"Be still and know that I am God."� The stillness of God is not that of death, but of the most intense life. It is the stillness of divine order, heavenly unity, the agreement of all the parts, the cessation of self-will, of debate, or argument, of the action of our own preferences. Sin is always a disturbing element, and there are multiplied forms of self-will that do not seem like sin, but they bring unrest, agitation, anxious forebodings. There are many degrees of soul-peace before it reaches that fixed state of stillness in God. When the sinner is pardoned, there is peace of conscience, and for awhile it is paramount, so blessed that other disturbing principles do not appear distinctly to consciousness. When the heart is made pure from indwelling sin, there is a deeper peace, the absence of unrest concerning God's will, concerning the assurance of salvation, concerning the great varieties of Bible and the divine nature and the things of eternity. Divine stillness is an experience that we are to enter through many testings, by an inward training of the soul, by not only ceasing from sin and every form of worldly or churchly ambition, but by being conquered by divine providence and the dealings of the Holy Spirit in all the details of life, by being subdued into that abiding hush like the breathless quietness of a serene sunset after the storms of the day have been sunken below the horizon, after the clouds have melted into the invisible upper air, after the tired winds have sunken below the whisper point, after the ripples have been smoothed out from the fretted surface of the sea, and the almost audible silence of the evening stars speaks down into our listening minds. The prophet Zachariah describes the restoration of Israel, and the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and the great joy of the people, and concludes by saying, "Be silent, all flesh, before the Lord, for He is lifted up out of His holy habitation."� (Zach. 2:13.) How distinctly it is true that the flesh is to be silent when the Lord is lifted up, when all flesh is put under His sway. The fulfilment of that blessed prophecy must take place in us, in our flesh, to prepare the way for its fulfilment in the opening of the new age when all the storms of Israel and all the agitation of the Church Age are to terminate in that serene sabbath of the divine mind, that unruffled sea of the work of redemption, of the result of the great salvation.

In Psalm 46 the prophet portrays the great tribulation judgment, the mountains being carried into the sea, the heathen raging, the kingdoms being moved, the world-wide desolations, and then at the close of that tribulation judgment, war is to cease, and all implements of war are to be destroyed, and then, and not till then, does God speak to the whole earth from pole to pole, from east to west, and to all the inhabitants, and say, "Be still, and know that I am God."� "I will be exalted in the earth."� In every single passage in the Bible that describes the coming age of sabbatic rest and world-wide righteousness and peace, it is always preceded by a description of judgment, of storm, of divine indignation, of a tribulation period, and out of that judgment storm there issues the beautiful dawn of universal peace, which proves in every single instance that there will be no Millennium, no righteous government, no cessation of war, no world-wide tranquility, till after Jesus comes and chastises the nations and sends the judgment on the living nations, and out of that work of righteousness will come perfect peace, and the effect of that righteous judgment will be quietness and assurance forever.

All these things are true in us as individuals. We must be broken to pieces in many ways before we enter the divine stillness. There is a certain sense in which we are to have a sort of preliminary individual judgment day, and, as it were, pass through our little tribulation judgment, and have our mountains removed, and have all our instruments of war destroyed, and our very strength reduced to utter weakness, and our very religion dwindle into nothingness, and all our questionings brought to a conclusion, and then, at the end of all our toils, and our theology, and our finest designs, and our brightest hopes, we are to lie down under that eternal voice which not only speaks to us, but speaks in us, and all through us, "Be still, and know that I am God."�

It was thus with Elijah when he was praying in the secret cave in the mountain crags of Horeb. He must needs pass through the cyclone of rending rocks, and the fire of the forked lightning, and the echoing thunder that turned every mountain glen into a tongue, and when all things in nature and in the human had gone through their performance, it was then that down from the heavens fell the divine stillness, softer than the tread of the falling snow, and out of that stillness from the very life of God there came supernatural commissions and supernatural endowments that made Elijah the fit agent to commission prophets and kings, and also fitted him with immortal wings to soar alive to the living and eternal Lord.

We need divine stillness to settle down all through us in these latter days. In proportion to the rush of our fellow-mortals, and the bewildering excitements of all things, and the multiplying of labors and cares and religious zeal, in that proportion do we need to live in the divine stillness. We need out minds kept so serene in God that out of Himself the heavenly dew will distill upon us, as out of the quiet night sweet moisture gathers on the grass. Divine stillness in our souls is the condition for learning the attributes and perfections of God, and hence He says, "Be still, and know,"� for it is out of that stillness that we are to know, not only the noise of sin, but the voice of our own religious ambitions, the noise of our reasonings, the clash of our uneasy feelings, the low, murmuring cry of our self-pity, the little whine of saying, "Why is this?"� and "How long must I bear this?"� The delicate baby-whimperings of our very religion prevent us from knowing the vastness, the truthfulness, the sweet wisdom in the nature and the ways of God. We only need to speak a few words and to do a few things in order to please God. But after all, it is God Himself that must put His hush upon us. It is when He says, "Be still,"� that stillness comes. It was when Jesus spoke that the winds ceased, and so our rest comes from Him and it must be spoken from His heart into ours.