Beloved! this is our spirit’s deepest need. It is thus that we can learn to know God. It is thus that we receive spiritual refreshment and nutriment. It is thus that we are nourished and fed. It is thus that we receive the Living Bread. It is thus that our very bodies are healed, and our spirits drink in the life of our risen Lord, and we go forth to life’s conflicts and duties like the flower that has drunk in, through the shades of the night, the cool and crystal drops of dew. But the dew never falls on a stormy night, so the dews of His Grace never come to the restless soul.

We cannot go through life strong and fresh on constant express trains with ten minutes for lunch: we must have quiet hours, secret places of the Most High, times of waiting upon the Lord, when we renew our strength and learn to mount up on wings as eagles, and then come back to run and not be weary, and to walk and not faint.

The best thing about this stillness is that it gives God a chance to work.

“Anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his” (Hebrews 4:10); and when we cease from our thoughts, God’s thoughts come into us; when we get still from our restless activity, “God . . . works in [us] to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (Philippians 2:13), and we have but to work it out.

Beloved! let us take His stillness! A. B. SIMPSON

Jesus, Deliverer, come Thou to me; Soothe Thou my voyaging, Over life’s sea!

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground.—We commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.—Study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands.

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.—The night cometh when no man can work.

Let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.—Always abounding in the work of the Lord forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.

There remaineth . . . a rest to the people of God.—Unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day.—This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing.