Pax Vobiscum | Page 3

turn infallibly linked with a mental experience called restlessness
and delirium. To abolish the mental experience the radical method
would be to abolish the physical experience, and the way of abolishing
the physical experience would be to abolish Africa, or to cease to go
there. Now this holds good for all other forms of Restlessness. Every
other form and kind of Restlessness in the world has a definite cause,
and the particular kind of Restlessness can only be removed 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
expect this; but, being a methodical world, it cannot be otherwise. Rest,
physical rest, moral rest, spiritual rest, every kind of rest has a cause, 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 be set in
motion. It is no use proposing finely devised schemes, or going through
general pious exercises in the hope that somehow Rest will come. The
Christian life is not casual but causal. All nature is a standing protest
against the absurdity of expecting to secure spiritual effects, or any
effects, without the employment of appropriate causes. The Great
Teacher dealt what ought to have been the final blow to this infinite
irrelevancy by a single question, "Do men gather grapes of thorns or
figs of thistles?" Why, then, did the Great Teacher not educate His
followers fully? Why did He not tell us, for example, how such a thing
as Rest might be obtained? The answer is, that He did. But plainly,
explicitly, in so many words? Yes, plainly, explicitly, in so many words.
He assigned Rest to its cause, in words with which each of us has been
familiar from his earliest childhood.
He begins, you remember--for you at once know the passage I refer
to--almost as if Rest could be had without any cause: "Come unto me,"
He says, "and I will give you Rest."
Rest, apparently, was a favour to be bestowed; men had but to come to
Him; He would give it to every applicant. But the next sentence takes
that all back. The qualification, indeed, is added instantaneously. For
what the first sentence seemed to give was next thing to an
impossibility. For how, in a literal sense, can Rest be _given_? One
could no more give away Rest than he could give away Laughter. We
speak of "causing" laughter, which we can do; but we cannot give it
away. When we speak of giving pain, we know perfectly well we
cannot give pain away. And when we aim at giving pleasure, all that we
do is to arrange a set 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 Great Personality breathes upon all who come within its
influence an abiding peace and trust. Men can be to other men as the

shadow of a great rock in 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 I speak. When Christ said He would give men Rest,
He meant simply that He would put them in the way of it. By no act of
conveyance would, or could, He make over His own Rest to them. He
could give them His receipt for 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 were not so planned that it could be made for them;
and for yet another thing, it was a thousand times better that they
should make it for themselves.
That this is the meaning becomes obvious from the wording of the
second sentence: "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
comes not 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
could indeed be no more found in a moment than could knowledge. A
soil has to be prepared for it. Like a fine fruit, it will grow in one
climate and not in another; at one altitude and not at another. Like all
growths it will have an orderly development and mature by slow
degrees.
The nature of this slow process Christ clearly defines when He