PEACE is something divinely glorious; for “peace” does not merely mean, that you are outside of trouble and struggle, but altogether differently, that an enemy stands or stood over against you, that that enemy lives, and that danger threatened you from all sides, and that it was evident, that you had to go under, and that now, a higher power has stepped in between, and that your enemy was either rendered powerless or has become a friend to you; and that now anxiety is lifted from your soul and the struggle is ended, and danger gone; and that in place of mortal anxiety and struggle and distress of soul there entered in an, O, so soul-uplifting and soul-refreshing feeling of rest and of peace.
He who can say: I have peace! is not the coward who ran away from the fray or held himself aloof from the battle. No, peace is the wage of the victor, the prize of bravery and of perseverance wherewith the battle was fought. Peace, which means to him who almost sank away and perished, particularly this one thing: that God the Lord decided the matter in his behalf, and granted him peace.
“Peace on earth!” this God’s angels did not sing in Paradise, when the conflict had not yet broken out, but “Peace on earth!” this sang God’s heavenly hosts at the well of Bethlehem, when He was about to be born, Whose coming to this earth was not to bring peace, but the sword.
And when the Son of God parted from His disciples and said to them: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you!” it truly was not to open a future to them, in which they were to walk a path of roses, neither for Himself already to enter upon glory; for He went to Gethsemane and every one of His apostles went toward the martyrdeath; and therefore the Lord added so emphatically: “Not as the world giveth, give I unto you!”
And therefore, if we will listen to God’s holy Word, “peace” has nothing, absolutely nothing in common with the sweetly holding oneself apart from the strife, which may not even be called “life,” let alone “peace.” “Peace” is the divine exaltation of soul on the part of him, who has overcome. “Peace” is to live anew from the blossom of strength that was developed in the mortal strife. “Peace” is no more to fight, but to be above the battle, and now to feel coming down into, to feel shining out in the heart, the sweet, the beauty and the desirable of full-blessed harmony.
STAND for such peace among men!
Two sorts of things among men can disturb your peace, the peace of your soul; for strife can come, when some one with whom you have to do, will not go out of the way for you; but there also can come strife, because he will not go out the way for God’s truth.
With that first sort of strife the choice of what you have to do is not difficult. Then indeed, yourself to go out of the way, is always your duty. It is as well the duty of the other, so that it is most glorious, when together by grace coming to recognize this, at a given moment both vie to give in, and the struggle no more is as to who may win, but as to who may lose. But even when the other does not listen to that admonition, for you this makes no difference. You may never seek to save your soul, for every time you do this, you lose her. Always be the least. Seventy times seven forgive. The Shepherd of our souls knows no exception.
But it is altogether different, when the battle does not center around you, but around God’s truth, for then you may not give in. Not do, as those cowards do, who, to keep peace, say nothing of anything, and then, in their cowardice imagine, that the beatitude of the peaceable is applicable to themselves. No, for God’s sake and right and Word and truth the battle must ever be on. Not only, not mostly even by abstract advocacy of the same, but above all and then mostly, when, in daily intercourse with people, in education, in dealing with matters of calling, a grain of the gold of God’s right and truth might be darkened, and we see it, O, then we may not keep silent, but the fight must be fought, and then, alas, yes, the peace, the peace especially among those who are nearest related or nearest united, is gone.
O, then fight the fight of God purely; fight it uprightly; never call anything a fight for the Lord’s sake, when in some hidden corner of your heart it is yet and really again for the sake of your own self.
Above all fight in prayer, and though the battle lasts long, will, desire, accept never any other peace than that, by which your brother is won and the cause of God triumphs.
STAND for this peace with yourself.
Every heart, that is alive, must begin with being in altercation with itself.
There truly is difference of character, and with one the wavebeat of the troubled breast goes higher than with the other, but yet, a stagnant morass is the human heart of him alone, that is lost, and with every child of God there is always the wind that beats down from above, the breath of the Spirit, to beat upward the waters of his soul, and that breath of the Spirit gives him no rest.
While young one feels this best, be it as yet not sharpest. He who is still young, finds it natural, that he has not yet found peace. But, and see here for the most part the mistake of the youthful mind, one then imagines, that after a struggle of say seven long years that battle shall be ended and the ideal of perfect peace shall have been reached.
And that then ends in disappointment. For he who watches his soul sharply finds, that he goes rather backward than forward. Not really, but because his life expands itself and temptation multiplies. And then most people effect a compromise. Weary of struggling they seek to come to some understanding with themselves. They let their once so glorious ideal lower; they now find, that something must be conceded to the world; and so they extinguish their fires, and lie quietly at anchor.
And this then is said to be at peace with oneself.
O, blessed is he, who never, not for one single moment, was charmed in behalf of his own soul, by so false a peace.
PSALMNODY therefore also knows another note.
Almost always the battle-song: “Work while it is day, for the night cometh wherein no man can work,” and only at the last mile-post comes the soul-satisfying refreshment of the: “God crowns the end of His servants with peace.”
Not that already in the midst of life a part of peace should not descend into the soul of a child of God.
Of course, the first, fierce, wild battle, whether he will stand for Satan or for God, no, that does not go on till our dying. That is decided long in advance. And after anxious distress of soul there comes insofar peace indeed, peace already now, peace already here on earth, that our soul stands fixed and certain, and also knows, that Satan himself can never here or yonder snatch her more out of the hand of the Father.
More still, in addition to this, parts of that peace the Lord sometimes gives His redeemed to taste, when there are edges to their character, and sinful tendencies in their soul, and battles rage around about them, whereby and wherein for long time they were vanquished, and however much in the need and death of their soul they labored, they could not come, where they well knew they ought to be. For, yea, also in such struggles already here on earth the Lord gives victory, and after the triumph peace, that the soul may rejoice: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, henceforth the crown is laid up for me!”
But the peace, the absolute, the full-blessed peace, no, that only comes at the end. Not when one becomes aged, and not even yet when one comes to die, but only when one dies, and if then the end may be peace.
For this is sure: So long as we are in this body of death and dwell in this world of sin, it is not yet the perfect deliverance and not yet the heavenly tenderness. Then the evil self may slumber, without tossing much about, but it is ever yet alive, and the peace, O, when that shall come upon you, nothing, nothing more must be wanting from the eternal peace. O, then it must lie so sacredly even and pure as the level between you and that glorious, holy, thrice holy God.
Therefore that highest, that richest, that full peace, which comes at the end, is then also no wage, but a crown.
Grace grants it unto us.
Grants it sometimes to a young child, to withhold it from an old man.
But yet, however sovereign God’s grace may be, with that peace He does not crown “sinners” in the end.
They shall perish, but the anointed of the Lord shall remain standing.
And then the battle is ended, and ended the trouble, and the insinking, and the blush of shame.
And then comes the peace.
The peace of the Eternal to reign eternally.
O, in that anxious hour, brothers, be this the blessed portion of us all.
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