Other versions are either
caricatures, or exaggerations, or misunderstandings, or shortsighted and
surface readings. For the most part their attainment is hopeless
and the results wretched. But I care not who the person is,
or through what vale of tears he has passed, or is about to pass,
there is a new life for him along this path.
III. How fruits grow.
Were Rest my subject, there are other things I should wish to say
about it, and other kinds of Rest of which I should like to speak.
But that is not my subject. My theme is that the Christian
experiences are not the work of magic, but come under the law of
Cause and Effect. I have chosen Rest only as a single illustration
of the working of that principle. If there were time I might next
run over all the Christian experiences in turn, and show the same
wide law applies to each; but I think it may serve the better
purpose if I leave this further exercise to yourselves. I know no
Bible study that you will find more full of fruit, of which will
take you nearer to the ways of God, or make the Christian life
itself more solid or more sure. I shall add only a single other
illustration of what I mean, before I close.
Where does Joy come from? I knew a Sunday scholar whose conception
of Joy was that it was a thing made in lumps and kept somewhere
in Heaven, and that when people prayed for it, pieces were somehow
let down and fitted into their souls.
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