"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

"Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

"For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." — Matt. 11:28-30.

"HOME unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." More properly, "I will rest you." That is a perfect promise, complete in itself. The next verse is the giving of another promise; " Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find " — not develop it, not grow it, not make it — ye shall discover soul rest. Then follows the conclusion. After we have found this second rest, then — "My yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

I never knew how to read that text in my life until the Lord gave me the experience which the text contains. I will give a simple exegesis of the words. I do not wish to add anything to the Word or to take anything from it, but simply explain the Word as it lies there,

Here are two kinds of rest that are promised to those who come to Jesus. The first rest is promised to those who come repenting of their sins, laboring with the struggles of their own sins, heavy laden, with a sense of guilt and of darkness, and a dread of future wrath. When they come to Jesus, He gives them rest by removing the guilt and by forgiving their sins. After the penitent is pardoned and regenerated, he is then in a condition where he can take the yoke, and never till then. You cannot find a passage in the whole Bible where God ever invites any one on earth to serve Him till after he is converted. No one can enter the service of God until he is born of God, no more than any one can enter upon the services of human life until he is born in the human life.

Now take the yoke of Christ, and learn that He is meek and lowly in heart, and when that lesson has entered the soul that soul will make a discovery greater than that of Columbus. It will not create something, it will not make something, it will not develop something, as we have been taught the last two hundred years, but that soul will find something that God made before He made the world. St. Paul tells us that the redemption in Jesus Christ is older than the foundation of the world, and when we get perfect heart rest we simply find what God made before He made Gabriel. And after we find heart rest, then the yoke of Jesus is easy and then the burden is light.

That is Scripture. Oh, how many times this Scripture has been butchered, by just giving it all to the unconverted, and inviting sinners to come to Christ! "You come to Christ and He will give you soul rest, and you will find that the yoke is easy and the burden is light! " And they have come and repented and been converted and joined the Church, and then found out that the preacher told a lie. They found that the yoke was not easy and the burden was not light. There are one million Christians to-day in this country serving God that are struggling to get to heaven, and they know that the yoke is not easy and the burden is not light. One thousand preachers are preaching the gospel, and they are talking away at it, and hundreds of deacons and stewards and trustees and official members and superintendents and Christian workers are serving God the best they can, but it is uphill business. Jesus does not say that every Christian finds the yoke easy and the burden light. He does not say that. He says that when you get the second rest, then the yoke will be easy and the burden light. That is what He says.

Perhaps some of you will think it is straining a point to say that there are two kinds of rest in this old text. Well, I am glad that the doctrine of full salvation is much more radically taught in the original language than in our translation. It is a wonder that in the days of King James, away back in the dark ages (for King James lived in the dark ages of religion) — it is a wonder, I say, that we got such a perfect version of the Bible as we did; and if it had not been for the superintending of the Holy Ghost, we would not have got it. Bat the more you search in the original languages, the more completely we find the doctrine of sanctification taught; and in the very words of this text the first rest is a different kind of rest from the second rest.

The first rest signifies a temporary rest, a rest with a view of going on again in the journey. The word in the twenty-eighth verse for rest is a verb; the word in the twenty-ninth verse for rest is a noun: and there is a vast difference between the verb rest and the noun rest. The first word is a term which signifies a repose or a refreshment, or a rest with a view of moving on, with a view of being transitory. But the word rest in the second instance is a term that signifies durability, perpetuity, immovability. It signifies a deep, abiding, permanent repose, that is utterly undisturbed by the turmoils of life or by the vicissitudes of time or of eternity.

The Bible furnishes such a comment on these two words. When the Jews came out of Egypt, — the old women and young people and children, — they had marched all night long; they had slain the Passover lamb, sprinkled the doorposts, and marched through the sea, — they were utterly fatigued and worn out. When they got beyond the Red Sea, and sat down on the bank of the sea to rest, while they gazed with complacency over the ruins of Pharaoh and his host, and Miriam danced on the sands and sung her song, they rested, and the people and the children took a long breath. What sweet, what refreshing rest came to their hearts as the thought broke in upon their minds — the brickyards are gone, Pharaoh is gone, the persecution is gone, the making bricks without straw is gone, the taskmasters are gone, and there is a great wall between them and us! Oh, what sweet, refreshing rest that was!

Now that is just exactly the meaning of this word in the twenty-eighth verse. It means a rest just like that. Then they crossed over into Canaan, which I want you to remember is always a type of the baptism of the Holy Ghost and not of temporal death. There is not one verse in the whole Bible to prove that the crossing over Jordan means temporal or physical death; and if we have been taught that way, that is the fault in our education; it is not in the Bible. The land of Canaan, in every passage in the New Testament, refers to the baptism of the Holy Ghost,. which is "the promise of the Father." God promised to Abraham the land of Canaan. Now, just as the land of Canaan was the promise of the Father for the Jewish Church, the baptism of the Holy Ghost is the promise of the Father for the Christian Church. That is as straight through the Bible as an arrow.

When the Jews entered the land of Canaan, they found stone houses that they did not build, and wells of water that they did not dig, and olive-yards and vineyards that they did not plant. God thrust out the old inhabitants (for they had no legal deed to it anyhow; they had only a "squatter sovereignty") and gave them the land. They marched right in, entered the stone houses, and went to housekeeping; and the Word says, "They entered into their rest."

Don't you see that the rest in the stone houses in Canaan, with the vineyards and the olive-yards and the wells of water, was a very different thing from the rest on the bank of the Red Sea? Now, that second rest that the Jews got in the land of Canaan is exactly what the Word means in the twenty-eighth verse. It means permanent, abiding, settled housekeeping with God. I see Dr. Cullis, in his " Songs of Victory," has printed a good hymn; it is the one hundred and sixty-fourth hymn. This hymn was composed by a Methodist and it was composed as a commentary on this text: —

"Breathe, oil, breathe Thy loving Spirit

     Into every troubled breast!

Let us all in Thee inherit,

     Let us find that second rest.

Take away our bent to sinning;

     Alpha and Omega be;

End of faith as its beginning;

     Set our hearts at liberty."

I want to explain now, briefly, the first rest. If there are any unconverted people here, or any church members who are doubtful as to whether they have ever experienced a change of heart, I ask your attention especially to this first rest. Jesus in this first verse is addressing penitents. " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden," and I will rest you. There are two words in the text that explain the state of every penitent, — the word "labor" and the word "laden." When persons are under conviction for sins, there are two characteristics that invariably mark them. One is, they begin a struggle with themselves. They begin to try to make themselves better. They break off their outward sins, which is all right and must be done by divine grace; and then they try to reform their inner life. So that the will of every convicted sinner is aroused and he begins to grapple with himself: " I will be a better man." He makes tremendous resolutions, and he resolves on the negative what he will not do, and then on the positive side what he will do. He then pushes his resolutions into the inner life, and begins to endeavor to govern his temper, control his words, regulate his passions, and govern his heart. He does not go far before he finds out that he has a piece of work on hand utterly beyond his strength. Every sinner is so deluded that he thinks he can break off his sins; he thinks he can be a good man very easily; but when he tries it he finds he is rowing against a current that he cannot stem. And that involves an awful battle of the will with the soul and its sins; that brings tremendous labor, hard work, soul toil. Now, Jesus means that when He says "ye that labor"; He means people struggling to save themselves.

Another feature of every convicted sinner is that he is heavy laden. When people begin to commit sin, God sees to it that the machinery of the heart gets clogged. Just as the breaking of a thread in a loom in one of these big mills in Lowell will stop the machinery, so when a child begins to commit sin, — knowingly and willfully gives way to sin, — God makes the loom of the child's conscience stop in some way. There is a jar, there is a sense of guilt, there is a sense of vileness, there is a sense of sorrow and a burden that drops instantly on the young man's conscience. Now, it may be that you people here never sinned very much except little white sins. But if you can recollect when you were a girl or boy, can you recollect the first lie you told — big, black lie? Can you recollect the first time you stole something from father or mother? Can you recollect the first oath you swore or that you came near swearing? Can you recollect some other sin that almost startled you? I can; I can remember it now. And do you know what an awful sense of burden came on your heart? You felt — I felt as if a lump of lead had been put right on my little heart, and I felt as if somebody heard me when I said a bad word. And when I reached home somehow I felt as if mother had heard me, although she was a quarter of a mile away. There was a load on my heart.

Now, sinners go on living in sin until they don't feel their load, they don't feel their burden. But when they do get under conviction, God rolls back on the conscience the guilt of all the sins of all those years, and gives a sense of awful pressure on the heart of a convicted sinner.

"Here on my heart the burden lies,

And past offenses pain my eyes."

Now, those two words Jesus gives us are a photograph of every convicted sinner. There is a struggle in his will and a burden upon his heart. For hundreds of years the various branches of the Church have been offering a remedy for a person in this fix. One says, "Go to the confessional, go to your priest, go to a nunnery, go to a monastery, go to the church, go to the water and get baptized, go to the bishop and get consecrated and confirmed, go and join the church on six months' probation, run here, run there, count beads and say prayers, join the church, and go to work for Jesus." That is the damnable heresy that has been preached for two thousand years almost. Jesus Christ sends a bugle blast to every heart on earth that is rent and torn by a sense of sin, and never says a thing about popes or preachers or churches. But He says, " Come to me, come to me! Come to the historical, personal, living, crucified, dead, risen, reigning Savior! Come to me, come to me! I, out of my own divine, sacrificial remedies, out of my own gracious, infinite, redeeming purpose, out of my own atoning blood, out of my own Word, out of my own Spirit, out of my own infinite will — I will rest you, I will impart to you freedom from guilt and wrath, and I will give you rest and send you to your home as light as a feather."

That is the way God "treated me. I remember the night out in the pine woods of Virginia — how bright the moon shone! — when the Lord gave me this rest from guilt and fear and wrath and hell. If there is an unconverted person here, dear friend, you just go right to Jesus. You get saved from your guilt first, and then you can attend the church, then you can be baptized, then you can be confirmed, then you can do ten thousand things; but you go to Jesus first! And the more people you go to, before you go to Christ, the more they will bother you and the more they will hinder you. O Jesus, bring us to Thyself, in preference to all the popes and the angels! Bring us to Jesus.

Now the next rest. From the time that the Lord blots out our sins it changes our hearts. From that time the Spirit of God calls us into a life of service. Being born of God we can now serve God, and so, "Take my yoke upon you." You are now converted; you are now God's child; your sins are now pardoned. The wrath has now passed away from you, and now you come as a living Christian to bow down your neck and take the yoke, which is only an emblem to represent the perfect will of God. You, as a child of God, now bow down and take the yoke upon you in absolute, entire, and unlimited surrender to the divine will; and by taking that yoke upon you, you learn the secret of the inner life, the secret of inner peace and inner cleansing and inner heart rest.

You know, brethren, the Lord does not yoke up any cattle but His own. God has no right to yoke up the devil's cattle. And when God says, " Take my yoke upon you," you may take it for granted He is talking to His own cattle.

You must not be offended because I call you God's cattle, because I had rather be one of God's cattle than to be an angel of the devil; and if God condescends to call ns His cattle I am glad. Any name that God puts upon me I will gladly wear. If He calls me a worm, — "Amen, Lord; I had rather be a worm for Thee than be an angel for the devil."

So when the owner of the young ox puts the yoke upon his neck, the young ox does not criticise the yoke. He does not know just what the yoke is made of, he does not know what kind of wood it is made of, he does not know how thick it is, he does not know the length of the yoke; but he simply bow's his neck and the master puts the yoke on. And so we don't know the things God will do with us in the years to come. You do not know what the outcome of this meeting is going to be. We do not know what God may or will do through us and by us. We know it is pure and holy and good, but we do not know the details of God's will. We do not know how long it is or how deep it is or how wide it is. Yet we know the nature of it, and if we know the nature of God's will we can leave the details to Him.

We know that the yoke in the Bible represents the human will. A proud-necked, stiff-necked people represents a stubborn people. When we bow down our wills entirely to God as far as we know and as far as we don't know, all we have and all we don't have and would like to have (for it takes a great deal harder struggle to give up all that we have not got, but would like to have, than to give up all we have), and so not only give up all we have but give all that we don't have; when we make an absolute yielding of the past, present, and future, all we have and all we are, to God, and He puts His perfect will down upon our souls, it is the juncture, it is the union, of our perfectly submissive wills and the almighty divine will coming upon ours; it is the union of those two wills that opens to us the flood gates of the inner life. When those two wills come together, then you learn that He is meek and lowly in heart.

It took me some time to cipher out how the Lord could connect a yoke with learning. The word "yoke" reminds me of the farm, the farmyard, and the cattle, and the implements of work with oxen; but the word "learn" reminds me of colleges and academies and schools and sciences and art and philosophy. And it took me some time to take the word "yoke" and the word "learn " and see the relation between them. Jesus says, "Take my yoke and learn" I said, " Where is the connection between the word 'yoke' and the word 'learn '? " Then this thought came to me (being raised on a farm and a farmer's boy): Why, a little ox never knows anything until you have put the yoke on him. It is through the yoke on the back of his neck that he gets his education. " Well," I said, " that is it exactly." Go down east, in Maine. See those boys in the winter time drive the great oxen round; how they will have their sleds, pile on the great white-pine logs, and stand off and talk to those oxen — two, four, or six hitched to a great sled; and how they will make them go right and left, and round that tree and by that big bowlder and behind that stump. You will stand off and see how they drive the team, and you will say, " I declare, those steers act as though they had been to college." And they have. They have been to steer college. They have been to school and they have learned. There was a time when those oxen were greenhorns — didn't know anything. But the yoke was put on their necks, and by the yoke on their necks they learned to pull and to " gee " and " haw " and back and go; and all the learning they ever got was through the back of their necks.

Do you know that is an absolute photograph drawn by the Son of God of you and me? It was God who made us, and God knows how to arrange for us; and God knows that, just as an ox gets all his learning through the back of his neck by a yoke, we get all our spiritual learning from our submissive wills under the will of God. If we will submit, like the young oxen, to the yoke of the divine will, we will learn the marvels of that book and the marvels of the Holy Ghost and the marvels of the things of God.

Brethren, a perfectly submissive will is the key to all spiritual enlightenment. Jesus says, "If any one will do my will, he shall know of the doctrine."

It does not matter what your creed has been or how you have been raised. If you are determined at all hazards and all risks to do the perfect will of God, your perfectly submissive will will be the key to j our spiritual instruction, and you will know the doctrine.

And so in this text. It is by giving ourselves utterly up to God that we learn the way of full salvation. The only way that God can get into our hearts is through the will. In the case of a sinner seeking pardon, just as he begins to relent and repent there dawns light upon his mind, and in perfect helplessness and submission, as a sinner, he finds the way of the cross, he finds the way of pardon. And so it is in seeking full salvation. It is through the perfect yielding of the will that we find the entrance into the second veil.

Now there are thousands of Christian people that would love to argue about holiness, that would love to debate, that would love to have it explained. There are people that will sit up all night long to discuss holiness, who will not get down on their knees and pray five minutes for the experience. There are ministers who will write volumes on volumes to show that you must live with depravity in your heart all your life, sooner than get down in the straw and pray a half hour for a clean heart. Human beings are fond of magnifying the human side. It is the instinct of depravity to magnify man and minify God. It is the instinct of depravity, even in Christian people, to magnify the man side and minify the Jesus side of salvation. And so the carnal mind leads Christian people always to insist on what I can do, and what I must do; I want to do this and I want to do that and I want to do the other; no man can live without sin, and no man can do this arid no man can do that. And God is not mentioned once; the blood of Christ is not mentioned once; the Holy Ghost is not mentioned once. It is man, man, man! Where is God all the while? Where is the "Fountain opened in the house of David" all the while? Where is that vast red sea of blood that Jesus poured on the world all the while? And here we go marching down the ages, — man cannot do this, and man cannot be holy, and man cannot do that; and our creeds are full of man, man, man; our sermons are full of man, man, man; and the majority of preaching is magnifying man, glorifying man, — the brilliancy of man, the dignity of man, the culture of man — until I get sick and disgusted with the everlasting hash and rehash. Thousands of students are sent out every year from the colleges of this land, and in every baccalaureate sermon it is, Make something of yourself! Make a man of yourself! Make yourself! Make yourself! You take the Monday morning papers of Boston and New York and London, and read the sermons preached on Sunday, and you will find man has been magnified nine hundred and ninety-nine times, where you will find not one single word about the blood of Jesus and the Holy Ghost. I am telling the truth.

I tell you, we never will learn salvation, we never will learn the deep things of God, we never will learn the way of a clean heart and perfect love and perfect soul rest, until we lay our miserable big heads in the dust, where they belong. All our catechisms will go together in the dust; all our prayer books and all our sermons and all our churches and all our college learning and all our culture and all our brains have got to go where they will go by and by when the clods cover you. And when we put our heads at Jesus' feet, where they belong, there will come a ray of light from His eternal nature, and He will shine through hearts and He will begin to reveal to us something of Himself.

"Learn of me!" "Learn of me!"— "Well, Lord, I have got to hear Rev. So-and-so preach." — "Learn of me!" — "Lord, I have been reading eight or ten or fifteen volumes on the higher life." — "Learn of me!" — "Lord, I have been watching these holiness folks for ten or fifteen years and they are cranky, odd, and all that." — " Learn of me! " — " Lord, my doctrine in my church doesn't teach these things." — "Learn of me! " — "Lord, my surroundings and circumstances are thus and so." — "Learn of me! "

If every Christian on this earth could be locked up in a dungeon with Jesus Christ five minutes, they would know something; away from their kinsfolk and country cousins, and all the college books and all associates, and locked up with Jesus Christ in a dungeon, or shipwrecked with the Son of God on the high seas, He and they lashed to the same spar and all the rest drowned, — in about five minutes they would learn something. " Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart." A perfectly submissive will will soon learn the way of salvation. "For I am meek and lowly in heart."

O brother, the inner life of Christ! The apostles walked by His side for three years, and in those three years they were converted, their names registered in heaven. They cast out devils and did many wonderful things, and they learned a great deal about Jesus, but they never learned the inner life of Christ till after Pentecost, When Jesus had gone back to the bosom of the Father, and the Holy Ghost had descended, and their hearts had been purged from all doubt and fear and the carnal mind, under the illumination of the Holy Ghost they learned more about the inner nature of Jesus in one hour than they had learned in three years.

St. Paul said there was a time when he knew Christ according to the outer man. Jesus was an historical Jesus, a redeeming Jesus. To a great many people to-day He is an outer Christ. O brothers and sisters, have you learned the inner Christ? have you learned the inner life of Jesus? He says there is a way for us to learn this inner life, — Learn that I am meek and lowly in heart. That is a learning that the noisy world never gets. That is a learning colleges cannot impart.. "I thank thee, O Father, . . . that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." There is an inner life in Jesus. There is an inner fellowship with His nature. There is an inner sense of His purity and of His calmness and of His fidelity and of His gentleness and love. There is an inner life in Christ that is worth more than words can tell. I have heard somewhere of a college called the "College of the Sacred Heart.' There is indeed a college of the Sacred Heart — one that no man can raise: it is the Sacred Heart of Jesus! Learn that "I am meek and lowly" in my heart.

We come up to this mountain top m order to enter the heart of our Savior. We have not come here to be like a lot of parrots, everlastingly prating of the mere outside things of religion. We have learned the outer life of Christ; we have learned all that. But we are here that we may enter His inner heart life, and participate in that inner life of our Savior by submitting to His will and learning of Him.

The word meekness and the word lowliness seem to be the same. The word meekness, however, means humility in reference to God: the word lowliness means humility in reference to our fellow beings. To be meek means to feel our entire nothingness in the presence of God: to be lowly means to esteem others better than we are. The one is a perpendicular virtue and refers to God, the other is a horizontal virtue and refers to our fellow men. Now, take these two virtues and they make a cross. To be perfectly meek means to get down to the bottom of yourself, to get where you are nothing in your own feelings and estimation. You are nothing. You get where Abraham got. He is our pattern, in one sense. Abraham said, " I am dust and ashes." Ashes is less than dust; it is burnt-up wood. When we get where Abraham got, to be dust and ashes, that is meekness.

Then, to be lowly in heart we are to esteem others better than we are. Let their faults alone; stop everlastingly criticising people; get where we see our own faults so much we have no time to fix our eyes on other people; get where we don't feel that we have got to manage God's Church; get where we stop being everlastingly annoyed over this thing going wrong and that thing going wrong, and where we are trying to boss the Church of God and trying to work ourselves to death to manage God's Church. A great many preachers backslide and lose their salvation by trying to manage God's Church instead of getting salvation themselves. Get where we stop stumbling over other people; get where we stop being sour, peevish, and cross over other people; . get where we feel that we are the least and the lowest, — that is to be lowly. The one virtue goes straight up to God, the other virtue goes straight out toward our fellow men; and they make a cross, and on that cross we die. And when we die on that cross we get sanctified.

When we get where we are perfectly nothing in our own estimation in God's presence, and when we get where we are perfectly willing to love everybody without living on their faults and their frailties, that is the cross of the inner heart. That is not the wooden cross that they put on steeples; that is not the golden cross that dangles at fashionable ladies' ears; that is not the historical cross that gleamed near Jerusalem; that is not the poetical cross that is wreathed in flowers on your parlor walls; but that is the cross of Jesus Christ. That is the cross that brings salvation. Not the cross of history, not the cross of gold or wood or poetry, but the cross that is made of the Holy Ghost inside your soul; and when the Holy Ghost puts the cross inside your soul, that will be to you the power of God unto your salvation. That is the cross we die on — we ministers, we laymen, we Christian people; that is the cross that the old Adam dies on, the cross of perfect humility. When we learn that lesson, and die on that cross, we will be like Jesus. He closed His eyes on Calvary in order to show us God. In the suffering and agony of the cross He closed His eyes and His Spirit went out. But the very minute after He closed His eyes in death, He opened them upon the splendors of heaven, and saw in the redeemed thief that He bore to heaven the first fruits of His cleansing blood.

Just. so, in a similar way, when you and I die in our inner nature, when the poor old self-life dies on the inner cross of humility in the heart, we will open our eyes the very next step and will find something. Just as Jesus, after He died, opened His eyes and saw the splendors of heaven, just after you die on the cross of humility you will open your eyes and find soul rest. There it will be. Jesus says so. You shall find rest to your soul.

Oh, how it breaks upon you! Just after you prayed all you could pray and gave all you could give and wept all you could weep and struggled all you could struggle and exhausted your magazine and bankrupted your resources, and went out into nothingness and said, "Lord, here I am; I am nothing, nothing," — you remember that after your old self-life struggled and died, and you felt you were utterly gone, the very next step quietly and silently the Spirit seemed to open up to you something, and you saw the way of faith. "Why yes, Lord, I see! I just believe! I believe!" and you began to look round. "Why, what else could I do but believe?" And in that hour the Holy Ghost opened up before you the wonderful vista of faith. Just believe. Believe what? Why, believe the blood cleanses. Believe the Holy Ghost is here. Just believe God will take care of you. Just believe God knows all about you. It is faith, simple faith. You see the way of faith open up until it seems as if the easiest thing in the world is just to believe. It is as easy as breathing; nothing to do but believe. When you get done with all the preliminaries faith comes easy. And you will find it; you will not make it. And you will say, "Why, isn't this strange! Why, Lord, here was the cleansing blood all these years!" — "Certainly, my child." — "Why, Father, when I was born I was born under the cleansing blood; I was born under the redeeming scheme; and here is the fountain that has been waiting for me all these years, waiting for me to get born, waiting for me to get converted, waiting for me to get consecrated! Here it is. Here I find myself in a vast, unlimitable ocean, without a bottom or bank. Here I find that God has made provision to sanctify me through Jesus Christ before the world was made."

How many there are trying to grow into holiness, trying to struggle into a clean heart! They have been struggling for forty years, and the heart is as mulish and stubborn now as forty years ago. When you learn this lesson you will find something. Oh, it is a pleasure to find things! A mother drops her ball or spool of cotton on the floor, and see how quickly the little fellow runs to find it. It is a joy to find things. Columbus didn't make America; he just discovered it, just found it. And that poor fellow in California did not manufacture the gold; he did not grow it, as you are trying to do. He found it. His mill needed repairing, and while he was digging out the foundation for the mill he found the gold. Brother, you go at the same work. You dig down. You have come up here hungry and thirsty, panting and yearning for full salvation. Let us dig down. And in our poverty, in our distress, when we get down we will find something. We will not make it, but we will find it already made to order, — soul rest, rest of heart, rest of mind, rest of conscience. The will does not struggle as it used to. The will does not struggle to try to hold you up. You will find you are resting in God. Your faith does not try to hold on to God's promises as it used to, but your faith reposes upon the promises. Your intellect finds rest. You are not disturbed or annoyed by theological problems. You have a mind clear as sunlight and as settled as Gibraltar. Your mind has no theological fog now; you have no more doubts about inspiration and divinity now, for the doctrine is as clear as the stars in heaven — no mist and no fog, and your heart has a settled and abiding love; the flutter is gone. You are not annoyed so easily. You used to get vexed, and take a whole week to get back in good humor again. You used to go to the train to meet a friend, and because he didn't come you became vexed and bothered. Some of your neighbors or friends had a wedding and didn't invite you, and you felt slighted and angry. You were going to preach a sermon and had it all nicely arranged, and there came a rainy day and a small audience, and you were all down in the dumps. But when God cleanses your heart there remains a calm, sweet rest. You are not annoyed by common things. There is a stability and there is a repose. A few winds may blow and ruffle the surface of your mind, and your thoughts may be perplexed, and in your sensibilities you may have sufferings. But down in the deep secret of your soul there is one everlasting calm. Ships may sail above and cyclones may howl, but in the great ocean deeps of your soul there is an everlasting calmness that judgment days and resurrection days and death days cannot shake or disturb.

O friends, we are pilgrims and strangers. We need this rest of heart. We need this inner calm. Why not now?