Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 271, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1918 — Rest Given and Rest Found [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Rest Given and Rest Found

By REV. L. W. GOSNELL

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TEXT—Come unto me, all ye that labor and we heavy ladpn. and I win give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. .and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye ahull find rest unto your souls, for my yoke is easy and my Burden is light—Matthew 11:28-30. One minister remarked to another: •U get tired pf hearing people talk of

as a place there." The first rep Med: “So do X but it is a pleasant thing to rest when you are weary." Multitudes will agree with him. Indeed, one-third of the people In the' । world follow ’ a religionBuddhism —which! [ promises rest, or rather extinction, as its chief boon.

Two Type* of Weariness. The words of Jesus suggest weariness of two tyffes, which may be described as active and passive. Some are weary because they “labor.” The toil of life exhausts them or the endeavor to live righteously throws them Into despair. They cry, “For that which I do I allow not; for what I would, that do I not, but what I hate, that do I.” Pastor Hsi, a notable Chinese Christian, tells us that as a heathen he struggled to fulfill Confucius* ideal of “the princely man,” but finally gave up his efforts and solaced himself with the opium pipe. Others are weary because “heavy laden” with sorrow or guilt. Many sing wlthTenuyson: / ' And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill: < But, O, for the touch of a vanished hand And the sound of a voice that is still. George Whitefield was Sb oppressed by a sense of guilt that he lay for hours at a time on the floor of the public house where he worked; and John Bunyan has pictured himself in the “Pilgrim” with the great bundle on his back. ' But, no matter what form of weariness may trouble us, Jesus offers rest to “all” who labor and are heavy laden.

First he says, “Come Tinto me—end I will give you rest.” This we take to refer to that rest of conscience which he bestows as a gift on all who come to him. This settles their position eternally and they are “safe in the arms of Jesus.” What a great boon this Is! John Wesley found It only after he had been an ordained minister for years. He was on his way to Georgia as a missionary to the Indians when a dreadful storm arose. He was frightened, but found some simple Moravian Christians singing through the storm. Even the women and children were not afraid to die. Wesley discovered they had learned the secret of peace by trusting In Christ alone for salvation, and he became a seeker for the same rest of soul. ' He found it at last, and as the result the Evangelical Revival was born. To come to Christ is to believe on him, to trust him (John 9:35). To all who thus come he gives rest of conscience. - , But many who have this gift are still oppressed from day to day by the cares of life. To them Jesus.speaks again, saying, “Take my yoke upon you and ye shall find rest unto your souls." This deeper rest, which ta,, found by taking his yoke, Is well our attention. It may be well to ask the Question, what Is a yoke for? The answer is found in the reference of the test to a “burden.” The yoke is to enable an animal to draw its burden. Moreover, the burden will be “light" only when the yoke is “easy." It is just as when, amongst us, the horse’s collar is rightly adjusted and well padded : the animal then finds it easy to draw its burden, but otherwise its shoulder is galled and it refuses topull the load. Herg now we are coming to the practical point. Jesus tells us the very things we need in our yokes to make them easy so that the burden of life will be light. “Take my yoke upon you,” he says, “and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart.” It is because we lack meekness and lowliness that the yoke galls and the burden is heavy. As we understand it, “meekness” is our attitude to men, .especially, while "lowliness" describes our attitude to God. Jesus had both graces in perfection. In the very chapter where our text is found, men call him a glutton and winebibber, but he is unruffled, saying, “Wisdom Is justified of her children.” Again, God hides his secrets from the wise and prudent but Jesus in his lowliness says: “Even so Father, for so It seemed good in thy sight" When we are thus meek and lowly, it to evident the yoke will be easy and the burden light Yokes are made for two and those who wear Christ’s yoke may assure themselves that he himself will journey besld?them, contributing his great strength to drawing the burdens that oppress them. “In the world ye shall have tribulation, but in, me ye shall have Decca.’*