On Rest, Its Nature and Use

The Case Before Us

You tell me that many live beneath a perpetual pressure; that the instrument of their labour accompanies them to the dinner table and to the bed, that the working week is nominally limited, but that the expectation of readiness runs through all seven days, and that the day which should be free is often spent in errands, in the management of life, or in that restless attention to the news and to the lives of others which shuts out retirement. I cannot pretend to speak with the knowledge of your circumstances beyond what you have laid before me; but I can, with some confidence, enquire into the nature of the grievance, and the principles by which it ought to be judged.

There is, I conceive, a double mischief in the state which you describe. First, the uninterrupted demand upon our time and thought contracts and blunts the higher powers of the soul, and makes us live at the level of utility and amusement rather than of ends which are high and abiding. Secondly, and of deeper consequence, such a habit tends to extinguish those affections and habits of dependence upon God which are the life of true religion. The question then is not merely how to stop, but how to be renewed; not merely how to suspend employment, but how to employ suspension aright.

What Rest Really Is

Rest is not the mere cessation of labour; it is a moral and spiritual state in which the man is permitted to detach his mind from the engrossing trifles of the hour, and to be occupied, in a loftier manner, with those ends to which his nature points. It is to be distinguished from mere idleness: the latter is a wasting of the powers entrusted to us; the former is their wise refreshment and direction. The Scripture speaks perpetually of ‘abiding’—of the branch abiding in the Vine—and teaches us that apart from that vital connexion we can do nothing of true value. It is in this sense that rest is more received than taken: it comes when the heart is brought again under the rule of a higher principle, and when the soul, with a thankful frame, ‘abandons’ itself to the God of its life.

I will not deny that there is a proper physical rest which the body requires; but the truer and more decisive rest is of the mind and of the affections. It is found in silence of the passions, in the recollection of the purposes of life, in that habitual temper which looks beyond the narrow present, and in devotion. To be thus refreshed, a man must sometimes withdraw—not as an escape from duty—but as a deliberate means of returning to duty with eyes cleared and affections warmed. This is not a counsel of sloth; it is an instruction in prudence and in holiness.

The Sabbath as a Pattern

In speaking of the example of a day set apart, I am aware that my own countrymen afford us a most instructive lesson. If the design of that ordinance be perverted, it will teach us how easily the noblest institutions may be transformed into occasions of neglect. As I have elsewhere observed, "The Sunday is with them, to say the best of it, a heavy day; and that larger part of it, which is not claimed by the public offices of the church, dully drawls on in comfortless vacuity, or without improvement is trifled away in vain and unprofitable discourse."

That stark possession of time by trifles is the very thing we see transferred into the week, when the mind is never permitted to be free. On the contrary, the Sabbath was appointed that men, "without being disquieted by any doubt whether they are not neglecting the duties of their proper callings, may be allowed to detach their minds from earthly things, that by a fuller knowledge of heavenly objects, and a more habitual acquaintance with them, their hope may grow more ‘full of immortality.’" It follows therefore, that rest rightly understood is not a jealous interruption of work, but its best friend; it is the interval in which the soul is re-adjusted to its proper ends so that the subsequent labour may be wiser, kinder, and more fruitful.

Observe then what the day should contain. It should be occupied with exercises which reclaim the heart from its selfish absorption: pious meditation, prayer, grateful remembrance of mercies, the reading of Scripture, the instruction of family and dependants, and the use of leisure in works of compassion and in plans for the good of our fellow-creatures. "Do they indeed ‘come into the courts of God with gladness?’ And how are they employed when not engaged in the public services of the day?" A day so employed returns a man to his week with a new principle.

Leisure, Idleness, and the Heart

It is necessary, for our present purpose, to mark with care the difference between innocent leisure and that unprofitable cessation which, while it may tranquilize the body, wastes the life of the mind. I have formerly warned against those who, though amiable and useful in the smaller circle, yet having no directing principle, possess only the ‘reward’ of outward complacency. "Inest sua gratia. Of such persons it must be said, in the language of scripture, ‘they have their reward.’" This is a sober truth; amiability without a governing principle is like a lamp without oil—agreeable for the moment, but not fit to enlighten the path of life.

Further: there is in many an easy complaisance to business and amusement which extenuates the real malady. Men will call their engagements recreation; they will flatter themselves that certain occupations refresh their spirits, when in truth they are but prolongations of the same worldly habit. "Idleness, profusion, thoughtlessness, and dissipation, the misapplication of time or of talents, the trifling away of life in frivolous occupations or unprofitable studies;" these are not simply social defects: they are spiritual maladies, and they are especially dangerous when they are reconciled with a decent exterior. The remedy therefore is not merely a change of employment, but the infusing of a higher principle into the use of leisure—an abiding aim which converts every interval into a source of sanctified strength.

Let no man think himself secure because he performs certain external duties. The peril which accompanies active life is that the agents, while they do much, may lose their animating motive; they may be zealous in action and cold in spirit. Hence the necessity of habitual self-examination and of prayer, that the affections may be kept alive; and hence also the wisdom of interposing seasons in which the business of the week is reviewed in the light of the higher law.

A Charge to the Reader

What, then, ought a person to do who is without any religious profession, yet conscious of that weariness which sleep does not cure? It would be affectation to thrust upon him a theological system which he does not own; but I would earnestly recommend that he consider the nature of his exhaustion: is it an exhaustion of mere bodily strength, or is it the dullness of the higher faculties? If the latter, he will seek not only diversion but enlargement; he will seek silence, the discipline of attention, the re-claiming of leisure from distraction so that he may think freely of the ends which give life its dignity; he will observe whether his affections are indeed engaged upon what is permanent and elevating, or whether they are scattered among small objects which never satisfy.

A week which never ends is cured, not by an artifice of the hours, but by a re-ordering of the heart. The means need not wear the air of devotion: they may be the deliberate withholding of that instrument of incessant demand which you have described; a retrieval of those human offices which solitude and noise alike deprive us of—the frank converse of a friend, the attention to a spouse or child, the study of some noble book, the habit of undistracted reflection. Above all, let him beware of mistaking mere stopping for true rest: the former may be an impatience of duty, a shrinking from exertion; the latter is a return to proportion and to principle.

Permit me to add one word upon the public side. If a nation’s health depends on the temper of its people, and if the vigour of public institutions is aided by a religion which enlightens the affections, then it concerns those who guide opinion and influence appointments to encourage—without enforcing—those institutions and practices which cultivate quietness of mind and devotion of heart. Let pastors and teachers, wherever they serve, insist upon the inward principle, and by the diffusion of a serious temper of mind, they will serve both the spiritual and the civil good.

I have not presumed to fashion a schedule, nor to supply a set of rules which would suit all constitutions. But I have urged, as the surest cure, that the heart be reclaimed from its restless engrossments; that leisure be sanctified by thought and affection; and that rest be sought as a condition in which the soul regains its right relations—towards God, towards our fellow-creatures, and towards ourselves. If such a temper be restored, the week will again take its proper form, and the man will be able to labour with intelligence, to enjoy without frivolity, and to sleep without remorse.