through general pious exercises in the hope that somehow Rest will come.
The Christian life is not casual but causal. All nature is a standing
protest against the absurdity of expecting to secure spiritual effects,
or any effects, without the employment of appropriate causes. The Great
Teacher dealt what ought to have been the final blow to this infinite
irrelevancy by a single question, "Do men gather grapes of thorns or
figs of thistles?" Why, then, did the Great Teacher not educate His
followers fully? Why did He not tell us, for example, how such a thing
as Rest might be obtained? The answer is, that _He did_. But plainly,
explicitly, in so many words? Yes, plainly, explicitly, in so many
words. He assigned Rest to its cause, in words with which each of us has
been familiar from his earliest childhood.

He begins, you remember--for you at once know the passage I refer
to--almost as if Rest could be had without any cause: "Come unto me," He
says, "and I will _give_ you Rest."

Rest, apparently, was a favour to be bestowed; men had but to come to
Him; He would give it to every applicant. But the next sentence takes
that all back. The qualification, indeed, is added instantaneously.
For what the first sentence seemed to give was next thing to an
impossibility. For how, in a literal sense, can Rest be _given_? One
could no more give away Rest than he could give away Laughter. We speak
of "causing" laughter, which we can do; but we cannot give it away. When
we speak of giving pain, we know perfectly well we cannot give pain
away. And when we aim at giving pleasure, all that we do is to arrange a
set of circumstances in such a way as that these shall cause pleasure.
Of course there is a sense, and a very wonderful sense, in which a Great
Personality breathes upon all who come within its influence an abiding
peace and trust. Men can be to other men as the shadow of a great rock