eace from war and
trouble, but a peace in war and trouble. "My peace I leave with you," and
"in the world ye shall have trouble," John xiv. 27, and xvi. at the end.
What a blessed message is it, that there is a peace, and a perfect peace
attainable in the midst of wars, confusions, and calamities of the times,
public and personal; a perfect peace, a complete peace, even complete
without the accession of outward and worldly peace, that needs it not;
nay, appears most perfect and entire in itself, when it is stripped naked
of them all. Behold what a privilege the gospel offers unto you! ye need
not be made miserable, but(292) if you please. This is more than all the
world can afford you. There is no man can promise to himself immunity from
public or personal dangers, from many griefs and disappointments; but the
gospel bids you reckon up all your troubles and miseries that you can meet
with in the world; and yet in such a case, if ye hearken to wisdom, there
is a peace that will make you forget that trouble. "Her ways are ways of
pleasantness, and all her paths are peace," Prov. iii. 17. I will
undertake to make thee blessed, says wisdom, the Father's wisdom. When all
the world hath given thee over for miserable; when thou hast spent thy
substance on the physicians, and in vain, come to me, I can heal that
desperate disease by a word. "I create peace," when natural causes have
given it over; I create it of nothing; I will keep you "in perfect peace."

You have then here, three things of special concernment in these times;
and all times, a blessedness, a perfect peace attainable, the way of it,
and the fountain of it. The fountain of it, the preserver of it, is God
himself; the way to attain it, is "trusting in God, and staying on him."
This sweetness of peace is in God the tree of life. Faith puts to its
hand, and plucks the fruit of the tree; hope and dependence on God is a
kind of tasting of that fruit and eating of it; and then followeth this
perfect peace, as the delightful relish and sweetness that the soul finds
in God, upon tasting how gracious he is. God himself is the life of our
souls, the fountain of living-waters, the life and light of men. Faith and
trusting in God, draws out of this fountain,--out of this deep well of
salvation; and staying on God, drinks of it, till the soul be refreshed
with peace and tranquillity, such as passeth natural understanding. Christ
Jesus is the tree of life, that grows in the gar