itating straitness of poverty. He was
driven from place to place, His purpose and motives were suspected, His
action and teaching resisted, the good He strove to do continually
marred; but He carried Himself through all with serenity. It is said
that nothing shakes the nerve of brave men so much as fear of
assassination: our Lord lived among bitterly hostile men, and was again
and again on the brink of being made away with; but He was imperturbably
resolute to do the work given Him to do. Take Him at an unguarded
moment, tell Him the boat is sinking underneath Him, and you find the
same undisturbed composure. He was never troubled at the results of His
work or about His own reputation; when He was reviled, He reviled not
again.

This unruffled serenity was so obvious a characteristic of the demeanour
of Jesus, that as it was familiar to His friends, so it was perplexing
to His judges. The Roman governor saw in His bearing an equanimity so
different from the callousness of the hardened criminal and from the
agitation of the self-condemned, that he could not help exclaiming in
astonishment, "Dost Thou not know that I have power over Thee?"
Therefore without egotism our Lord could speak of "My peace." The world
had come to Him in various shapes, and He had conquered it. No
allurement of pleasure, no opening to ambition had distracted Him and
broken up His serene contentment; no danger had filled His spirit with
anxiety and fear. On one occasion only could He say, "Now is My soul
troubled." Out of all that life had presented to Him He had wrought out
for Himself and for us peace.

By calling it specifically "My peace" our Lord distinguishes it from the
peace which men ordinarily pursue. Some seek it by accommodating
themselves to the world, by fixing for themselves a low standard and
disbelieving in the possibility of living up to any high standard in
this world. Some seek peace by giving the fullest possible gratification
to all their desires; they seek peace in external things--comfort, ease,
plenty, pleasant connections. Some stifle anxiety about worldly things
by impressing on themselves that fretting does no good, and that what
cannot be cured must be endured; and any anxiety that might arise about
their spiritual condition they stifle by the imagination that God is too
great or too good to deal strictly with their shortcomings. Such kinds
of peace, our Lord implies, are delusive. It is not outward things which
can g