Quietness Disturbed: Quietness in Semblance

Quietness of spirit is sometimes disturbed by our desires and efforts to do good. The danger from this source is undoubtedly less imminent than that from some other sources. It is true, however, that it really exists. Truly pious persons sometimes defeat their own object and do considerable injury by permitting the suggestions of grace to be controlled by the unbelieving zeal of nature, instead of being chastened and regulated by the oversight of grace added to grace. 

We admit that from time to time we meet with something, which looks like quietness of spirit, with something which is a semblance of it; which, nevertheless, has no foundation in the true and sanctified adjustment of the inward state. The inactivity of nature, to which we have reference in making this remark, is a very different thing, both in its origin and its manifestations, from the calm rest of grace. 

Natural quietude is the result of darkness; spiritual quietude is the child of light. The one does nothing, because it is too indolent and too selfish to do any thing, and its rest, therefore, bears the fatal mark of being a rest in its own will. The other, which does nothing in its own choice, does all things in God’s will, so that its rest is in God and not in itself. The one is the rest of a man, who, unconscious of his danger, is walking blindfolded on the brink of a precipice. The other is the conscious rest of a glorified spirit, who walks in peace, and with open vision, on the golden pavements of the New Jerusalem.

— from The Life of Faith, Part 2, Chapter 13.