"You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You." Isaiah 26:3
"Perfect Peace!" That is what we all want. That, too, is what Christ offers us in his gospel. Among his farewell words we find this bequest: "Peace I leave with you my peace I give unto you."
After his return from the grave, he said to his disciples, three times repeating the same benediction, "Peace be unto you." Peace is thus part of the blessed evangel, and an essential element of the true and full Christian life. Christ desires us to have peace.
If we do not have it we have missed part of the blessing of being a Christian, part of our inheritance as children of God. It is not a peculiar privilege which is only for a favored few; it is for everyone who believes in Christ and will accept it.
In this blessed text you will find the path of the Peace of Christ.
James Russell Miller (20 March 1840 – 2 July 1912) was a popular Christian author, Editorial Superintendent of the Presbyterian Board of Publication, and pastor of several churches in Pennsylvania and Illinois.
James Russell Miller was born near Frankfort Springs, Pennsylvania, on the banks of the Big Traverse, which according to his biographer, John T. Faris, is a merry little mill stream which drains one of the most beautiful valleys in the southern part of Beaver County. His parents were James Alexander Miller and Eleanor Creswell who were of Irish/Scottish stock.
Miller was the second child of ten, but his older sister died before he was born. James and his sisters attended the district school in Hanover Township, Beaver County, Pennsylvania until, when James was about fourteen, his father moved to a farm near Calcutta, Ohio. The children then went to the district school during the short winters and worked on the farm during summer.
In 1857, James entered Beaver Academy and in 1862 he progressed to Westminster College, Pennsylvania, which he graduated in June 1862. Then in the autumn of that year he entered the theological seminary of the United Presbyterian Church at Allegheny, Pennsylvania.
