The Peace of the Spirit
“And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him,” — ISA, xi. 2,
ca Ye) LONE among the sons of men the Spirit
came to Him in the form of rest. To
us it always comes in the form of unrest. The beginnings of new life ever make us restless. We are disquieted by the novelty of our own vision, we are pained by its unlikeness to our present selves. Why is youth the time of unrest? It is because youth carries in its bosom a life higher than its own — the germ of that coming man for whose coming it is not yet ready. God’s Spirit also comes as a germ in the bosom of a life not its own. It comes into the heart while the heart is yet in winter; it sings as a swallow in the cold. It is too big for its environment, it has seen too much for its surroundings; so it beats against the bars and struggles to be free. But far otherwise was it with Him. When the Spirit came to Him it came to no foreign soil; His heart was ready for it. There was no struggle between the year
ay S 2) Le Ze, 4 that was coming and the year that was going; the dove from heaven rested in the pure waters of an already prepared soul. There was no strife between the breath of the divine Spirit and the atmosphere of the earthly wilderness; it was the Spirit that led Him imo the wilderness. It was the underlying rest that conquered for Him the outward tempest. It made the stones bread in the valley; it gave calmness on the dizzy height. It smoothed a passage through the sea; it multiplied sustenance in a desert land. It bore the solitary burden of the garden; it endured the universal burden of the cross. It was a peace eternal, a peace continuous, a peace independent of war; the Spirit rested on Him.
Son of man, let me enter into Thy rest. Fulfil to me Thy latest promise, send me Thy peace. I often get Thy Spirit in flashes — in moments of transfiguration, in heights of Pisgah. But I want more than its flashes; I want its abiding rest. I want it to come to me as a permanent power, to be with me alway even unto the end of the world. I want it to be something which the world can neither give nor take away, which the hosannahs of Jerusalem cannot create nor the tears of Gethsemane destroy. That is what Thou hast promised me, that is what I wait for. Nothing less will make life tolerable to me; nothing more remains to make it perfect. Thy peace passeth all understanding because it is unchanged amid the changing; give me also this fadeless bloom. Grant me too the power to pass from the opened heavens into the clouded wilderness and to hear undimmed the voice ‘“‘ This is my beloved Son.” The dove that lighted on me at the Jordan must abide with me in the desert; the desert will be a Paradise when Thy Spirit has rested upon me.