CHRISTIAN JOYFULNESS.

"Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer."-ROMANS xii. 12.

This may be called a maxim of life, or a very brief, condensed charter of happiness.

Joy is not a faculty; it is a quality of action, or a mood which may belong to any or to all of the faculties of the human soul. There is a double action, both of the physical organization and of the mental. The nerve that is in health, and is directed according to its own nature, responds pleasantly and joyfully. If it be in unhealth, or if it be directed contrary to its nature, it has the inverse power-that of the infliction of pain. Properly speaking, pain is a quality of the body; suffering is a term which designates pain of the mind.

In respect to the faculties of the soul, in one way their action inspires enjoyment. If they be violated, or if they be wrongly coupled, or apportioned, or dealt with, then they have the power of producing suffering.

Now, pain or suffering, whether it be of the body or of the mind, is not primary. It is not the end for which the body and the mind were created. It is cautionary, alternative, remedial. Pain bears to the body, and suffering bears to the mind, the same relation which medicine bears to the physical system. It is not food. It is that which is taken for the purpose of restoring health where it is impaired. And pain or suffering is either cautionary, indicating that we

SUNDAY MORNING, May 3, 1874. LESSON: Eph. i. 11-23; fi. 1-7. HYMNS (Plymouth Collection): Nos. 217, 922.

are going wrong; or remedial, to bring us back from wrong ways; or educational, to inspire us to a higher development of life.

Joy is normal, or it is that which best becomes every faculty. It is the response which we have a right to seek, and which we have a right to expect, from every faculty of the human soul. In us, as imperfect beings, working upward, suffering is needful; but the needfulness of it is a sign of our inferiority, of our limitation, of our defects; and all forms of discipline, all self-denials, all cross-bearings, all cares and burdens and griefs, are signs of relative imperfection. And they are not to be despised. Nor are we to suppose that any man in this life-at any rate, until the later periods of it—will escape suffering and pain. It is one thing to regard pain and suffering as secondary, and instrumental to a higher purpose; it is another thing to think that they are legitimate things to be sought as if they were good in themselves,

The ideal of perfectness is that of the mind acting in a mood so high that there is pleasure in all its action. Pleasure is the testimony of any faculty that it is acting in health and aright.

Now, is Christianity to be a pain or a pleasure ?—I mean ideal Christianity. Is religion to be a pæan, as of victory, or a requiem, as of defeat? Is it set to the key of joy or to the key of sadness? In reading the New Testament promiscuously, you will find that both things are continuously recognized-namely, the certainty of suffering, and of exaltation. by suffering. You will find also that the New Testament is full and overflowing with the idea of joy and rejoicing. It becomes a question, therefore, of rank or gradation: Which is characteristic-joy or pain and suffering? Suffering and pain are characteristic of an imperfect condition; and all right enjoyments are characteristic of growing perfectness, or of a tendency toward perfection. Joy is a sign of health and virtue and holiness. Sorrow is a sign that we are taking medicine for the sake of health, but that we have not yet reached health.

Religion may therefore be a mere yoke, or it may be a

freedom from bondage. It may be, like a tune, set either to the major or to the minor key. It may be played slow, and therefore it may be dull; or it may be rendered with a sparkling effect. The popular idea of religion is on the whole dolorous. It is very much a commercial transaction. We pay a certain amount of sorrow here for the sake of getting a dividend of joy hereafter. We are willing to give up a great many things which are good and desirable now for the sake of receiving an equivalent, or more than an equivalent, by and by. People who are exhorted to become Christians feel that they are called from liberty to circumscription. From the great world, with all its ambitions and freedoms and plenitudes and excitements, to a strait and narrow way of the church in which they are to be children of hours, and days, and methods, and ordinances, and deprivations. To be a Christian seems to most people as my condition used to seem when I was forbidden the street, and the fields, and the forest, and the whole round of nature, and was told that I must not go out of the door-yard. "You may play in the door-yard, but you must not go outside of it," it was said to me; and I remember how wistfully I used to look down the street and see the boys playing in their freedom. I recollect how crazily I heard the drum and fife on military training days, and caught glimpses of the red coats as they marched to and fro down town. How these things used to stir my imagination! and how it grieved me that I, a poor little boy, was shut up there in the door-yard, and made to behave myself!

There are many who think that being in the church is being in the Lord's door-yard, and not being allowed to go outside of the gate, and play with bad boys, nor to roam in the forests. I do not so regard it. To be a child of religion is to be like a bird taken out of its cage, let loose, and taught how to fly through all the air, and in the branches of every tree. It is to be a soul taken out of its prison-house, and given its liberty, and taught how to use it. There is no man so fit to live a religious life as he whose soul has derived freedom from his God.

Religion, as presented to the world, has gone through very many moods. There have been periods of the world in which

religion was presented in its ascetic form. It is so presented in some quarters at the present day. In other words, because pain has been constantly an instrument and part of discipline, men have deified it. Self-denial, mortification of the flesh, and the crucifixion of lusts-to these, undue emphasis has been given. Religion has been preached as though the more pain, the more virtue; as though the more self-denial, the more Christian development. The ascetic school has damaged Christianity exceedingly. There is still, in the popular notions of religion, and in much of the teaching which prevails on the subject of religion, this vitiating element of asceticism, which makes pain and suffering a part of it: not an education toward it, but an element belonging to its very substance.

Then, as a shade removed from that, after openly avowed asceticism had been measurably rejected, there came up a school that held what may be called the sober, solemn view; and religion has been preached as a grand sobriety, as a magnificent solemnity; and men have been taught to have such a sense of the dangers of the future, and of the awful responsibilities which are laid upon them in view of the risks of the future, that they have maintained to the utmost a sober and solemn aspect.

Now there are hours for solemnity, there are hours for sobriety; but to characterize religion by sobriety or solemnity is as if a man should characterize nature by comparing it with the night instead of the day; or as if a man should point out caves, gorges, and the shadows of trees, and say, "These are the emphatic things." Which is the most, the tree or the shadow that it casts?

If you will read the New Testament, you will find that it constantly recognizes the reality of suffering, and that it gives a deep undertone of solemnity to it; but after all, let one read the New Testament, and he will find joy the regnant quality. The word joy, if you take your Concordance and look for it, you will find to be as thick on its pages as the dandelions will be in a week in the meadows. The New Testament fairly sparkles with a conception of joyfulness.

Then there is a view of Christianity which continually

makes conscience the vital point. So men are self-studious. They are all the time intently watching and judging themselves. They are under an anxious fear lest they shall violate conscience. There is a tension of their mind which prevents much naturalness or freedom in their lives. It is comprehended in the general phrase, a sense of responsibility.

Now conscience is a foundation quality. There are a great many qualities which are indispensable, but which are not lovely when they are constantly projected into the foreground. Conscience is to a man's mind what bones are to his body. Bones are good things when they are well covered up; but they are very ghastly things when they are bare. Many Christians are like skeletons that show nothing but bones; and they talk much of conscience, and the awful duties and responsibilities which are imposed upon them. These are specimens of osteology which ought to be excluded from the sanctuary. Love is mightier than conscience, and joy is the result of both love and conscience. Conscience is the bones, love is the nerves, and joy is that which gives color to the whole.

There are false views of life growing out of these imperfect, erroneous presentations of Christianity. Look, for instance, at the tracts which are distributed on the subject of religion. I can understand how about one half of these tracts, if a man was only sick, in a morbid condition, discouraged, shut up in a corner, might lead him toward a religious life; but if a man is in good health, in the full performance of life's real duties, joyous and happy, I can hardly understand how he could have a greater damp thrown upon him than half the religious tracts which are thrown around among men. The best thing about them is that nobody reads them. Look at the pious books which are sent forth through communities. See how almost entirely they run upon the minor key. See how shadowy they are. See how little there is in them that cheers, inspires, and comforts the soul.

Now, religion gives to us the largest manhood possible. By it we are brought out of lower conditions, and out of all manner of circumscriptions. The aim of true Christianity