Jeremiah 6:14

They have healed also the hurt. .. slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.

Healing our wounds slightly

I. What need we all have of healing.

1. Asserted in Scripture.

2. Confirmed by experience.

II. Who they are that heal their wounds slightly.

1. They who rely on the uncovenanted mercy of God, fatally deceive their souls by expecting mercy contrary to Gospel.

2. They who take refuge in a round of duties; no attainments can stand in place of Christ.

3. They who rest in a faith that is unproductive of good works; but the faith that apprehends Christ will “work by love,” “purify the heart,” “overcome the world.”

III. How we may have them healed effectually.

1. The Lord Jesus has provided a remedy for sin (Isaiah 53:5).

2. That remedy applied by faith shall be effectual for all who trust in it.

Address--

1. Those who feel not their need of healing.

2. Those who, after having derived some benefits from Christ, have relapsed into sin.

3. Those who are enjoying health in their souls. (C. Simeon, M. A.)

False teachers

How mischievous is that false kindness which is afraid of telling you honestly the state of the case, if it happen to be dangerous or desperate! Now, in regard of their eternal concerns, men have a willingness to be deceived, though in regard of their temporal concerns, they are keenly alive to attempts at imposition, and eager to resent them. They commonly prefer the moral physician who will make light of their vices, and not startle them by faithfully exposing their danger, though, were they similarly beguiled by one whom they consulted on a bodily malady, they would denounce him as guilty of the most hateful perfidy. And it may be for your profit, if we look into some of the more ordinary cases. First, we would remind you that, if there be truth in the statements of Scripture, there is a distinction the very strongest between the people of the world and the people of God. Yet, here is the respect in which, perhaps, the danger is the greatest of the moral hurt being only slightly healed, and peace prophesied when there is no peace. The worldly are well pleased to have the differences between themselves and the religious made as few and unimportant as possible, inasmuch as they are thus soothed into a persuasion that after all they are in no great danger of the wrath of the Almighty. On the other hand, those who profess a concern for the soul are often still so much inclined to the pursuits and the pleasures of earth, that they have a ready ear for any doctrine which seems to offer them the joys of the next life, without requiring continued self-denial in this life. Thus it is an unpopular thing, opposed to the inclinations of the majority of hearers, to insist upon the breadth of separation between the worldly and the religious, to represent, without qualification or disguise, that the attempting to serve two masters is the certain serving of only one, and that the master whose wages is death. But if we would be faithful in the ministry, this is what we must do. To do otherwise, would be to play with your souls--to lead you into delusion, which, if continued, must leave you shipwrecked for eternity. Take another case, the case of those in whom has been produced a conviction of sin, whose consciences after a long slumber have been aroused to do their office and have done it with great energy. It is no uncommon thing for conviction of sin not to be followed by conversion. Hundreds who have been stirred for a time to a sense of guilt and danger, in place of advancing to genuine penitence have lapsed back into former indifference. Ah, this is amongst the most alarming of moral phenomena. The signs and earnest, as we thought of life, give a melancholy and mysterious interest to death. Let the ministers of religion take heed that they be not accessory to so disappointing an occurrence, and they easily may be. The spiritual physician may be too hasty in applying to the wounded conscience the balm of the Gospel; and thus he may arrest that process of godly contrition which seemed so hopefully begun. It is no time to speak of free forgiveness till the man exclaims in the agony of alarm and almost of despair, “What must I do to be saved?” Then display the Cross. Then expatiate on the glorious truth, that “the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.” Then point to the unsearchable riches of Christ, and meet every doubt, oppose every objection, and combat every fear by exhibiting the mighty fact of an atonement for sin. But the case suggested by our text is that of a too hasty appropriation of the consolations of Christianity, and this case we cannot doubt is of frequent occurrence. Not, indeed, that whenever conviction of sin is not followed by conversion, the cause is to be found in the premature use of the mercies of the Gospel. We know too well that in many instances the conscience which had been mysteriously aroused is as mysteriously quieted; so that, without a solitary reason, men who had manifested anxiety as to their souls, and apparently been earnest in seeking salvation, are soon again found amongst the careless and indifferent, as busy as ever with chasing shadows, as pleased as ever with things that perish in the using. For a moment they have seemed conscious of their immortality and have risen to the dignity of deathless beings, and then the pulse has ceased to beat, and they have again been creatures of a day in place of heirs of eternity. Still, if there be many instances in which we may not fairly ascribe to a too hasty appropriation of the mercies of the Gospel, the failure of what seemed hopefully commenced, we may justly say that such an exhibition is likely to produce so disappointing a result, and that the probability is that it frequently does. We have further to remark, that the peculiar doctrines of Christianity are strongly offensive to the great body of men, and that on this account chiefly it is that there is so much reluctance to the bringing them forward, and so much readiness to explain them away. You cannot fail to be aware that the offence of the Cross has not ceased, you must be sufficiently aware that these are not days when men are called to join the noble army of martyrs, yet there is an opposition to the peculiar doctrines of the Gospel, an opposition which gives as much cause now as there was in earlier days for the Saviour to exclaim, “Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in Me.” So that here is a precise case in which the known feelings of the generality of men place the teacher under a temptation to keep back truth, or of stating it so equivocally that its full force shall not be felt, He cannot be ignorant that if he set forth without reserve, or disguise the corruption and helplessness of man, insist on the perfect gratuitousness of salvation, and refer to God’s mercy and distinguishing grace as first exciting the desire for deliverance, and then enabling us to lay hold upon the provided succours, he will have to encounter the antipathies of perhaps a majority of his hearers; and he is consequently and naturally moved to the concealing much, and the softening down more; and if he yield to the temptation, then we have that mixed and diluted theology which does not, indeed, exclude Christ, but assigns much to man, which without denying the meritorious obedience and sufferings of the Mediator soothes our pride with an assurance that by our good works we contribute something towards the attainment of everlasting happiness. By encouraging the opinion that men are not very far gone from original righteousness, that notwithstanding the fall, they retain a moral power of doing what shall be acceptable to God, and that their salvation is to result from the combination of their own efforts and the merits of Christ, we maintain that by encouraging such opinions as these, the teacher flatters his hearers with the most pernicious of all flattery, hiding from them their actual condition, and instructing them, how to miss, at the same time that they think they are securing deliverance. Probably enough has been advanced to certify you not only of the possible occurrence but of the grievous peril which must lie in the substituting in religion what is superficial for what ought to be radical. It is on this that we are most anxious to fix your attention. We want to have you satisfied that there can be no falser kindness than that which should hide from men their real condition, and that it is the very extreme of danger when those who are tottering believe themselves secure. It needs no small courage--we ought rather to say, it needs no small grace--to be willing to know the worst; not to be afraid of finding out how bad we are, how corrupt, how capable of the worst actions, if left to ourselves. This is a great point gained in spiritual things, it is a great point gained to be able to pray with David, “Search me, O God, and try me, and see if there be any wicked way in me.” We call it a great point gained to be willing to know the worst; for so long as we stop short of this, we shall always be trying half measures, healing the hurt slightly, and therefore never reaching the root of the disease. We counsel you then to be honest with yourselves, honest in observing the symptoms of spiritual sickness, honest in applying the remedies prescribed by the Bible. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

False peace

I. A false peace, what is it? We do not mean, in describing a false peace, to depict the state of those who are utterly indifferent to religious claims and obligations. We are speaking of another class, in whose minds there has been at some time an anxiety concerning their state in the sight of God. They have felt that sin is within them, that sin is working out terrible results, and, unless some remedy be applied, must work their ultimate ruin. This anxiety has increased upon them; and at length they have found the anxiety soothed; its pressure has been alleviated, and at length it has departed. But it has been soothed by unsuitable means. To be in a state of false peace is to be in a state of composure--not of indifference, but of composure and satisfaction, in a belief that all is well when all is not well. And this may arise from various causes.

1. It may be that some are lulled into this false peace from the fact of never having had clear and scriptural notions of the true nature of sin. They have had their attention perhaps drawn rather more to sins and to sinning than to sin; and in their cases it may have happened that the course of sinning has not been a very atrocious course--that the habitude has never manifested itself in any very formidable way. Now, so long as our attention is fixed upon sins, and so long as our minds are drawing distinctions between the greater and the lesser amount of actual transgressions against God, we overlook the scriptural view of sin, as that fatal principle in the nature of man which taints every faculty, and which renders it utterly impossible that man should live in the light of God’s countenance.

2. But suppose men do entertain scriptural views of sin, as a deadly principle within them, still they may have very inadequate views of the justice of God and of His perfect holiness. Many minds are very apt to measure God, as it were, by a human standard, as if God’s mode of procedure would be governed on the same principles on which man’s mode of procedure is usually governed; and the consequence is, that they invest God with a kind of mercy which is altogether unscriptural. If the sinner views God merely as a God of goodness and tenderness and mercy, and thinks His justice is not to have its full and unrestricted exercise, then we ask, what are we to do with those passages of God’s Word which exhibit all His attributes in their just proportions, and their relations one to another?

3. False peace may also be produced by having obscure notions of the Gospel. If we could sum up the whole Gospel message, the whole of the rich provision of God’s mercy and justice in Christ Jesus, in one sentence, we should say, it is a remedy for sin; but multitudes hear the Gospel, in all its simplicity and fulness, and yet come to the conclusion that the Gospel system only calls us into a greater familiarity of relation to God, that it sets before us a more spiritual walk than the people who lived under the Jaw were accustomed to, that it calls upon us for a higher moral bearing, and that if we do in the main adhere to that, as if it were a second form of law exhibited to us, then all shall be well; but they overlook the fact that there is in the Gospel a remedy for sin--that it contains a provision for the healing, the true healing of the wound which sin has made.

4. This false peace may arise, moreover, out of an imperfect reception of the true Gospel. The doctrines may be received; the matters of fact upon which the doctrines are based may be received; the economy of the Gospel may be received, as far as the intellect goes; but there may be no surrender of the soul to the Gospel--there may be no yielding up of all the perversity of the natural man to the sweet and precious operations of the Spirit of God, seeking to establish His truth in the heart as a remedy for sin. Now we believe, that wherever these four, or any one of these four causes exist, the result is a false peace. And let it be borne in mind, that most men are very much disposed to be satisfied with a false peace. When the testimony of conscience has been stirring, when the burden of sin has been felt to be a heavy burden, there is a disposition to embrace the first offer of peace that presents itself. And why is it so? Because the burden is heavy to be borne, and the anxiety it occasions is a distressing anxiety, which is to be got rid of in any way. Anything, therefore, that can silence conscience, or that can lessen the severity of its testimony, will be resorted to, and will be regarded as peace.

II. The real nature of that only peace which can be relied upon. Let it be remembered, that true peace has relation both to God and to man; that is, it must be a peace on both sides--on the side of a just and holy God, and on the side of man with his “carnal mind” which is “enmity against God.” There must be peace on both sides; and the peace on God’s side must be a peace that shall be in the highest degree honourable to Himself; and in order to be strictly honourable to Him, it must be a peace that shall have magnified His justice, as well as given Him a just occasion for the exercise of mercy. It is plain, therefore, that man himself cannot make and establish such a peace, either by sacrifice or by service. Then the truth is, that God has taken the whole matter into His own hands. He regards man as altogether helpless in this respect; and God undertakes for the establishing a peace that shall be in the highest degree honourable to Himself, and in the utmost degree suitable to man. In graciously revealing Himself, then, in Christ, God has come forth from the light and glory in which He has dwelt from all eternity, and in the person of Jesus, the Eternal Word, has manifested Himself in an attitude of peace--is at peace. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.” In that declaration we “see the attitude of peace. God comes not forth, in the Gospel of His dear Son, as an avenger, but He comes honourably forth as a peacemaker. He comes forth, manifesting the strength and severity of His justice, and magnifying the perfection of His justice. He spared not His own Son.”

III. The danger of a false peace. There is present danger, and there is future danger. So long as a false peace is soothing our anxieties in regard to our state as sinners before God, this helps to deaden conscience; it does not always satisfy, but it subdues the activity of conscience, and opens a way for the subtle workings of Satan. Moreover, this false peace disinclines the mind of the deluded one for the definiteness of the Christian state and the Christian character--makes all the peculiarity that marks the Christian and the Christian’s walk distasteful--makes it regarded as too exact, as too minute, as going too far in its restraints upon the natural freedom of man; and the consequence is, that it is said, as it is sometimes said of some ministers of the Gospel, that their views are a great deal too high, that they expect a great deal more of people than they ought, that they are always raising a standard which makes religion appear so impracticable. Lastly, there is the danger of indisposing us to study the depths of the written Word, and to listen to those depths when they are brought out in the public ministry of the Word. So long as the imagination is pleasantly exercised, and the ministry of the preacher is like the song of one who hath a pleasant voice, and playeth well upon an instrument, there is contentedness; but when the depths of God’s truth are brought forth, then it is regarded as a dry matter--a matter in which they have but little concern; and whilst this state of mind exists, the false peace makes the sinner to lie in a perilous abode, like a man whose roof is on fire, and who is pressed down by the weight of slumber. But the danger is also future. If we die in a false peace, then in the day of resurrection and in the judgment we meet God as an avenger, and an avenger during all eternity. (G. Fisk, LL. B.)

Foundation of peace

There is a very true sentence of Lord Macaulay’s, in which he says, “It is difficult to conceive any situation more painful than that of a great man condemned to watch the lingering agony of an exhausted country, to tend it during the alternate fits of stupefaction and raving which precede its dissolution, and to see the symptoms of vitality disappear, one by one, till nothing is left but coldness, darkness, and corruption.” It was just such a situation that the prophet Jeremiah was at this time condemned to fill. We feel that there is real agony in the sentence of doom he is compelled to utter. What aggravated his own personal grief was that he saw the remedy that alone could save them, the thorough, searching, radical treatment of their ease that contained their only hope, and they refused it, and with the very grip of death upon them they turned for comfort to those who had the mildest treatment to prescribe, and who cried, “Peace, peace, when there was no peace.”

I. The prophet here lays his finger on the essential error--the formalist has no adequate idea of the significance of sin. To suppose you have healed the corruption of a man’s nature by the sacrifice of a turtle dove is the merest folly. To suppose that you remove the enmity of a man’s heart against God by crying “Peace, peace” is an incredible mockery. Peace with God is the will, and the heart, and the conscience at one with Him.

II. This ignorance of the priests as to the very nature of the sin they professed to cure reminds us of the truth of Lord Bacon’s saying, that that is a false peace which is grounded upon an implicit ignorance, just as all colours agree in the dark. You may cherish the ignominious ambition to have peace at any price. You may escape the problems of thought by declining to think. You may avoid the responsibility of freedom by voluntary slavery; you may escape the pain of repentance by ignoring the reality of sin; yes, you may refuse to acknowledge the obligations of the light by dwelling ever in the darkness; you may prefer to be the victim of error and superstition to being their victor; you may prefer the cowardly acquiescence of surrender to the glad triumph of conquest; but you will surely not delude yourselves into the belief that you have settled anything, healed any hurt, or that the peace you enjoy is a worthy one, with any elements of desirability at all. For let us be quite sure that true peace--moral or mental--is based upon an honest facing of the truth. It was old Matthew Paris, the last of the old monastic historians, who complained somewhat pathetically that the case of historians was hard, because if they told the truth they provoked men, while if they wrote what was false they offended God. The historian’s art, it appears, must have in it something of the photographer’s, whose bounden duty is well known to be to make men better looking than they are. It has been urged, that if you can persuade a man that he is better than be really is, he will try to live up to the new revelation. Overlook his faults, and explain his errors away, and he will take heart and grow better. The question comes back to an old one that has been asked and discussed again and again, “Can there ever be any moral uses in a lie?” Do we believe in that religious homoeopathy that proposes to cure one immorality by another, conceal corruption by falsehood, and cover sinfulness by lying? Can any possible good come out of such a practice? Can there ever be any moral uses in a lie? I think you will agree with me, that even if it were possible to obtain a satisfactory peace by the suppression of conviction on the one hand, or a misrepresentation of fact on the other, we are not at liberty to take it on such terms. To obtain a worthy peace we must face the facts. (C. S. Horne, M. A.)

A blast of the trumpet against false peace

It is no uncommon thing to meet with people who say, “Well, I am happy enough. My conscience never troubles me. I believe if I were to die I should go to heaven as well as anybody else.” I know that these men are living in the commission of glaring acts of sin, and I am sure they could not prove their innocence even before the bar of man; yet will these men look you in the face and tell you that they are not at all disturbed at the prospect of dying. Well, I will take you at your word, though I don’t believe you. I will suppose you have this peace, and I will endeavour to account for it on certain grounds which may render it somewhat more difficult for you to remain in it.

1. The first person I shall deal with is the man who has peace because he spends his life in a ceaseless round of gaiety and frivolity. You have scarcely come from one place of amusement before you enter another. You know that you are never happy except you are in what you call gay society, where the frivolous conversation will prevent you from hearing the voice of your conscience. In the morning you will be asleep while God’s sun is shining, but at night you will be spending precious time in some place of foolish, if not lascivious, mirth. If the harp should fail you, then you call for Nabar’s feast. There shall be a sheep shearing, and you shall be drunken with wine, until your souls become as stolid as a stone. And then you wonder that you have peace. What wonder! Surely any man would have peace when his heart has become as hard as a stone. What weathers shall it feel? What tempests shall move the stubborn bowels of a granite rock? You sear your consciences, and then marvel that they feel not. Oh, that you would begin to live! What a price you are paying for your mirth--eternal torment for an hour of jollity--separation from God for a brief day or two of sin!

2. I turn to another class of men. Finding that amusement at last has lost all its zest, having drained the cup of worldly pleasure till they find first satiety, and then disgust lying at the bottom, they want some stronger stimulus, and Satan, who has drugged them once, has stronger opiates than mere merriment for the man who chooses to use them. If the frivolity of this world will not suffice to rock a soul to sleep, he hath a yet more hellish cradle for the soul. He will take you up to his own breast, and bid you suck therefrom his own Satanic nature, that you may then be still and calm. I mean that he will lead you to imbibe infidel notions, and when this is fully accomplished, you can have “Peace, peace, when there is no peace.”

3. I shall come now to a third class of men. These are people not particularly addicted to gaiety, nor especially given to infidel notions; but they are a sort of folk who are careless, and determined to let well alone. Their motto, “Let tomorrow take care for the things of itself; let us live while we live; let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” If their conscience cries out at all, they bid it lie still. When the minister disturbs them, instead of listening to what he says, and so being brought into a state of real peace, they cry, “Hush I be quiet I there is time enough yet; I will not disturb myself with these childish fears: be still, sir, and lie down.” Oh! up ye sleepers, ye gaggers of conscience, what mean you? Why are you sleeping when death is hastening on, when eternity is near, when the great white throne is even now coming on the clouds of heaven, when the trumpet of the resurrection is now being set to the mouth of the archangel?

4. A fourth set of men have a kind of peace that is the result of resolutions which they have made, but which they will never carry into effect. “Oh,” saith one, “I am quite easy enough in my mind, for when I have got a little more money I shall retire from business, and then I shall begin to think about eternal things.” Ah, but I would remind you that when you were an apprentice, you said you would reform when you became a journeyman; and when you were a journeyman, you used to say you would give good heed when you became a master. But hitherto these bills have never been paid when they became duo. They have every one of them been dishonoured as yet; and take my word for it, this new accommodation bill will be dishonoured too.

5. Now I turn to another class of men, in order that I may miss none who are saying, “Peace, peace, when there is no peace.” I do not doubt but that many of the people of London enjoy peace in their hearts, because they are ignorant of the things of God. If you have a peace that is grounded on ignorance, get rid of it; ignorance is a thing, remember, that you are accountable for. You are not accountable for the exercise of your judgment to man, but you are accountable for it to God.

6. I now pass to another and more dangerous form of this false peace. I may have missed some of you; probably I shall come closer home to you now. Alas, alas, let us weep and weep again, for there is a plague among us. It is the part of candour to admit that with all the exercise of judgment, and the most rigorous discipline, we cannot keep our churches free from hypocrisy. Oh! I do not know of a more thoroughly damnable delusion than for a man to get a conceit into his head, that he is a child of God, and yet live in sin--to talk to you about sovereign grace, while he is living in sovereign lust--to stand up and make himself the arbiter of what is truth, while he himself contemns the precept of God, and tramples the commandment under foot.

7. There remains yet another class of beings who surpass all these in their utter indifference to everything that might arouse them. They are men that are given up by God, justly given up. They have passed the boundary of His long suffering. He has said, “My Spirit shall no more strive with them”; “Ephraim is given unto idols, let him alone.” As a judicial punishment for their impenitence, God has given them up to pride and hardness of heart. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

False security

I. How is it persons reach this state of easy confidence?

1. There is a disposition to acknowledge in a general way that they are sinners, though also to palliate the enormity of sin, and to gloss it over with the gentle epithet of an infirmity.

2. Then, to make all right, secure, and comfortable, the sentiment is cherished that God is merciful and will overlook our infirmities. But this mercy, so vaguely trusted in, is not the mercy which has been made the subject of an actual offer from God to man. He has stepped forth to relieve us from the debt of sin.

II. The evils of such a false confidence.

1. It casts an aspersion on the character of God.

2. It is hostile to the cause of practical righteousness, since it tends to obliterate all restraints, on the specious plea of all-availing mercy, and leaves every man to sin just as much as he likes. (T. Chalmers, D. D.)

Peace, when there is no peace

The value of these Old Testament prophecies for us is that they hold up the mirror to nature. Under different guises we see men grappling with the same problems, encountering the same fears, wrestling with the same difficulties, meeting the same joys and the same disappointments. History is ever repeating itself.

1. The same oppression, the same sin, the same corruptions which are causing so much anguish in our midst, were at work there, and from many a heart there went up the cry, “How long, O Lord, how long?” The means they adopted were not sufficient for the end, and that is just the point at which these Israelites join hands with many reformers in our days. There are fashions in these things as in everything else. With the crowd and with the priests in these far-off days it was sacrifice and burnt offering. With us the favourite nostrums are somewhat different. Let us look at some of them.

(1) There is what has been called the doctrine of culture. “Educate, educate, educate,” some cry, and that will put all right. The exponents of this school are enthusiastic, and talk of great things to be accomplished when the refinement and culture which is fostered in the “upper ten” has filtered down through university extension schemes and settlements to the working classes.

(2) Others, of a more practical turn of mind, think that the world can be set right by legislative means. “Better laws and greater freedom are what is wanted,” they say, “to elevate the people.” Life to them consists in the abundance of things which men possess. They laugh at the notion of a happiness which has not plenty, and ridicule the very idea of comfort or contentment in a one-roomed house.

(3) Another set think that if we could make the people sober all would be well. They tell us that almost nine-tenths of the crime and mischief in the country comes from drunkenness.

2. There is much truth in a great deal of what has been said by the advocates of each of these different systems, and within certain limits they are right. That they will ever reach the root of the matter is another thing. They are no new doctrines. Long have men tried them. And what has been the result where they have had freest play? A perfect cure? An approach to an ideal State? Alas, no. In some cases one or other of them, or all of them together, may have contributed to render life easier, or more comfortable to individuals here and there; but none of them, nor all of them together, have been able to heal the hurt of humanity. They are but the purple patches with which men seek to hide the festering sores. The trouble is in the heart, in the blood, in the innermost centre of our being, and till it is expelled from that citadel, there can be no hope for us, or the world. They who cherish the supposition that man at bottom is a lover of truth and light, of purity and goodness, fondle a vain conceit. Is there no cruelty, is there no lust in upper circles of society? Is there no impurity, no degradation, no oppression among the learned? Is there no misery, no broken hearts in the homes of the wealthy? Are there no tears, no sighs, no wrinkled brows where intemperance is unknown? (R. Leggat.)

Useless doctoring

In China they have some queer ways of doctoring sick people, and in Pekin, it is said, they have a brass mule for a doctor! This mule stands in one of their temples and sick people flock there by the thousands to be cured. How can a brass mule cure anybody? do you ask. Sure enough, how can he? and yet these poor ignorant people believe it. If you lived there, instead of in this country, it is likely that when you had a toothache your father would take you--to a dentist? Oh no! That is what they do in this country. In Pekin you would probably be taken to the temple where the brass mule stands, and be lifted up so that you could rub his teeth, then rub your own, and then think the pain ought to go away. If you fell down and hurt your knee, you would go and rub the mule’s knee, and then your own, to make it well. They say so many have rubbed the mule that they have rubbed the brass off in many places, so that new patches had to be put on, and his eyes have been rubbed out altogether. But a brand new mule stands waiting to take the place of the old one when that finally falls to pieces. It seems a very simple way to cure pains and aches, but, I fear, the pain is not very much better after the visit to the mule; and I am sure all boys and girls who read of the “brass doctor” will be glad they live in this land, even if dentists do sometimes pull out teeth that ache, and doctors often give medicine that is not pleasant to take.

False peace

Your peace, sinner, is that terribly prophetic calm which the traveller occasionally perceives upon the higher Alps. Everything is still. The birds suspend their notes, fly low, and cower down with fear The hum of bees among the flowers is hushed. A horrible stillness rules the hour, as if death had silenced all things by stretching over them his awful sceptre. Perceive ye not what is surely at hand! The tempest is preparing, the lightning will soon cast abroad its flames of fire. Earth will rock with thunder blasts; granite peaks will be dissolved; all nature will tremble beneath the fury of the storm. Yours is that solemn calm today, sinner. Rejoice not in it, for the hurricane of wrath is coming, the whirlwind and the tribulation which shall sweep you away and utterly destroy you. (C. H. Spurgeon.)