The ideal achievement of peace is here in Bethlehem where the mother holds the Holy Child to her breast, while her spirit is utterly in union with Him Who is both man and God.  There is never any break in the pure peace of S. Mary because there is never any moment when her will is separated from the will of God, when her union with Him fails.  This peace of perfect union has, through the merits of her Son, been hers always; she has never known the wrench of the will that separates itself from God.  She has always been poor; she has been perplexed with life; she has suffered and will suffer intensely, suffer most where she loves most; but peace she has never lost, because her will has never wavered in its allegiance.  What visibly she is doing in these moments of her great joy, holding God to her breast in a passion of love, she in fact is doing always—­always is she one with God.

That undisturbed peace of a never broken union is never possible for us.  We have known what it is to reject the will of God and go our own way and indulge the appetites of our nature in violation of our recognised standards of life.  If we are to come to peace it must be along the rough road of repentance.  And it is wholly just that it should be so; that we should win back to God at the expense of shame and suffering; that we should retrace the road that we have travelled, with weary feet and bleeding heart.  This after all does not much matter:  what does matter immensely is that there is a road back to God and that we find it.  What matters is that we discover that repentance and reformation are the only road to peace.  We are offered many other roads alleged to lead to the same place; but not even a child should be deceived by the modern substitutes for repentance, by the shallow teaching whereby it is attempted to persuade men of the innocence of sin.  They are never worth discussing, these modern substitutes for repentance.  Men accept them, not because they are rational or convincing, but because they offer a justification for going the way that they have already made up their minds to go.  But it is plain that whatever else they do they do not afford a basis for peace.  They are no rock foundation for eternity.  Other foundation for peace can no man lay or has laid than the acceptance of the salvation offered in Jesus Christ.  He is our peace; and when we discover that, He makes peace in us by the application to our souls of the Blood of His Cross.  This is the peace He came to bring.  This the peace that the angels announced as they sang over Bethlehem.  This is the peace which is ceaselessly proclaimed from the altars of the Christian Church, the peace of God which passeth understanding, the peace which is offered to all men of good will.