_Oh that I had wings!... then would I fly away._ That desire has never taken any one to heaven, but it has made them less useful upon earth. The breath of this desire is able to blight the flowers of social service. No one would be foolish enough to indict suburbanism as a mode of life. The day must surely come when few or none will dwell in the smoke-grimed heart of the city. But in as far as a man seeks the fairest suburb open to him in order that he may see little of, and think little of, 'the darkness of the terrible streets,' then the very life that restores health to his body shall sow seeds of disease in his soul.
There is only one way to rest, and that lies right through the heart of the world's work and pain. Rest is not for those who flee away from life's difficulties, but for those who face them. 'Take my yoke ... and ye shall find rest.' It were not well for our own sakes that we had wings. It were not well for us to be able to avoid the burden-bearing and the tale of tired days, for God has hidden the secret of our rest in the heart of our toiling. They who come unto the City of God come there not by the easy flight of a dove, but by the long, slow pilgrimage of unselfishness.
Yet there is a beauty and a fitness in this longing. It is expressive of more than the weariness of a world-worn spirit, or the thinly disguised selfishness of one who fears to pay the price of life.
When the long working-day of life is wearing away its last hours and verging towards the great stillness, the voices of time fall but faintly on the ear, the adorations and ideals and fashions and enthusiasms of the world come to mean little to a man who in his day has followed them as eagerly as any, and the heart within him asks only for rest.
God, if there be none beside Thee Dwelling in the light, Take me out of the world and hide me Somewhere behind the night.
When, like Simeon the seer with the Christ-Child in his arms, a man feels that for him life has said its last word and shown its last wonder and uttered its last benediction, the desire for rest is a pure and spiritually normal thing; it is just the soul's gaze turned upward where
beyond these toils God waiteth us above, To give to hand and heart the spoils Of labour and of love.