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PAX VOBISCUM

BY HENRY DRUMMOND, F.R.S.E., F.G.S., LL.D.

1890


"PAX VOBISCUM," prepared for publication by the Author, is now published
for the first time, being the second of a series of which "The Greatest
Thing in the World" was the first.


Nov. 1, 1890. "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and
I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am
meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my
yoke is easy, and my burden is light."




CONTENTS


PREFACE

PAX VOBISCUM

EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES

WHAT YOKES ARE FOR

HOW FRUITS GROW




PAX VOBISCUM


I heard the other morning a sermon by a distinguished preacher upon
"Rest." It was full of beautiful thoughts; but when I came to ask
myself, "How does he say I can get Rest?" there was no answer. The
sermon was sincerely meant to be practical, yet it contained no
experience that seemed to me to be tangible, nor any advice which
could help me to find the thing itself as I went about the world that
afternoon. Yet this omission of the only important problem was not the
fault of the preacher. The whole popular religion is in the twilight
here. And when pressed for really working specifics for the experiences
with which it deals, it falters, and seems to lose itself in mist.

The want of connection between the great words of religion and every-day
life has bewildered and discouraged all of us. Christianity possesses
the noblest words in the language; its literature overflows with terms
expressive of the greatest and happiest moods which can fill the soul of
man. Rest, Joy, Peace, Faith, Love, Light--these words occur with such
persistency in hymns and prayers that an observer might think they
formed the staple of Christian experience. But on coming to close
quarters with the actual life of most of us, how surely would he be
disenchanted. I do not think we ourselves are aware how much our
religious life is made up of phrases; how much of what we call Christian
experience is only a dialect of the Churches, a mere religious
phraseology with almost nothing behind it in what we really feel and
know.

To some of us, indeed, the Christian experiences seem further away than
when we took the first steps in the Christian life. That life has not
opened out as we had hoped; we do not regret our religion, but we are
disappointed with it. There are times, perhaps, when wandering notes
from a diviner music stray into our spirits; but these experiences come
at few and fitful moments. We have no sense of possession in them. When
they visit us, it is a surprise. When they leave us, it is without
explanation. When we wish their return, we do not know how to secure
it. All which points to a religion without solid base, and a poor and
flickering life. It means a great bankruptcy in those experiences which
give Christianity its personal solace and make it attractive to the
world, and a great uncertainty as to any remedy. It is as if we knew
everything about health--except the way to get it.

I am quite sure that the difficulty does not lie in the fact that
men are not in earnest. This is simply not the fact. All around us
Christians are wearing themselves out in trying to be better. The amount
of spiritual longing in the world--in the hearts of unnumbered thousands
of men and women in whom we should never suspect it; among the wise and
thoughtful; among the young and gay, who seldom assuage and never betray
their thirst--this is one of the most wonderful and touching facts of
life. It is not more heat that is needed, but more light; not more
force, but a wiser direction to be given to very real energies already
there.

The Address which follows is offered as a humble contribution to this
problem, and in the hope that it may help some who are "seeking Rest and
finding none" to a firmer footing on one great, solid, simple
principle which underlies not the Christian experiences alone, but all
experiences, and all life.

What Christian experience wants is _thread_, a vertebral column, method.
It is impossible to believe that there is no remedy for its unevenness
and dishevelment, or that the remedy is a secret. The idea, also, that
some few men, by happy chance or happier temperament, have been given
the secret--as if there were some sort of knack or trick of it--is
wholly incredible. Religion must ripen its fruit for every temperament;
and the way even into its highest heights must be by a gateway through
which the peoples of the world may pass.

I shall try to lead up to this gateway by a very familiar path. But as
that path is strangely unfrequented, and even unknown, where it passes
into the religious sphere, I must dwell for a moment on the commonest of
commonplaces.




EFFECTS REQUIRE CAUSES


Nothing that happens in the world happens by chance. God is a God of
order. Everything is arranged upon definite principles, and never
at random. The world, even the religious world, is governed by law.
Character is governed by law. Happiness is governed by law. The
Christian experiences are governed by law. Men, forgetting this, expect
Rest, Joy, Peace, Faith to drop into their souls from the air like snow
or rain. But in point of fact they do not do so; and if they did they
would no less have their origin in previous activities and be controlled
by natural laws. Rain and snow do drop from the air, but not without a
long previous history. They are the mature effects of former causes.
Equally