S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.
Peace
Let us reckon upon the future. A time will come when the science of destruction shall bend before the arts of peace; when the genius which multiplies our powers—which creates new products—which diffuses comfort and happiness among the great mass of the people—shall occupy in the general estimation of mankind that rank which reason and common sense now assign to it.
There be also two false peaces, or unities: the one, when the peace is grounded upon an implicit ignorance; for all colours will agree in the dark: the other, when it is pieced up upon a direct admission of contraries in fundamental points: for truth and falsehood in such things are like the iron and clay in the toes of Nebuchadnezzar’s image: they may cleave, but they will not incorporate.
When we mention peace, however, we mean not the stupid security of a mind that refuses to reflect, we mean a tranquillity which rests upon an unshaken basis, which no anticipations, however remote, no power of reflection, however piercing or profound, no evolutions which time may disclose or eternity conceal, are capable of impairing: a peace which is founded on the oath and promise of Him who cannot lie; which, springing from the consciousness of an ineffable alliance with the Father of Spirits, makes us to share in his fulness, to become a partner with him in his eternity; a repose pure and serene as the unruffled wave which reflects the heavens from its bosom; while it is accompanied with a feeling of exultation and triumph natural to such as are conscious that ere long, having overcome, they shall possess all things.
Robert Hall: Funeral Sermon for the Princess Charlotte.
Great and strange calms usually portend the most violent storms; and therefore, since storms and calms do always follow one another, certainly, of the two, it is much more eligible to have the storm first, and the calm afterwards: since a calm before a storm is commonly a peace of a man’s making; but a calm after a storm a peace of God’s.
