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I. A problem to solve is given to every dependent moral creature, and to the human race. It is this; WHERE, IN WHAT, OR IN WHOM, WILL YOU FIND YOUR REST? A husband finds rest in home. A thinker finds rest in truth. A worker finds rest in the products of his toil. Israel found rest in Canaan. The saint hopes to find rest in heaven. Where does the soul find its present rest? As the psalmist uses the expression, "Return," we infer that he had solved the problem and found his rest. He must have found it in God, and in personal relations with God. The soul's rest comes in the voluntary uniting of the soul with God; it comes when the soul goes out of itself to trust God fully; or, more precisely, rest comes by winning the character that can trust. And that character is gained only by discipline, which roots out the self-reliance. This rest is no mere idling quiescence. It is not destroyed individuality. It is such rest as the "Man Christ Jesus" knew all the while he was going to and fro on the earth's highways. Many, looking over the conflicts of their early life, can remember how they won rest. They can recall their soul-struggle. They can remember how it ended in a glad surrender, which brought them peace.

II. THE SOUL'S REST, WHEN WON, NEEDS PROVING. It must be tried. It may have to be tried "so as by fire." In Birmingham there is a "proving-house." The gun-barrels are skillfully made, but there is no security in their use until they have been tested and proved. The bridge may be completed, but traffic cannot be permitted until it has been proved. Young people go from country homes with good characters, but the full strong manhood does not come until those characters have been submitted to stern city-tests. Our earthly life, more especially, perhaps, the early years of our manhood, are the proving-house of the soul-rest that we have gained.

1. Our soul-testings often come in the way of enlarged faculties and increasing knowledge. Perhaps there never was a time when our discipline in this way was more severe. The man must grow out of his childish notions. Every year is bringing us richer stores of knowledge. Much of it is antagonistic to our previous knowledge; more of it is felt to be incompatible with it. We are half tempted to associate ignorance with faith, and knowledge with doubt, and then to wish that we need not know. But the trouble passes when we can see that this is a part of the soul's proving-house, one feature of the discipline through which alone can come virtue and strength. "Let knowledge grow from more to more:" what matter, if only "more of reverence in us dwell"?

2. Our soul-testing often comes in the self-activity demanded in order to win world-success. Many a godly man has, for a time, lost his soul in the all-absorbing business, and civic, and political strain. There is no pressure put on men equal to that of heaped-up daily responsibilities. Under it their souls are flattened right down, silenced, stifled, crushed.

3. Our soul-testing often comes in the discipline of disappointment and failure. This we find represented in the psalms of Asaph. Such experiences made him feel uncertain about God - whether he really was on the side of the good. But these provings need but have a passing and temporary influence. Bunyan shows his pilgrim sleeping in the arbor, and letting his roll drop out of his bosom, losing it thus for a while. Only when lost soul-rest becomes a permanent state does it become fatal.

III. THE SOUL'S REST, THOUGH TEMPORARILY LOST, MAY BE REGAINED. God is always watching for the first opportunity to give it back; and the soul that has once had it is keen enough to seize the first occasion to get it hack. Here is the peculiarity of the psalmist - he had lost his soul-rest, but he was troubled by the loss.

1. All through the dark time in the proving-house he wanted to keep trust if he could. That made all the difference. There are two attitudes which we may take. We may want to doubt, if we can. We may want to trust, if we can. And though the false notion prevails that doubting - wanting to doubt - is the more intelligent, it is surely more reasonable that dependent creatures should want to trust.

2. All through the dark time in the proving-house the psalmist kept that love to God on which his trust was based. The trust was no mere intellectual conclusion, which could be upset by enlarging knowledge. He had gained his soul-rest by self-abandonment. He gained it by entering fully into the sonship which is based on affection. There is no fear of love-relations with God. Love may have its faded times. Other interests may seem to come in, and for a time push love aside. It will never consent to be pushed aside very long; it will soon say, "Return unto thy rest, O my soul!" - R.T.

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KJV: Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the LORD hath dealt bountifully with thee.

WEB: Return to your rest, my soul, for Yahweh has dealt bountifully with you.