k of our relationship with God, and know that He and
we are friends, there is no real repose possible for us. In the whirl of
excitement we may forget, and for a time turn away from, the realities
of our relation to Him, and so get such gladness as is possible to a
life not rooted in conscious friendship with Him. But such lives will be
like some of those sunny islands in the Eastern Pacific, extinct
volcanoes, where nature smiles and all things are prodigal and life is
easy and luxuriant; but some day the clouds gather, and the earth
shakes, and fire pours forth, and the sea boils, and every living thing
dies, and darkness and desolation come. You are living, brother, upon a
volcano's side, unless the roots of your being are fixed in a God who is
your friend.

Again, the peace of God is peace within ourselves. The unrest of human
life comes largely from our being torn asunder by contending impulses.
Conscience pulls this way, passion that. Desire says, 'Do this'; reason,
judgment, prudence say, 'It is at your peril if you do!' One desire
fights against another, and so the man is rent asunder. There must be
the harmonising of all the Being if there is to be real rest of spirit.
No longer must it be like the chaos ere the creative word was spoken,
where, in gloom, contending elements strove.

Again, men have not peace, because in most of them everything is topmost
that ought to be undermost, and everything undermost that ought to be
uppermost. 'Beggars are on horseback' (and we know where they ride),
'and princes walking.' The more regal part of the man's nature is
suppressed, and trodden under foot; and the servile parts, which ought
to be under firm restraint, and guided by a wise hand, are too often
supreme, and wild work comes of that. When you put the captain and the
officers, and everybody on board that knows anything about navigation,
into irons, and fasten down the hatches on them, and let the crew and
the cabin boys take the helm and direct the ship, it is not likely that
the voyage will end anywhere but on the rocks. Multitudes are living
lives of unrestfulness, simply because they have set the lowest parts of
their nature upon the throne, and subordinated the highest to these.

Our unrest comes from yet another source. We have not peace, because we
have not found and grasped the true objects for any of our faculties.
God is the only possession that brings quiet. The heart hungers until it
feeds upon Him. The