thrill with despairing terror the hearts of an ungodly world, while the faithful were being wonderfully caught up in the air to meet their Lord? And thus the very grandeur of their hopes cast a cloud athwart their conscience, and slackened the tension of the will; and it required the quiet and equable faith of the great apostle at once to ply a handicraft and to look for Christ,-to earn to-morrow's bread in expectation of a morrow which should be the breaking of eternity. So among the Christians of Thessalonica the landmarks of ordinary life were removed: men forsook their occupations to watch for the kingdom of God: to wait for the coming Bridegroom seemed a duty which absorbed and abrogated all lesser obligations: and society incurred the imminent risk of being dissolved before its time. And Paul, with that practical wisdom which so wonderfully and happily mingled with the mystical and enthusiastic elements of his character, urges upon his disciples that they "study to be quiet," and to do their own business, and to work with their own hands; thus practically illustrating, by anticipation, his famous declaration, that however rapt the faith which brings human souls face to face with the realities of the spiritual world,-however divine and inspiring the hopes which the doctrine of immortality justifies to the imagination,-neither faith nor hope can ever supply the place, or do away with the necessity, of that patient, active, self-forgetting love which best manifests itself in the quiet sphere of daily duty.

But now, leaving on one side the circumstances under which the apostle addressed the words of our text to the Thessalonians, let us ask whether they do not contain a secret of the Christian life applicable and valuable to ourselves also.

"And that ye study to be quiet." Do we not always associate the idea of the greatest strength with that of quietness? Look among the remains of antique sculpture for the God of Physical Power, leaning upon his knotted staff: every limb

is in perfect, well-balanced repose; and yet what calm consciousness of strength in those mighty thews and sinews! Who can tell what crashing destruction will follow the uplifting of his arm! What work for the imagination to picture the firm weight of his footfall! Whereas in that other wellknown masterpiece, where the unhappy father holds aloof with despairing vigour the snake which winds its horrid folds round himself and his children, we feel rather the powerlessness than the power of human muscles, and recognize at once how narrow are the limits within which our bodily vigour exerts itself. There is something of the infinite in the statue of reposing strength; while the representation of strength taxed to its utmost energy reminds us how surely finite it is. And the reason why these great works affect us so differently, is the instinctive perception we have of the fact, that in body, in will, and in mind, the strongest men are also the quietest ; that the most effectual power is self-sustained, and needs to be lashed into temporary excitement by no factitious anger or enthusiasm.

And so metaphysicians and mystics speak of the quietness of God. There is a felt contrast is there not ?-between the variable, fitful energy to which any human life can attain, and that awful Omnipotence to which thoughts are words, and words acts. "And God said, Let there be light; and there was light." What act of ours is unaccompanied by sensible effort—a strain of will against obstacles within or without- -a rousing of soul and body from the lethargy into which they are ever ready to fall back? Yet the idea that to call into existence this infinite universe-stretching farther into space than our minds can conceive or our arithmetic expressteeming, even in its minutest portions, with a life which eludes our keenest observation-to think that this cost the Almighty One more than a thought, is irreconcilable with any worthy conception of Divine Omnipotence. Thus, too, we are driven ́

to and fro by loves and hatreds, hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, trances of exultation, faintings of despair; so that it is the constant problem of existence to keep our heart and our way ever turned to duty and to heaven, and we know that often we advance half unwillingly and slowly, often cower down helplessly on the path. While how can we conceive of God's being but as an everlasting, tranquil joy? What should disturb the serenity of Him who seeth the end from the beginning, to whom the tangled maze of the world's destiny is all plain,—and who surely prepares a final possibility of good for all His creatures? And thus, though it be very hard to speak of the Infinite Being in terms that shall not, from their very finiteness, express our conceptions too definitely, we must needs think of God as ever working, yet as ever at rest,-putting forth from Himself a tranquil, full stream of energy, which vivifies and upholds the universe, and yet active only in so far as and because He exists. For in Him, to be and to do are the same; and rest and action are one.

Leaving, again, the contemplation of the Divine Essence where the attempt to express the attributes of Infinity involves us in inevitable confusion of idea and contradiction of phrase, we notice a characteristic air of tranquillity about the moral lineaments of Christ. And yet this is quite other than the passionless repose which our highest thought associates with the nature of God. We cannot admit-to do so were to lose our hold of the fixed anchor of our faith in humanity—that Christ was not sorely vexed with temptation as we are; that no pang thrilled his great heart when the sure sorrows of mortality fell upon him; that no joy raised him nearer heaven when he saw his Father's work prospering in his hands. But you will see what I mean by the quietness of Christ when you compare your thought of him with what you know of his weaker fellow-workers for God. How hard it is for us to infuse any persistency and perseverance into our fitful, vari

able spirits! How soon is our faith in ourselves and the great Taskmaster damped by what appears to us failure, yet which may be really the precise measure of success which we have deserved! How constantly do we feel the need of some external stimulant, the consciousness of something achieved, perhaps even the approving smiles of men, to stir our faith and energy to a vigour that shall perform some worthy work! And what alternations of enthusiastic devotion and faithless self-indulgence even in the noblest of us; so that no one is his best self at all times, and is best only when his weary will still feels the recent spur of self-reproach! Whereas the life of Christ, to me at least, presents itself as a far quieter, calmer, more equable, and therefore stronger thing than this. "My meat," says he, "is to do the will of Him that sent me." "I must work while it is day, for the night cometh when no man can work." And so the existence recorded in the Gospels is, comparatively, one of few events. Day follows day in quick, similar succession. The people throng about him to hear the promise of the kingdom, and the gracious words do not cease to flow from his lips. They bring their sick, their halt, their blind, to lay in his path; and health, and sight, and vigour, are in his look. He finds his ready way to the heart of the outcast, and the harlot and the publican swell his happy train. His own little band of disciples share his wanderings, his privations, his labours-all but the daily speech with the Father upon the mountain or in the wilderness. And meanwhile, through the vista of a few busy days like these, he sees the cross in clear perspective; and quietly approaches it, not with the exultant courage of a martyr, not with the unsteady faith of a fanatic, but with the calm fortitude of a man who loves life for what service of God may fill it, and will yield it up when death is the last best sacrifice to duty. I would not willingly under-estimate, my brethren, the worth of those great convulsions of the spirit which sometimes nerve our poor

human resolution to great deeds of courage and endurance; I respect and love the noble enthusiasm which often consumes the thought of self in the flame of religious or philanthropic zeal; but there is a lesson in the quietness of Christ which teaches me that no storms vex or agitate the highest regions of the spiritual atmosphere-that there, duty and self-sacrificing love are the very breath of life-and that there is a peace in God which can inspire a greater and more persistent strength than the wildest or noblest commotion of the spirit. I know well that this is what theologians call a "doctrine of perfection,”—that this quietness, that is, is a crowning excellence of the Christian life,—and so hardly to be understood by those who still labour in the lowest places of duty. Is not the work of the disciple, I may be asked, a race for an incorruptible garland-a fierce battle for Right and God? And how is your quietist theory to be reconciled with these apostolic metaphors? Still, even granting all this-admitting that this divine tranquillity of heart and action is a grace too high for our present attainment-it is surely well sometimes to fix our thoughts and hopes upon the most exalted rewards of our Christian calling; to strive to perceive, even if dimly and imperfectly, the final goal of our endeavours. And there is no true Christian but knows what quietness of heart is, even if that other quietness of sustained, unwearied, unvaried, unimpassioned action be too great for his comprehension and attainment. Have we not felt, when the cares of life seemed to close around us in hostile array, and our wearied spirits lost all the elasticity of hope, and, unable to charge and rout their foes, sank down half-willing victims to despair,have we not felt at such seasons carried away as by a flood of sudden trust in God, coming, as it seemed, from some source quite external to ourselves, and yet lapping our souls in a great happy calm? Do we not know what it is, when sinking under the pressure of some unexpected calamity, which seems