1. IN the teaching of Jesus Christ and His apostles stress is often laid upon the inward peace enjoyed by the children of God, which arises from a sense of reconciliation with Him. That peace is at once fundamental and eternal; for it lies between us and the Father of our spirits, and will find its consummation in His immediate presence, when the noise of this world will no longer fill our ears. Happy is he who enjoys “the peace of God which passeth all understanding” (Php_4:7), won for us, and placed within the reach of every one of us, by the coming to the world of Jesus Christ. He was the embodiment of this peace, though none lived a more troubled life than He, and no legacy could have seemed more precious to His disciples than that which He assigned to them in His parting words—“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth give I unto you” (Joh_14:27). He then implanted within their souls the germ from which universal peace was ultimately to grow, till the angels’ song, which at His birth foretold “peace on earth,” would be fulfilled in the deepest and broadest sense.
But all Divine blessings have their earthward, as well as their heavenly, side. They are not like the moon, which always presents the same face towards us; but like the earth, which presents to the sun every face in turn. The whole of life, not this or that part of it, is to be ruled by serenity. If we enjoy inward peace with God, there is no department of our life in which it is not to assert its supremacy. It should appear in the home, the church, and the business. In short, Divine peace, like Divine love, is to be fullorbed. Men are to see it as well as God; for while we love the Lord our God with all our heart, and soul, and strength, we are also to love our neighbours as ourselves.
Human nature is full of antipathies—antipathies of colour and creed, of caste and culture, of social position and religious ritual. It would be difficult to say which of these is the most obstinate. It is quite certain as a matter of history that the only force that has ever had the power of effectually “slaying” these enmities is that embodied in the Cross of Jesus Christ. In Him there is neither Jew nor Gentile, bond nor free, wise nor foolish. Under the shadow of that gaunt tree on which He died, the flower of a universal charity has at last blossomed, and men, looking on Him whom they have pierced, have learnt to whisper “brother” to one another in the same breath as they have lisped “Saviour” to Him. He is the Universal Brother, and in Him all men are brethren. If even after nineteen centuries we have failed to learn this lesson effectually, it is because there was so much antipathy and hatred between man and man to overcome, so much blindness to the simple scope and meaning of this glorious Gospel of humanity.
