, to all a struggle and a pain. How to carry this burden oflife had been the whole world's problem. It is still the whole world'sproblem. And here is Christ's solution: "Carry it as I do. Take lifeas I take it. Look at it from My point of view. Interpret it upon Myprinciples. 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 thatreligion will absolve any man from bearing burdens. That would be toabsolve him from living, since it is life itself that is the burden. What Christianity does propose is to make it tolerable. Christ's yoke issimply His secret for the alleviation of human life, His prescriptionfor the best and happiest method of living. Men harness themselves tothe work and stress of the world in clumsy and unnatural ways. Theharness they put on is antiquated. A rough, ill-fitted collar at thebest, they make its strain and friction past enduring, by placing itwhere the neck is most sensitive; and by mere continuous irritation thissensitiveness 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 gravestsources of restlessness in the world. Touchiness, when it becomeschronic, is a morbid condition of the inward disposition. It isself-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 thingstouch 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 numbfrom want of use. It is the beautiful work of Christianity everywhere toadjust the burden of life to those who bear it, and them to it. It hasa perfectly miraculous gift of healing. Without doing any violenceto human nature it sets it right with life, harmonizing it with allsurrounding things, and restoring those who are jaded with the fatigueand dust of the world to a new grace of living. In the mere matter ofaltering the perspective of life and changing the proportions of things, its function in lightening the care of man is altogether its own. Theweight of a load depends upon the attraction of the earth. But supposethe 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. NowChristianity removes the attraction of the earth; and this is one wayin which it diminishes men's burden. It makes them citizens of anotherworld. What was a ton yesterday is not half a ton to-day. So withoutchanging one's circumstances, merely by offering a wider horizon and adifferent standard, it alters the whole aspect of the world. Christianity as Christ taught is the truest philosophy of life everspoken. But let us be quite sure when we speak of Christianity that wemean Christ's Christianity. Other versions are either caricatures, or exaggerations, or misunderstandings, or shortsighted and surfacereadings. For the most part their attainment is hopeless and the resultswretched. But I care not who the person is, or through what vale oftears he has passed, or is about to pass, there is a new life for himalong this path. HOW FRUITS GROW Were rest my subject, there are other things I should wish to say aboutit, and other kinds of Rest of which I should like to speak. But that isnot my subject. My theme is that the Christian experiences are not thework of magic, but come under the law of Cause and Effect. And I havechosen Rest only as a single illustration of the working of thatprinciple. If there were time I might next run over all the Christianexperiences in turn, and show how the same wide law applies to each. ButI think it may serve the better purpose if I leave this further exerciseto yourselves. I know no Bible study that you will find more full offruit, or which will take you nearer to the ways of God, or make theChristian life itself more solid or more sure. I shall add only a singleother illustration of what I mean, before I close. Where does Joy come from? I knew a Sunday scholar whose conception ofJoy 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 andfitted into their souls. I am not sure that views as gross and materialare not often held by people who ought to be wiser. In reality, Joy isas much a matter of Cause and Effect as pain. No one can get Joy bymerely asking for it. It is one of the ripest fruits of the Christianlife, and, like all fruits, must be grown. There is a very clever trickin India called the mango-trick. A seed is put in the ground and coveredup, and after divers incantations a full-blown mango-bush appears withinfive minutes. I never met any one who knew how the thing was done, butI never met any one who believed it to be anything else than aconjuring-trick. The world is pretty unanimous now in its belief in theorderliness of Nature. Men may not know how fruits grow, but they doknow that they cannot grow in five minutes. Some lives have not even astalk 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; andothers who may have planted a germ or two have lived so little insunshine that they never could come to maturity. Whence, then, is joy? Christ put His teaching upon this subject into oneof the most exquisite of His parables. I should in any instance haveappealed to His teaching here, as in the case of Rest, for I do not wishyou to think I am speaking words of my own. But it so happens that Hehas dealt with it in words 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 merelythrow it into space as a fine illustration of general truths. It wasnot simply a statement of the mystical union, and the doctrine of anindwelling 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 greatestlessons. He turned to the disciples and said He would tell them why Hehad spoken it. It was to tell them how to get Joy. "These things haveI spoken unto you, " He said, "that My Joy might remain in you and thatyour Joy might be full. " It was a purposed and deliberate communicationof His secret of Happiness. Go back over these verses, then, and you will find the Causes of thisEffect, the spring, and the only spring, out of which true Happinesscomes. I am not going to analyse them in detail. I ask you to enter intothe words for yourselves. Remember, in the first place, that the Vinewas the Eastern symbol of Joy. It was its fruit that made glad the heartof man. Yet, however innocent that gladness--for the expressed juice ofthe grape was the common drink at every peasant's board--the gladnesswas only a gross and passing thing. This was not true happiness, and thevine of the Palestine vineyards was not the true vine. _Christ_ was"the _true_ Vine. " Here, then, is the ultimate source of Joy. Throughwhatever media it reaches us, all true Joy and Gladness find theirsource in Christ. By this, of course, is not meant that the actual Joyexperienced is transferred from Christ's nature, or is something passedon from Him to us. What is passed on is His method of getting it. Thereis, indeed, a sense in which we can share another's joy or another'ssorrow. But that is another matter. Christ is the source of Joy to menin the sense in which He is the source of Rest. His people share Hislife, and therefore share its consequences, and one of these is Joy. Hismethod of living is one that in the nature of things produces Joy. WhenHe spoke of His Joy remaining with us He meant in part that the causeswhich 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 thatabideth in Me, the same bringeth forth much fruit. " Fruit first, Joynext; the one the cause or medium of the other. Fruit-bearing isthe necessary antecedent; Joy both the necessary consequent and thenecessary accompaniment. It lay partly in the bearing fruit, partly inthe fellowship which made that possible. Partly, that is to say, Joy layin mere constant living in Christ's presence, with all that that impliedof peace, of shelter, and of love; partly in the influence of that Lifeupon mind and character and will; and partly in the inspiration to liveand work for others, with all that that brings of self-riddance and Joyin others' gain. All these, in different ways and at different times, are sources of pure Happiness. Even the simplest of them--to do good toother people--is an instant and infallible specific. There is no mysteryabout Happiness whatever. Put in the right ingredients and it must comeout. He that abideth in Him will bring forth much fruit; and bringingforth much fruit is Happiness. The infallible receipt for Happiness, then, is to do good; and the infallible receipt for doing good is toabide in Christ. The surest proof that all this is a plain matter ofCause and Effect is that men may try every other conceivable way offinding Happiness, and they will fail. Only the right cause in each casecan produce the right effect. Then the Christian experiences are our own making? In the same sense inwhich grapes are our own making, and no more. All fruits _grow_--whetherthey grow in the soil or in the soul; whether they are the fruits of thewild 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 allthe conditions. But the growing is done by God. Causes and effects areeternal arrangements, set in the constitution of the world; fixed beyondman's ordering. What man can do is to place himself in the midst of achain of sequences. Thus he can get things to grow: thus he himself cangrow. But the grower is the Spirit of God. What more need I add but this--test the method by experiment. Do notimagine 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 thatif you try in this simple and natural way, you will not fail. Spend thetime you have spent in sighing for fruits in fulfilling the conditionsof their growth. The fruits will come, must come. We have hitherto paidimmense attention to _effects_, to the mere experiences themselves; wehave described them, extolled them, advised them, prayed for them--doneeverything but find out what _caused_ them. Henceforth let us deal withcauses. "To be, " says Lotze, "is to be in relations. " About every othermethod of living the Christian life there is an uncertainty. Aboutevery other method of acquiring the Christian experiences there is a"perhaps. " But in so far as this method is the way of nature, it cannotfail. Its guarantee is the laws of the universe, and these are "theHands of the Living God. " THE TRUE VINE "I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch inme that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that bearethfruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye areclean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and Iin you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide inthe vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye arethe branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringethforth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. If a man abide notin me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gatherthem, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. If ye abide inme, and my word abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall bedone unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit;so ye shall be my disciples. As the Father hath loved me, so have Iloved you: continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shallabide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, andabide in his love. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joymight remain in you, and that your joy might be full. " THE END.