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The Scriptures are full of priceless secrets, and here is one of them — the secret of trust in God as revealed to us in Jesus Christ, as the sole method and means of that peace which we all desire. "Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace"; or, as the original expresses it still more forcibly in its Semitic simplicity, "Thou shalt keep him in peace, peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee." It is not the promise of freedom from sorrow; it is not, by any means, a promise of success or prosperity on earth: but it is a promise of that inward peace — of that heart's ease in the breast — with which sorrow itself is a tolerable burden, and without which prosperity itself is a questionable boon. The existence or the absence of peace in our hearts is no slight indication of our true condition, for, as peace must exist with the righteous even in the midst of adversity, it cannot exist in the hearts of the wicked, however smiling, however prosperous their lot. "There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." There is, I know, a false, as well as a true peace. There is the simulated contentment of a hard indifference. There is the cynical self-complacency of a moral blindness. There is the deep infatuation of a false security. There is the dull stupefaction of an obstinate despair. But who will call this peace? The carelessness of a traveller by night, who knows not that he is walking all the time along the edge of a frightful precipice — is that peace? For, just as we must not be deceived by the false semblance, or by voices which cry Peace, peace, when there is no peace, so let us neither be robbed of the deep reality by external appearances, or by passing troubles.

1. Take, for instance, the case of personal anxieties. Most — perhaps everyone — of us suffer from these anxieties for ourselves; anxieties about our families; anxieties for the present; anxieties of a still deeper kind about the future. Though we are children of God, yet the cares of life come to us which come to all. They are the necessary incentive to our efforts. They are the necessary impulse to make us treasure otherwhere than on earth our hopes. But, oh, how differently do they happen to the Christian and to the sinner! But to be absorbed in merely private agitations is the characteristic of a mean soul, and the lives of many men who rise far above these personal and domestic egotisms are yet deeply troubled by the world's agitation and unfit, by the perils of institutions to which they are devoted, by the perplexities of nations which they love. We have heard how Augustus, the ruler of the world, constantly moaned in his sleep for the loss of his three legions. We remember how the sad English queen, who lies with her great sister in this Abbey, said that when she died the word "Calais" would be found written on her heart. We have known how, in his later days, the good and great Lord Falkland fell into deep melancholy, ever murmuring the words "Peace, peace," because his heart bled with the bleeding wounds of his country. We recall how the wasted form and shattered hopes of William Pitt were laid, in a season dark and perilous, at the feet of his great father, Chatham, with the same pomp, in the same consecrated mould, and how, grieved to the soul with the news of Austerlitz, he died, with broken exclamations about the perils of his country. Well, we should not be human if we did not suffer thus with those whom we see suffer. We may say to the fools, "Deal not so madly, — and to the ungodly. "Lift not up your horn on high; but the issues of all these things we must leave humbly," calmly, trustfully, with God. The earth is not ours, nor the inhabiters of it; neither do we hold up the pillars of it. Let us not think much of our own importance. Ah, yes, for the anxieties of the statesmen, and the churchmen, and the patriot, here again is the remedy. We know that the angels of the Churches and the angels of the nations gaze on the face of God. Troubled was the life of David, yet he could say, calmly and humbly, "God sitteth above the water floods, and God remaineth a King forever."

2. Again, the lives of how many of us are troubled by the strife of tongues! And yet even amid these flights of barbed arrows; amid these clouds of poisonous insects; amid these insolences of anonymous slander, what peace — what perfect peace — may we find if our minds be stayed on God. Let them say what they will," said a good man, now gone into his rest, "they cannot hurt me; I am too near the great white throne for that." Yes, "Thou shalt hide them privily by Thine own presence from the provoking of all men. Thou shalt keep them secretly in Thy tabernacle from the strife of tongues." "Thou shalt keep him in peace, peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee."

3. There is yet another, the heaviest of all life's troubles in which this promise of peace comes to us like music heard over the stormy waters. It is when we are most overwhelmed with shame and sorrow for the past, — when our sins have taken such hold upon us that we are not able to look up. Who shall count the number of the men whose lives are ruined by the consequences of the past, but who, even in the midst of that ruin, are far more embittered by shame than by calamity, and who feel the sickness or the downfall far less than they feel the remorseful accusing of the evil conscience. It is the lost Heaven which torments no less surely than the present hell. In Michael Angelo's great picture of the last judgment, one of the evil spirits has seized upon a doomed transgressor, and is dragging him downwards; and as he drags him in down rushing flight the demon is driving his furious teeth into the sinner's flesh; but, with a touch of marvellous spiritual insight, the great painter has represented the poor wretch as wholly unconscious of that agony — as so unaware of it that his clasped hands and his eyes gazing upwards in agony on his offended Lord, show that, in the absorbing sense of having forfeited the blessing of the forgiven, he has no anguish left to thrill at the torture of the condemned. Yes, it is the worst sting of misery to have once been happy, — the worst pang of shame to have once been innocent, — the most fearful aggravation of punishment that men do not forget the Heavens from which they fall. Lock at the white water lily, in its delicate fragrance, as it lifts from its circle of green floating leaves the immaculate purity of its soft sweet flower. Its roots are in the black mud; its resting place is on the stagnant wave. Not from its mean or even foul surroundings — not assuredly from the blackness of the mud, or the stagnation of the wave — did it draw that pure beauty and that breathing beneficence, but from some principle of life within. And cannot He who gave to the fair blossom its idea of sweetness draw forth from us, the souls whom He made when He breathed into our nostrils the breath of life — oh, though we have debased those souls with the stagnancy of idleness, and blackened them with the mud of sin — cannot our God still bring forth frown those souls that He has made His own sweetness and purity again? He can, if we trust in Him. The alchemy of His love can transmute dross to gold, and, though our sins be as scarlet, the blood of His dear Son can wash them white as snow. Let the very depth of your remorse, if God grants you to feel remorse and a shameful and sinful past — let the very depth of this remorse be your protection from despair. Seek God, and that remorse may be but the darkness which is deepest before the dawn.

(Dean Farrar, D. D.)

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KJV: Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.

WEB: You will keep whoever's mind is steadfast in perfect peace, because he trusts in you.