mind is satisfied with no truth until behind truth
it finds a Person who is true. The will is enslaved and wretched until
in God it recognises legitimate and absolute authority, which it is
blessing to obey. Love puts out its yearnings, like the filaments that
gossamer spiders send out into the air, seeking in vain for something to
fasten upon, until it touches God, and clings there. There is no rest
for a man until he rests in God. The reason why this world is so full of
excitement is because it is so empty of peace, and the reason why it is
so empty of peace is because it is so void of God. The peace of God
brings peace with Him, and peace within. It unites our hearts to fear
His name, and draws all the else turbulent and confusedly flowing
impulses of the great deep of the spirit after itself, in a tidal wave,
as the moon draws the waters of the gathered ocean. The peace of God is
peace with Him, and peace within.

I need not, I suppose, do more than say one word about that descriptive
clause in my text, It 'passeth understanding.' The understanding is not
the faculty by which men lay hold of the peace of God any more than you
can see a picture with your ears or hear music with your eyes. To
everything its own organ; you cannot weigh truth in a tradesman's scales
or measure thought with a yard-stick. Love is not the instrument for
apprehending Euclid, nor the brain the instrument for grasping these
divine and spiritual gifts. The peace of God transcends the
understanding, as well as belongs to another order of things than that
about which the understanding is concerned. You must experience it to
know it; you must have it in order that you may feel its sweetness. It
eludes the grasp of the wisest, though it yields itself to the patient
and loving heart.

II. So notice, in the next place, what the peace of God does.

It 'shall keep your hearts and minds.' The Apostle here blends together,
in a very remarkable manner, the conceptions of peace and of war, for he
employs a purely military word to express the office of this Divine
peace. That word, 'shall keep,' is the same as is translated in another
of his letters _kept with a garrison_--and, though, perhaps, it might be
going too far to insist that the military idea is prominent in his mind,
it will certainly not be unsafe to recognise its presence.

So, then, this Divine peace takes upon itself warlike functions, and
garrisons the heart and mind. What does he mean