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. I am not sure that views
as gross and material are not often held by people who ought to be
wiser. In reality, Joy is as much a matter of Cause and Effect as
pain. No one can get Joy by merely asking for it. It is one of
the ripest fruits of the Christian life, and, like all fruits, must
be grown. There is a very clever trick in India called the mango
trick. A seed is put in the ground and covered up, and after diverse
incantations a full-blown mango-bush appears within five minutes.
I never met any one who knew how the thing was done, but I never
met any one who believed it to be anything else than a conjuring
trick. The world is pretty unanimous now in its belief in the
orderliness of Nature. Men may not know how fruits grow, but they
do know that they cannot grow in an hour. Some lives have not even