The sweetest invitation ever given from the lips of him who spake as never man spake, is "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11; 28). It appeals to the hearing ear, touches the affections, quickens fruition, develops aspiration, opens perception, and invites to the revelation of the real and eternal.
"Come unto me." What musical words! They chime with the tones of rest.
The question arises, How can we accept this invitation? How can we obey this voice? In the first place we must find out what it is that labors and is heavy laden. It is the carnal, material senses that build the claim of a self apart from God. Mortal mind is a claim of life, substance, and intelligence that has its origin in dust, and is reducible to dust. It is a belief of weariness in all its conceptions. From the cradle to the grave, it paints on the canvas of its own imaginings, its beliefs, fears, changes and tears. Its conception, birth, growth, maturity and old age, all are laden with weariness and burdened with labor, uncertainty, expectation, a searching for satisfaction within itself which is never found. It is in itself a realm of unreality, a creation of deception. Its hopes are as the leaves of some fading flower, its prospects, the cheat of some expectant gratification, its yearnings, the dream of some unsatisfied want, its realization, the weariness of its own claim in realities. The temporal and fading things of time and sense spin their own tangled skeins of labor and heaviness.
