ord of Peace Himself give you peace
always, by all means. The Lord be with you
all.'--2 THESS. iii. 16.

We have reached here the last of the brief outbursts of prayer which
characterise this letter, and bear witness to the Apostle's affection
for his Thessalonian converts. It is the deepening of the ordinary
Jewish formula of meeting and parting. We find that, in most of his
letters, the Apostle begins with wishing 'grace and peace,' and closes
with an echo of the wish. 'Peace be unto you' was often a form which
meant nothing. But true religion turns conventional insincerities into
real, heartfelt desires. It was often a wish destined to remain
unfulfilled. But loving wishes are potent when they are changed into
petitions.

The relation between the two clauses of my text seems to be that the
second, 'The Lord be with you all,' is not so much a separate,
additional supplication as rather the fuller statement, in the form of
prayer, of the means by which the former supplication is to be
accomplished. 'The Lord of Peace' gives peace by giving His own
presence. This, then, is the supreme desire of the Apostle, that Christ
may be with them all, and in His presence they may find the secret of
tranquillity.

I. The deepest longing of every human soul is for peace.

There are many ways in which the supreme good may be represented, but
perhaps none of them is so lovely, and exercises such universal
fascination of attraction, as that which presents it in the form of
rest. It is an eloquent testimony to the unrest which tortures every
heart that the promise of peace should to all seem so fair. It may be
presented and aimed at in very ignoble and selfish ways. It may be
sought for in cowardly shirking of duty, in sluggish avoidance of
effort, in selfish absorption, apart from all the miseries of mankind.
It may be sought for in the ignoble paths of mere pleasure, amidst the
sanctities of human love, amidst the nobilities of intellectual effort
and pursuit. But all men in their workings are aiming at rest of spirit,
and only in such rest does blessedness lie. 'There is no joy but calm.'
It is better than all the excitements of conflict, and better than the
flush of victory. Best which is not apathy, rest which is not
indolence, rest which is contemporaneous with, and the consequence of,
the full wholesome activity of the whole nature in its legitimate
directions, that is the good that we are all longing f