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The earth is full of war. Nor is it a new thing; it is an old thing. Since brother smote brother, fighting has been popular. Race has contended with race, nation with nation. One island of the sea, century after century, has carried arms against a neighbouring island. The warlike element is strong in human nature. Read history. Its letters are all red. History tells little of the triumphs of peace. Seventeen-twentieths of her pages are crowded from top to bottom, to tell the student of the triumphs of war. Triumphs of war! War has no triumphs. War is all disaster, all calamity, all ruin. There is in the universe a Spirit of right, a Spirit of goodness, a Spirit of love, and this we call God. This Spirit is an energetic Spirit. Its object is to have everybody to do right — to have everybody good, and to establish the reign of universal love — love towards Himself as the beautiful embodiment of these sweet and sublime principles, and love to all lesser ones whose nature and condition make them the object of benevolent designs and the recipient of benevolent efforts. This great Spirit, whose characteristics are what we have suggested, has within His bosom these benevolent wishes, and His wishes when expressed become law unto us and unto every order of being. Man contends against them; man rejects them. In so doing man declares war against God. And this God, against whom man is at war, is not a Being disconnected from us, whose Spirit is separate from our spirit; but He is a Being associated with us, and whose Spirit is mingled with our spirit. He is not a power that is remote, foreign, arbitrary; He is a power that is nigh, that is native, and whose workings are co-operative with our faculties. It is the Father's Spirit lovingly contending with the child's spirit, striving to bring it into sympathetic alliance with that which is good. The war, therefore, on the part of man with God, is a war within his own members; a war between that which is right and wrong in tendency and principle, between that which is pure and impure in passion, between that which is holy and unholy in deed. The evil in man contends with that which is good in him. The war is the war with nature. The fight is spiritual. The Waterloo is the Waterloo of the soul. Indeed, man might be likened to a globe composed of two hemispheres, whereof the one is black, the other white. Over civilized people the evil does not hold dominion; it seeks dominion and fights for it. In civilized classes men are not possessed of the devil; the devil striveth to possess them. This is the cause of the war, then. The elements in him are of opposite character and in actual contention. And only when the evil in him is eradicated, and the good in him is not only thoroughly rooted in him, but moves upward and develops in the course of its growth unmolested, will the war within him cease, and his nature find its original but long-lost heritage of peace. The text says that the fruit of the Spirit is peace. The ultimate result of those Divine operations which work their change in men is peacefulness; and this word "peacefulness" is one of those mirror-like words which are framed into every language, because of its fine capacity to receive and reflect happy impressions. "Home" is one of these words. "Mother" is another, and "peace" is a third. Looking into its reflected depths you behold a sky without a cloud; a sun whose rays are genial without being fierce; fields waving with abundant harvests; broad stretches of territory on which no armies manoeuvre. In the plains no battles smoke; in the cities no sack nor pillage; in the hamlets no blazing cottage; on the sea no hostile armaments. These are the scenes, the lovely scenes, the charming scenes which the word reflects in reference to material interests and prosperity. But other and more lovely images are in it. Men and women find therein reflection — men and women with happy faces, with countenances that glow in innocent pleasure; men and women with no war within their natures; whose passions are orderly and under correct government; whose feelings are pure, whose emotions are all noble, whose aspirations are heavenly, whose consciences are undisturbed; men and women at peace with themselves, with surrounding nature, and with God. The earth shall come to such a day. Its mountains shall behold the rising of its sun. The hills shall clap their hands at its coming, and its fields through all their bounteous growth shall laugh as they receive of the benevolence of its quickening beam. The golden age of which the ancient poets sang, the old star-gazing dreamers dreamed, and the prophets who saw with eyes that looked not out of mortal sockets, predicted; when the swords shall be beaten into ploughshares, and the spears be turned into pruning-hooks; when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together, and a little child shall lead them — this age, I say, shall come. And the human race, which has been like a ship long tossed on stormy waves, and which many times has come nigh unto utter wreck, shall sail in toward a coast whose winds blow fair, and be wafted by favouring and fragrant gales into the wished-for harbour of repose. But how shall the race come to such a time? you ask; and by what power shall man be changed — as he must be — or ever he can stand like a perfect note in this sweet psalm? By the Spirit of God, I answer. Ay, the work of the Spirit shall bring it about, and by the operations of the Spirit shall it be caused. The Spirit that is mighty; that is pure; that is peace-working; that bloweth like the wind whose home is all lands, and which moveth its salutary influences through all climes; — the Spirit of God shall bring it about. Here we see the philosophy of that peace which is the fruit of the Spirit. Its causes are found in the enlightenment of the understanding and the regeneration of the soul, by which men are made to see what is for their true and lasting happiness, and to seek after it with all the energy of their natural powers, reinforced with other and superior energies imparted to them by the Author of their souls. And when this twofold work is accomplished, the nature of a man cometh unto peace, because out of it have been eradicated the causes that produce war. The sons of God are, therefore, with peculiar aptness, called the sons of peace. They are peaceful in their disposition; peaceful in their conduct; peaceful in their lives, and peaceful in their resignation when they come to die.

(W. H. Murray, D. D.)

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KJV: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,

WEB: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith,