"The first impulse of the 'natural man' is to seek peace by mending his external condition; to quiet his desires by increasing his ease, to banish anxiety by increasing his wealth, to guard against hostility by making himself too strong for it; to build up his life into a fortress of security and a palace of comfort, where he may softly lie, though tempests beat and the rain descends.

The spirit of Christianity casts away at once this whole theory of peace; and declares it the most chimerical (imaginary, fanciful) of dreams; and proclaims it impossible ever to make this kind of reconciliation between the soul and the life where in it acts. As well might the athlete demand a victory without a foe.

To the noblest faculties of the soul, rest is like a disease and a torture.

The understanding is commissioned to grapple with ignorance, the conscience is to confront the powers of moral evil, the affections are to labor for the wretched and oppressed; nor shall peace be found till these, which reproach and fret us in our most elaborate ease and luxury, and put forth an incessant and satisfying energy; till instead of conciliating the world, we vanquish it; and rather than sit still, in the sickness of luxury, allowing it to amuse our senses, we thrust ourselves upon it to mold it into a new spiritual creation. But attempt to make all smooth and pleasant in your outward circumstances, and you thereby create the most corroding of anxieties, and stimulate the most insatiable of appetites within.

But let there be harmony within, let no clamors of self drown the voice which is entitled to authority there, let us set forth on the mission of duty, resolved to live for it alone, to close with every resistance that obstructs it, and march through every peril that awaits it: and in the consciousness of immortal power, the sense of mortal ill with vanish; and the peace of God will virtually extinguish the sufferings of the man. 'In the world we may have tribulation; in Christ we shall have peace."  James Martineau.