1. WHAT word in universal language is there that wakes a surer response within human hearts than that word Peace? How necessary an element does it seem in our experience, if life is really to be worth living! We may perhaps resign the tempting thought of joy; we may with stoical determination lay aside the pursuit of pleasure; but what thoughtful man can face with any degree of equanimity the idea of abandoning all hope of peace? If we could only make sure of this we might face the most adverse circumstances without any very serious misgivings, whereas bereft of this the greatest external prosperity is little better than a pretentious mockery.
No matter what struggle men are involved in, and no matter how much men enjoy their struggle, there always is below their labour a wish for peace, a sense that peace is the final and ideal condition of all things. No man who has crossed the border of barbarism, or who has any idea of life above that of a bandit and a robber, will ever dare openly to proclaim that tumult and confusion and war are the true and permanent conditions for humanity to live in. The soldier delights in war, and chafes at the very thought of stagnant, peaceful days, but still he dares propound no theory except that war is a temporary thing, the purifier of corruption, the settler of old quarrels, and so the true builder of a higher peace. The reformer shakes the foundations of old institutions, but his plea must always be that he seeks to dig deeper and lay stronger the great stones on which he may construct the new. The sceptic touches with his withering finger the fairness of a soul’s belief, and brings confusion where there used to be the placidness of an accepted creed, but hardly any thinker has ventured to praise scepticism as the true resting-place (or floating-place) of a human spirit. The disturbance of faith always claims to be in order to a readjustment of faith. So everywhere peace and not war is the desire—nay, peace is the under-desire out of which war springs. War is the means, peace is the end. There may be always tumult about us here; but, whether men’s dispositions make them look back or forward, they always discern peace in the distance—a Golden Age behind or a Millennium before.
What a maze is a man’s heart, wherein he must lose himself every minute! What involved and intricate turnings and turnings on itself; what fugitive replacement of emotion by emotion; what strife between pities and passions; what longings for peace! [Note: J. Galsworthy, Some Slings and Arrows, 16.]
2. This universal desire of peace is the reason why men have pictured it so differently to themselves. What all men wish, and no man completely has, each man will image to himself after his own character. It is the universal ideals of the race—Freedom, Strength, Peace—which have been most variously conceived, and so most often misconceived. This is the reason why the sources and the character of peace are so differently pictured by different men, and by different men at different stages of their lives.
Paul, the young student, was trying to understand the world, so that he might harmoniously adjust himself to it, compel its powers to answer his demands, force it to satisfy his ambitions—it was the mastery of his mind making the world his servant; Paul the Apostle was trying to get nearer to Christ by more perfect obedience and love—it was the heart fastening itself upon a perfectness which it loved and whom it trusted. Here are two different conceptions of peace—one of mastery, the other of dependence. One is conquered by the mind; the other is bestowed upon the heart. One is within the range of the understanding which analyzes and investigates its grounds; the other goes beyond or passes the understanding, and relies upon a Being who, in unknown ways and out of infinite resources, provides and supports the entirely reliant life. [Note: Phillips Brooks, The Law of Growth, 222.]
I remember being greatly impressed by a sentence or two in Nansen’s Farthest North. He is describing the maddening monotony of the interminable Arctic night. “Ah!” he exclaims suddenly, “life’s peace is said to be found by holy men in the desert. Here, indeed, is desert enough; but peace!—of that I know nothing. I suppose it is the holiness that is lacking.” The explorer was simply discovering that there is nothing in Nothing but what you yourself take into it. [Note: F. W. Boreham, Faces in the Fire, 83.]
3. It is an eloquent testimony to the unrest which tortures every heart that the promise of peace should to all seem so fair. It may be presented and aimed at in very ignoble and selfish ways. It may be sought for in cowardly shirking of duty, in sluggish avoidance of effort, in selfish absorption, apart from all the miseries of mankind. It may be sought for in the ignoble paths of mere pleasure, amidst the sanctities of human love, amidst the nobilities of intellectual effort and pursuit. But all men in their workings are aiming at rest of spirit, and only in such rest does blessedness lie. “There is no joy but calm.” It is better than all the excitements of conflict, and better than the flush of victory. Rest which is not apathy, rest which is not indolence, rest which is contemporaneous with, and the consequence of, the full wholesome activity of the whole nature in its legitimate directions, that is the good that we are all longing for. The sea is not stagnant, though it be calm. There will be the slow heave of the calm billow, and the wavelets may sparkle in the sunlight, though they be still from all the winds that rave. Deep in every human heart is this cry for rest and peace.
We pray for rest and beauty, that we know we cannot earn, And ever are we asking for a honey-sweet return;
But God will make it bitter, make it bitter, till we learn
That with tears the race is run. [Note: C. H. Sorley, “Marlborough and Other Poems.”]
4. This peace is offered in the Gospel. For the Gospel of Christ is most emphatically a Gospel of peace; and peace is amongst the chiefest of its promises. “The Prince of Peace” (Isa_9:6) was one of the dearest titles of that Saviour whose birth was so longingly expected by His people: “Peace on earth, goodwill toward men” (Luk_2:14) was the glad song by which the holy birth was announced to the world: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” was the dearest promise that thrilled through the ears of weary men: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth give I unto you” (Joh_14:27) was the cheering assurance left to His sad disciples in His last talk with them before His crucifixion: and “Peace be unto you” is His first solemn greeting when He appears to His Apostles as their risen Lord (Joh_20:19; Joh_20:21; Joh_20:26).
In these solemn words their doubts were solved, their difficulties were past, all smaller things that had perplexed them were gone: in the presence of their risen Lord they could only have peace. And so, too, is it through the whole course of the Apostolic history: we are told of the first congregation at Jerusalem that they “did eat their meat in gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and having favour with all the people” (Act_2:46-47). And throughout all the Apostolic writings there is no wish more common or more strongly dwelt on than that for the peace of the little Christian communities. “The very God of peace sanctify you wholly” (1Th_5:23). “The Lord of peace himself give you peace always by all means” (2Th_3:16). “The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ” (Php_4:7).
II.
If peace is so desirable, and if it is also so obtainable, why is it that men miss it? There are many reasons.
1. Some men miss it because they do not see that they must come to Christ for it. They say that they do not need to come. Like Thoreau, they reply that they do not need to be reconciled to God, because they have not fallen out with Him. Well, there was a time when religion was the healthy and the natural state of man’s soul. Whatever may be the literal meaning of those strange passages which tell of a garden in Eden, and God walking in that garden, this, at least, is plain, that man’s pulse once beat with love to God as naturally as the current of blood ran which carried health and vigour through his frame. And this, besides, is plain, that over all that there has passed a change. Man’s religion then was the religion of spontaneous innocence; the only religion left open to man now, the only religion possible, is the religion of penitence. It is this which makes the Gospel from first to last to bear the character of a system of cure. It is not a work of improvement for a nature which is already. good, it is a work of remedy for a nature which has become diseased. There is one word which marks out the peculiar character of the Gospel of Christ (Mat_8:7): “I will heal him.” It is a healing process. And it is this which so peculiarly endears the Gospel to every man who is conscious of frailty and inward pollution. For if it be asked in one word what the Gospel is, we answer, it is all that apparatus of remedy by which a weak, erring, and guilty spirit may get back again the strength and the purity which it has lost.
The first thing, therefore, that is necessary in order that we may enjoy the blessing of peace is conscious reconciliation with God. “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God” (Rom_5:1). Here is the scriptural assertion of the believer’s privilege—“peace with God,” freedom from the sense of wrath, and from the apprehension of doom, and this freedom to be enjoyed already—not merely to light up the death-bed, not merely to play around the destiny with a sort of tremulous lustre, but to brighten with its radiance the sky of the present, as well as to redeem the future from its otherwise hopeless gloom.
The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews in that emphatic expression “first King of righteousness, and after that also King of peace,” (Heb_7:2) penetrated very deeply into the heart of Christ’s reign and work, and echoed a sentiment that runs all through Scripture. Hearken to one psalmist: “The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness” (Psa_72:3). Hearken to another: “Righteousness and peace have kissed each other” (Psa_85:10). Hearken to a prophet: “The work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quietness, and assurance for ever” (Isa_32:7). Hearken to the most Hebraistic of New Testament writers: “The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace” (Jam_3:18). Hearken to the central teaching of the most Evangelical, if I may so say, of New Testament writers: “Being justified”—made righteous—“by faith, we have peace with God” (Rom_5:1). So the “first” and the “after that” reveal to us the very depth of Christ’s work, and carry in them not only important teaching as to that, but equally important directions and guides for Christian conduct. [Note: A. Maclaren, Last Sheaves, 104.]
Like Richard Baxter and John Wesley in this, Dr. Townsend always made it easy for the solitary seeker to find him. And lie went after the one lost sheep until he found it. The following incident he told of his early ministry. He was then labouring in Leicester:
One Sunday evening a young woman of remarkable intelligence and prepossessing appearance came out to the communion rail as a seeker after Christ. I had a long interview with her, and no one that I ever dealt with was more intensely sincere, but no peace came. At last I closed the meeting, and she left the church. The next night at the prayer-meeting she was again present, and the experience of the previous night was repeated. She came to my class on the Wednesday evening, and again she struggled in agony of mind without avail. At last I said to her, “There is some special cause for this; what have you been doing? What sin have you committed that you are hiding in your heart? “Then she confessed that for a long time, in order to supply her lover with money, she had been robbing her employers, and that a large sum of money had been thieved from them. I insisted on her pledging herself to make a full confession to her employers the next morning, with the promise that I would see them and intercede on her behalf if there should be need for it. This she joyfully agreed to, and then she grasped Christ as a Saviour and her joy was extreme. She did make full confession, her masters forgave her, but exacted that for some time her salary should be lessened that she might thus make some amends. [Note: G. Eayrs, William John Townsend, 49.]
2. But even after reconciliation there is not always peace.
Why not? Because we are conscious still of sin. When the day is done, with its rush of business and care, its multitudinous demands on heart, and head, and hands, what a relief it is to shut the doors, to exclude all intruders, and to meet with beloved and familiar faces! And yet, even at such times, there are thoughts which we cannot exclude. The disciples might shut the doors of the upper chamber, for fear of the Jews; but those doors could not exclude the memory of their late unfaithfulness and cowardice, their treachery and desertion. And these bitter thoughts were more terrible to endure than their fear of hostile intruders. Such is often our own experience. The day that opened so bright and fair has become marred by many sad and painful incidents, which we have been able to disregard amid the impetuous rush of life, but which refuse to be longer ignored, and return to oppress and sadden our hearts, like a recurring nightmare, as we sit down to rest in the quiet of our own chambers, beneath the fall of night.
Some impatience or outburst of irritability; an unkind word; a look of annoyance; a selfish preference of ourselves to others whom we really love; some indulgence, however momentary, of evil imagination and unholy desire; some act of meanness or overreaching in our business. Ah, it all comes back to us afresh! What would we not give not to have yielded so weakly; or to be able to live the time over again! But, alas! it is beyond recall. And our only comfort is in the presence of the Peace-giver, who, standing beside us, says gently, “My peace I give unto you”; and shows us His hands and His side, marked still by the wound-prints of Calvary, the pledge and guarantee of forgiveness through His blood. At such times let us gratefully accept what He brings; and wrap ourselves about in the mantle of His tender, forgiving grace, as the dark brown earth of winter wraps itself in the mantle of soft white snow.
I couldn’t live in peace if I put the shadow of a wilful sin between myself and God. [Note: George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss.]
O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world,
Give me peace, give me peace!
The mists are round me, rolled and curled,
The dark and dangers of the way increase.
I cannot pray,
Pray as of old.
My thoughts are like a flock astray,
Wilt Thou not call them back,
Back to the heavenly track,
Unto the trodden pathway of Thy fold?
Bid these strange tumults cease!
Thyself upon my heart enthrone!
Make me Thine own, Thine own!
Give me peace, give me peace! [Note: Alfred Austin.]
3. It has been said that “the higher mind of today is not worrying about his sins at all.” The statement may be questioned. But if it is true, what then? Has “the higher mind” peace? If he does not worry about his sins he worries. Is anything more characteristic of our time than that restless activity which is the very opposite of peace? William James, the psychologist, in his book, Talks to Teachers, describes the visit of a number of accomplished Hindus to his American University. “More than one of them,” he writes, “has confided to me that the sight of our faces, contracted as they are with American over-intensity of expression, made a painful impression upon him. ‘I do not see,’ said one of them, ‘how it is possible for you to live as you do without a single minute in your day given to tranquillity and meditation. It is an invariable part of our Hindu life to retire for at least half an hour daily into silence, to relax our muscles, to govern our breathing, to meditate on eternal things. Every Hindu child is trained to this from a very early age.’ ” “James’s own comment is that the good fruits of such a discipline were obvious in the physical repose and the lack of tension, and in the wonderful calmness of facial expression of his Oriental visitors, and that his own countrymen in America were depriving themselves of an essential grace of character; he proceeds to recommend that” American children should be taught to moderate their piercing voices, and to relax their unused muscles, and when sitting, to sit quite still.”
If you will stand on Broadway, and look at the faces of the people that are going up and down, you will see care written there, eagerness written there, energy written there, force written there; but how often will you see peace? Even in our recreations we are loath to take peace. It is the drama which stirs men and excites them that placards at its door, “Standing room only.” It is the romance that is intense and creates tempestuous emotions in the reader’s heart that sells by tens of thousands. I wonder, as I look on your faces this morning, how many there are of you that enjoy quietness and repose; how many there are of you that are glad to get an hour to be absolutely by yourselves; how many there are of you that find yourselves good company for yourselves. [Note: Lyman Abbott, Signs of Promise, 247.]
We have to remember that strife for strife’s sake, discontent for discontent’s sake, restlessness for restlessness’ sake, can never be good. We must not run away from ourselves, or even want to run away. It is a most unfortunate thing when rest means boredom. There must be attainment in the midst of endeavour, and not merely external attainment, but what I may call internal attainment also. So far as our own selves are concerned, we must not always feel that what we want is just beyond our grasp. There must be peace at the very heart of our struggle. It is difficult, no doubt, to obtain the right kind of peace, or to obtain it in the right way. We do not want the peace of sloth, the peace of self-satisfaction, the peace of obtuseness. But we want the peace which is higher than all these, and yet truer. It is the peace to which Wordsworth alludes in his character of the Happy Warrior. He is the man who in himself possesses his own desire, who through the heat of the conflict keeps the law in calmness made, and sees what he foresaw. [Note: C. G. Montefiore, Truth in Religion, 154.]
4. One obvious cause of dispeace is intellectual doubt. St. Paul says to the Ephesian Christians (Eph_4:14), “That ye henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive.” The Apostle uses here two figures to express the condition of a mind that has not anchored itself to any religious certainties.
(1) When the wind blows strongly, all little objects that have not much weight in themselves are taken up and tossed to and fro. A feather or a piece of paper will be borne on the wings of the wind, and even if it settles for a moment on a twig or stone it is borne away again wherever the wind will. So it is with people who have no certain convictions. They come into the presence of believers and, for the moment, the atmosphere of faith in which they find themselves inclines them to believe; but the moment after they may come into the company of unbelievers, and the atmosphere of unbelief inclines them again to deny the truth that they were on the point of accepting, and so they vacillate. They reflect whatever individual sentiments they happen to meet. One day they believe that there is a God, and the next day they doubt it. One day they believe that the Bible is the Word of God, and the next day they deny it. One day they are inclined to think that Christ is God’s Son and man’s Saviour, and the other they are inclined to think that He is a mere myth, or an impostor, or a misguided man. How can there be any heavenly rest in the soul where there is not heavenly belief in the soul? St. Paul could say, “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2Co_5:1); he could say, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day” (2Ti_1:12); he could say, “I know that all things work together for good to them that love God” (Rom_8:28); and the power to say “I know” on great religious questions is the power that brings the peace of God to the human mind, and no mind ever knew peace unless there was this rest of conviction in God.
(2) St. Paul uses another figure to express the unrest of the mind that has no settled conviction. He says, “By the sleight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive” (Eph_4:14). This language refers to the tricks of a magician—legerdemain, skill, or sleight of hand. The trickster holds up his silk handkerchief, and makes you believe, for the moment, that behind that handkerchief he accomplishes a certain thing which he does not accomplish. He makes your eyes the fools of your other senses, and you are almost persuaded that a thing is true which is a trick, an imposition. And so, by the sophistries of false argument, men, through sleight of mind, as other men through sleight of hand, make you believe that they prove what they do not prove and cannot prove—that there is no God, that the Bible is a fraud, there was no such person as Jesus Christ, or that His resurrection was a myth and an imposture, and that all belief in Jesus Christ is misguided fanaticism. They pretend to prove what cannot be proved, and their forms of logic are the silk handkerchief behind which they perform these tricks of intellectual legerdemain. Now it is as possible to get to certainty on religious things as it is to certainty on other things. You can experiment on the unseen world just as truly as you can experiment on the world that is material and sensible. God says, “O taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psa_34:8). Now the taste is one of our senses. It is the simplest, and the earliest to be brought into exercise; and yet we never think of distrusting our sense of taste, and to that sense God appeals as a figure to express experimenting on Him. You may send up your prayers to the throne of grace, and get the answers down. You may look into the Bible and find the testimonies of Jesus Christ within the pages of the very scriptures themselves. You may open your heart to the incoming of the Holy Spirit, and in that have the highest demonstration of the reality of the unseen spirit and the unseen world. If you will have your senses exercised to discern both good and evil, you will, by the power of a holy experiment, demonstrate to yourself the reality and verity of spiritual things.
Robert Buchanan tells us of a certain professor who had long thrown over religion as a piece of intolerable superstition. Like the elder Mill he resolved to bring up his only son in the same belief. At a preternaturally early age, accordingly, the lad was steeped to the lips in science and learning, and at seventeen he wrote slashing articles to the Reviews. Under such an exacting strain his health gave way; and his father, becoming alarmed, removed him to the sunny shores of an Italian lake where every scene was bathed in beauty. But the change brought no betterness; and the young man, feeling that he was dying, is represented as soliloquising thus:
“A little while
And I shall be a part of that soft sleep
Upon the lake and on the purple hills,
And in the quiet grave where no shape stirs.
But now it does not seem so hard to go,
Since all life seems a dream within a dream,
And I myself the strangest dream of all.
To those fair elements whence first I came—
Water and earth and air—I shall return:
And see! how tranquil and how beautiful
They wait for me, the immortal ministers
Of man, and all that shares mortality.”
The old man, who had heard, cries out involuntarily: “God, God, God”; and the son, becoming yet weaker, continues :
“Tell me, dear father, now before we part—
And tell me plainly with no thought of fear,
Is it for ever? Have I read indeed
My lesson truly? Tell me: am I right?
For you have taught me truth is best of all.
Is this the utter end of all our love?
And shall we never meet and know each other
Again as we have known each other here?”
Smitten to the heart, the father breaks into passionate sobs, and seems as one whose house has fallen about him. His dying boy, who knew no better, asks him to read Lucretius to him. He reads :
“From nothing, nothing is formed,
All things are wrought without help of God” :
and in this cheerless creed the young man dies. [Note: W. H. Macfarlane, Redemptive Service, 171.]
5. But it is useless to seek peace in compromise. “I sat listening the other day,” says Mr. A. C. Benson, “to a beautiful sermon on the peace of God, on the text, “My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.”
It was a beautiful sermon, as I say, the sentences clear and strong, the thoughts delicate and refined, and the whole of it transfused with a fine emotion. The Christian, said the preacher, was to seek peace and make peace by every means in his power, but he was never to sacrifice principle, or to abandon what he held to be true. He instanced the case of the. Congo atrocities, and he said that this afforded a good illustration of the point. The Christian must protest against tyranny and wrong-doing, even if his protest were to endanger the peace of Europe. And then he went on to speak of the doctrines of the faith, and he said that a man must never conceal or dissemble his belief in those doctrines in order to conciliate an opponent, even though he knew that the result must be strife and hostility.
Mr. Benson questions this. He tells the old story about the two hermits in Egypt who began to be afraid that they were living too peaceful and harmonious a life together. One of them said, “Let us have a quarrel, like people in the world, so that we can learn how to defend our faith courageously. I will take one of these stones, and set it up and say it is mine; and you shall say it is yours, and then we will have a fine dispute dyer it.”
“Excellent!” said the other. “That will be good for us both. We are growing lazy and indifferent.”
So the first put up a stone and said, “That stone is mine!” And the other said, “I am sure you are very welcome to it.” And then after a pause the first said, “Well, I give it to you, and it is yours.” And the second said, “I thank you with all my heart.” Then the first said, “But, though it is yours, I take it from you and use it as my own.” And the second said, “It is the greatest pleasure I can have to yield it to you.” Then they both laughed, and gave up trying to quarrel any more.
But what is meant by compromise is not quarrelling for the sake of quarrelling. It is the surrender of truth from fear or cowardice or a weak desire to be pleasant all round. St. Paul gives the advice to the Roman Christians, “If it be possible, as much as in you lieth, be at peace with all men” (Rom_12:18). But no one was less inclined to find peace of mind in compromise. “To whom we gave place in the way of subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the Gospel might continue with you” (Gal_2:5).
Many are afraid to act up to what they know: they see that genuinely to act up to their highest duties, really to do all that at might be done, would set them in opposition to prevailing prejudices or habits, would require a strength of character towards which they feel indisposed to make the first efforts: these are they which put their hand to the plough and look back: these have for various reasons, some wearing a very specious aspect, deliberately built up their lives on a lower level than the highest which they know: we cannot wonder that to them the world looks gloomy, and the year has lost its spring.
Peace is not a compromise with circumstances. It does not come out of an interlocution which runs after this fashion: “Let me alone, and I will let you alone; if you will be quiet, I will be quiet; let us proclaim a truce.” Rest is not a compromise. Itis a Divine reality in the heart. Righteousness is rest,—holiness is peace,—rectitude with God, coming through trust in the atonement of God the Son, means tranquillity deep and unchanging as the peace of God which passeth understanding! [Note: Joseph Parker.]
6. There are many other things that take away our peace. Among the rest there is a morbid feeling, very frequently met with, which disguises from itself that it is selfishness, by trying to lay claim to extra sensitiveness and demanding special consideration from all who come in contact with it. This is one of the commonest forms of discontent and unhappiness. It is one of the most ordinary complaints of the moral invalid that he is misunderstood, that he is not appreciated as he ought to be, that he does not receive the affection he requires,—you know the long string of excuses that we all of us are tempted to give when we do not wish to be judged by the rules which we apply to all others. We must be content to be misunderstood in the sense that we all know our own virtues better than any one else, that we often speak unadvisedly and carelessly with our tongue, and have not the strength to take the consequences. It may be we are not appreciated, or loved as we would wish, or as we think we ought to be; but if we were to become of more value we should certainly be more appreciated, and if we were more amiable we should be more loved. In moral questions, as in political questions, the whole issue turns on whether we commence from our rights or our duties: to take up an easy attitude towards life and demand that every one should do their duty towards us, while we gracefully waive the question of how far we are doing our duty towards them, is one of the most ordinary forms of selfishness nourished by a distorted sense of justice. Let us begin from ourselves in the first instance, and the result will be quite different: let us consider whether we do all we can for others, and let us not try to wring out of them the uttermost farthing, nay, let us keep no creditor account at all against them. Every time we forgive our brother a trespass, our opinion of him increases; we are less hurt by his clumsiness or whatever it may be that excites our anger: life in general wears brighter colours for us: God’s peace sinks more deeply into our hearts.
We torment ourselves more than others can torment us. The worst misfortunes are those that never happen after all, and panics are terrors for which there is no foundation. The more we think for others, and the less we think of ourselves, the happier we shall be. “On ne se repose,” says Cherbuliez, “qu’en s’oubliant.” Moreover, we often torment ourselves in vain. “With him (Epicurus),” says Cicero, “it is folly to ruminate on evils to come, or such as, perhaps, never may come. Every evil is disagreeable enough when it does come; but he who is constantly considering that some evil may befall him, is loading himself with a perpetual evil, and even should such evil never light on him, he voluntarily takes upon himself unnecessary misery, so that he is under constant uneasiness, whether he actually suffers any evil, or only thinks of it.” And those which do happen we make worse by brooding over them. “La mort est plus aisee a supporter sans y penser, que la pensee de la mort sans peril.” [Note: Lord Avebury, Peace and Happiness, 340.]
