Having reconciled us to God by the blood of His cross, Christ is “our Peace,” as the apostle says. He is called so, first, because He restores us to a state of friendship with God; and, secondly, because a sense of that fills the whole soul with a peace which passeth understanding. So, speaking of the righteousness which Christ wrought out for us, the prophet says, “The work of righteousness is peace”—His righteousness being the root, and our peace the fruit—that the spring, and this the stream. To describe for the comfort of the Church the constancy of the last and the fulness of the first, another prophet borrows two of nature’s grandest images, “Thy peace shall be like a river, and thy righteousness like the waves of the sea”—the believer’s peace flowing like a broad, deep stream, with life in its waters and smiling verdure on its banks; and a Saviour’s righteousness covering all his sins, as the waves do the countless sands of their shore, when, burying them out of sight, the tide converts the whole reach of dull, dreary sand into a broad liquid mirror, to reflect the light of the sky and the beams of the sun.

Christ’s imputed righteousness is bestowed equally on all believers—none, the least any more than the greatest sinner, being more justified than another. Feeling assured or not of their salvation, all His are equally safe—“those whom Thou hast given me I have kept, and none of them are lost.” There is no such equal enjoyment among believers of peace in believing; some walking all their days under a cloud, and some who walk in darkness and have no light, only reaching heaven, like a blind man guided homewards by the hand of his child, by their hold of the promise, Who is he that feareth the Lord and obeyeth the voice of His servant, that walketh in darkness and hath no light; let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay himself in his God. But where there is peace springing from a sense of forgiveness, of all the fruits of the Spirit that grow in Christ’s fair garden, this is sweetest. Among the blessings enjoyed on earth, it has no superior, or rival even. It passeth understanding, says an apostle. Nor did David regard any as happy but those who enjoyed it—pronouncing “blessed,” not the great, or rich, or noble, or famous, but “the man,” whatever his condition, “whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” And so he might. With this peace the believer regards death as the gate of life: enters the grave as a quiet anchorage from seas and storms; and looks forward to the scene of final judgment as a prince to his coronation, or a happy bride to her marriage day. A sense of forgiveness lays the sick head on a pillow softer than downs; lightens sorrow’s heaviest burdens; makes poverty rich beyond the wealth of banks; spoils death of his sting; arms the child of God against the ills of life; and, lifting him up above its trials, makes him like some lofty mountain, at whose feet the lake may be lashed into foaming billows, and adown whose seamed and rugged sides clouds may fall in gloomy folds, but whose head, shooting up into the calm blue heavens, reposes in unbroken peace, rejoices in perpetual sunshine.

Happy such as obtain a firm hold of Christ, and, having made their calling and election sure, enjoy unclouded peace! Feeling that there is now no more condemnation for them, because they believe in Jesus, and walk not after the flesh but after the spirit, they see a change come on objects such as imparts pleasure and surprise in what are called dissolving views. Where death, with grim and grisly aspect, stood by the mouth of an open grave, shaking his fatal dart, we see an angel form opening with one hand the gate of heaven, and holding in the other a shining crown—from the face of God we see the features of an angry, stern, inexorable judge melt all away, and in room of an object of terror we behold the face and form of a kind, loving, forgiving Father, with open arms hastening to embrace us. The God of hope give you joy and peace in believing, is the prayer of the apostle—a prayer in many cases so fully answered that the dying saint has been borne away from all his earthly moorings; and, ready to part from wife and children, has exclaimed with Simeon when he held the infant Saviour in his joyful arms, “Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.”

“Be at peace among yourselves,” is a blessed injunction which an apostle lays on families, on friends, and on churches. In happy contrast to the storm which, hurtling through the troubled air, and shaking doors and windows, goes raving round every corner of the house, let peace reign on the domestic hearth, and also within the church, when, like the ark of old, she drifts on the billows of a shoreless sea—God only at the helm.

It is good to be at peace with our brethren, but to be at peace with one’s-self is better. At peace with conscience, one can afford, if God will have it so, to be at war with all men. It is painful, when we cannot be at peace with all men—to have enemies without; but his case is infinitely worse who lodges an enemy in his own breast—in a guilty, uneasy conscience, in self-reproaches, in terror of death, in the knowledge that God and he are not friends, nor can be so, so long as he cherishes his sins. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked. There cannot be. Drugged with narcotics, you may sleep as quietly on a bed of thorns as of roses. Drugged with narcotics, you may lie down on the cold pavement, and fancy as you throw your arms around the curbstone that it is the wife of your bosom. Drugged with narcotics, you may go to sleep in a cell with visions of home playing round the head that shall be capped for hanging to-morrow. But no more than I call these peaceful sights, can I apply the name of peace to the insensibility of a conscience seared by sin; to the calmness, or rather callousness of one who has allowed the devil to persuade him that God is too merciful to reckon with us for our transgressions. The peace we are to seek, and, seeking to pursue, is not that of death, but life,—not that the lake presents in winter, when no life appears on its shores, nor sound breaks the silence of its frozen waters; but that of a lake which, protected from tempests by lofty mountains, carries life in its waters, beauty on its banks, and heaven mirrored in its unruffled bosom. Being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Such is the peace which we are to seek—a peace which, springing from a sense of reconciliation through the blood of the Lamb and wrought within the soul by the in-dwelling of the Holy Spirit, has so raised the saint above all fears of death, and shed such a flood of glory around his dying head, that wicked men have turned from the scene to exclaim, May I die the death of the righteous, and may my last end be like his!