'Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing
instant in prayer.'--ROMANS xii. 12.
These three closely connected clauses occur, as you all know, in the
midst of that outline of the Christian life with which the Apostle
begins the practical part of this Epistle. Now, what he omits in this
sketch of Christian duty seems to me quite as significant as what he
inserts. It is very remarkable that in the twenty verses devoted to
this subject, this is the only one which refers to the inner secrets
of the Christian life. Paul's notion of 'deepening the spiritual
life' was 'Behave yourself better in your relation to other people.'
So all the rest of this chapter is devoted to inculcating our duties
to one another. Conduct is all-important. An orthodox creed is
valuable if it influences action, but not otherwise. Devout emotion
is valuable, if it drives the wheels of life, but not otherwise.
Christians should make efforts to attain to clear views and warm
feelings, but the outcome and final test of both is a daily life of
visible imitation of Jesus. The deepening of spiritual life should be
manifested by completer, practical righteousness in the market-place
and the street and the house, which non-Christians will acknowledge.
But now, with regard to these three specific exhortations here, I
wish to try to bring out their connection as well as the force of
each of them.
I. So I remark first, that the Christian life ought to be joyful
because it is hopeful.
Now, I do not suppose that many of us habitually recognise it as a
Christian duty to be joyful. We think that it is a matter of
temperament and partly a matter of circumstance. We are glad when
things go well with us. If we have a sunny disposition, and are
naturally light-hearted, all the better; if we have a melancholy or
morose one, all the worse. But do we recognise this, that a Christian
who is not joyful is not living up to his duty; and that there is no
excuse, either in temperament or in circumstances, for our not being
so, and always being so? 'Rejoice in the Lord alway,' says Paul; and
then, as if he thought, 'Some of you will be thinking that that is a
very rash commandment, to aim at a condition quite impossible to make
constant,' he goes on--'and, to convince you that I do not say it
hastily, I will repeat it--"and again I say, rejoice."' Brethren, we
shall have to alter our conceptions of what true gladness is before
we can come to understand the full depth of the great thought that
joy is a Christian duty. The true joy is not the kind of joy that a
saying in the Old Testament compares to the 'crackling of thorns
under a pot,' but something very much calmer, with no crackle in it;
and very much deeper, and very much more in alliance with 'whatsoever
things are lovely and of good report,' than that foolish,
short-lived, and empty mirth that burns down so soon into black
ashes.
To be glad is a Christian duty. Many of us have as much religion as
makes us sombre, and impels us often to look upon the more solemn and
awful aspects of Christian truth, but we have not enough to make us
glad. I do not need to dwell upon all the sources in Christian faith
and belief, of that lofty and imperatively obligatory gladness, but I
confine myself to the one in my text, 'Rejoicing in hope.'
Now, we all know--from the boy that is expecting to go home for his
holidays in a week, up to the old man to whose eye the time-veil is
wearing thin--that hope, if it is certain, is a source of gladness.
How lightly one's bosom's lord sits upon its throne, when a great
hope comes to animate us! how everybody is pleasant, and all things
are easy, and the world looks different! Hope, if it is certain, will
gladden, and if our Christianity grasps, as it ought to do, the only
hope that is absolutely certain, and as sure as if it were in the
past and had been experienced, then our hearts, too, will sing for
joy. True joy is _not_ a matter of temperament, so much as a matter
of faith. It is _not_ a matter of circumstances. All the surface
drainage may be dry, but there is a well in the courtyard deep and
cool and full and exhaustless, and a Christian who rightly
understands and cherishes the Christian hope is lifted above
temperament, and is not dependent upon conditions for his joys.
The Apostle, in an earlier part of this same letter, defines for us
what that hope is, which thus is the secret of perpetual gladness,
when he speaks about 'rejoicing in hope of the glory of God.' Yes, it
is that great, supreme, calm, far off, absolutely certain prospect of
being gathered into the divine glory, and walking there, like the
three in the fiery furnace, unconsumed and at ease; it is that hope
that will triumph over temperament, and over all occasions for
melancholy, and will breathe into our life a perpetual gladness.
Brethren, is it not strange and sad that with such a treasure by our
sides we should consent to live such poor lives as we do?
But remember, although I cannot say to myself, 'Now I will be glad,'
and cannot attain to joy by a movement of the will or direct effort,
although it is of no use to say to a man--which is all that the world
can ever say to him--'Cheer up and be glad,' whilst you do not alter
the facts that make him sad, there is a way by which we can bring
about feelings of gladness or of gloom. It is just this--we can
choose what we will look at. If you prefer to occupy your mind with
the troubles, losses, disappointments, hard work, blighted hopes of
this poor sin-ridden world, of course sadness will come over you
often, and a general grey tone will be the usual tone of your lives,
as it is of the lives of many of us, broken only by occasional bursts
of foolish mirth and empty laughter. But if you choose to turn away
from all these, and instead of the dim, dismal, hard present, to sun
yourselves in the light of the yet unrisen sun, which you can do,
then, having rightly chosen the subjects to think about, the feeling
will come as a matter of course. You cannot make yourselves glad by,
as it were, laying hold of yourselves and lifting yourselves into
gladness, but you can rule the direction of your thoughts, and so can
bring around you summer in the midst of winter, by steadily
contemplating the facts--and they are present facts, though we talk
about them collectively as 'the future'--the facts on which all
Christian gladness ought to be based. We can carry our own atmosphere
with us; like the people in Italy, who in frosty weather will be seen
sitting in the market-place by their stalls with a dish of embers,
which they grasp in their hands, and so make themselves comfortably
warm on the bitterest day. You can bring a reasonable degree of
warmth into the coldest weather, if you will lay hold of the vessel
in which the fire is, and keep it in your hand and close to your
heart. Choose what you think about, and feelings will follow
thoughts.
But it needs very distinct and continuous effort for a man to keep
this great source of Christian joy clear before him. We are like the
dwellers in some island of the sea, who, in some conditions of the
atmosphere, can catch sight of the gleaming mountain-tops on the
mainland across the stormy channel between. But thick days, with a
heavy atmosphere and much mist, are very frequent in our latitude,
and then all the distant hills are blotted out, and we see nothing
but the cold grey sea, breaking on the cold, grey stones. Still, you
can scatter the mist if you will. You can make the atmosphere bright;
and it is worth an effort to bring clear before us, and to keep high
above the mists that cling to the low levels, the great vision which
will make us glad. Brethren, I believe that one great source of the
weakness of average Christianity amongst us to-day is the dimness
into which so many of us have let the hope of the glory of God pass
in our hearts. So I beg you to lay to heart this first commandment,
and to rejoice in hope.
II. Now, secondly, here is the thought that life, if full of joyful
hope, will be patient.
I have been saying that the gladness of which my text speaks is
independent of circumstances, and may persist and be continuous even
when externals occasion sadness. It is possible--I do not say it is
easy, God knows it is hard--I do not say it is frequently attained,
but I do say it is possible--to realise that wonderful ideal of the
Apostle's 'As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.' The surface of the
ocean may be tossed and fretted by the winds, and churned into foam,
but the great central depths 'hear not the loud winds when they
call,' and are still in the midst of tempest. And we, dear brethren,
ought to have an inner depth of spirit, down to the disturbance of
which no surface-trouble can ever reach. That is the height of
attainment of Christian faith, but it is a possible attainment for
every one of us.
And if there be that burning of the light under the water, like
'Greek fire,' as it was called, which many waters could not
quench--if there be that persistence of gladness beneath the
surface-sorrow, as you find a running stream coming out below a
glacier, then the joy and the hope, which co-exist with the sorrow,
will make life patient.
Now, the Apostle means by these great words, 'patient' and
'patience,' which are often upon his lips, something more than simple
endurance. That endurance is as much as many of us can often muster
up strength to exercise. It sometimes takes all our faith and all our
submission simply to say, 'I opened not my mouth, because thou didst
it; and I will bear what thine hand lays upon me.' But that is not
all that the idea of Christian 'patience' includes, for it also takes
in the thought of active work, and it is _perseverance_ as much
as _patience_.
Now, if my heart is filled with a calm gladness because my eye is
fixed upon a celestial hope, then both the passive and active sides
of Christian 'patience' will be realised by me. If my hope burns
bright, and occupies a large space in my thoughts, then it will not
be hard to take the homely consolation of good John Newton's hymn and
say--
'Though painful at present,
'Twill cease before long;
And then, oh, how pleasant
The conqueror's song!'
A man who is sailing to America, and knows that he will be in New
York in a week, does not mind, although his cabin is contracted, and
he has a great many discomforts, and though he has a bout of
sea-sickness. The disagreeables are only going to last for a day or
two. So our hope will make us bear trouble, and not make much of it.
And our hope will strengthen us, if it is strong, for all the work
that is to be done. Persistence in the path of duty, though my heart
be beating like a smith's hammer on the anvil, is what Christian men
should aim at, and possess. If we have within our hearts that fire of
a certain hope, it will impel us to diligence in doing the humblest
duty, whether circumstances be for or against us; as some great
steamer is driven right on its course, through the ocean, whatever
storms may blow in the teeth of its progress, because, deep down in
it, there are furnaces and boilers which supply the steam that drives
the engines. So a life that is joyful because it is hopeful will be
full of calm endurance and strenuous work. 'Rejoicing in hope;
patient,' persevering in tribulation.
III. Lastly, our lives will be joyful, hopeful, and patient, in
proportion as they are prayerful.
'Continuing instant'--which, of course, just means steadfast--'in
prayer.' Paul uttered a paradox when he said, 'Rejoice in the Lord
alway,' as he said long before this verse, in the very first letter
that he ever wrote, or at least the first which has come down to us.
There he bracketed it along with two other equally paradoxical
sayings. 'Rejoice evermore; pray without ceasing; in everything give
thanks.' If you pray without ceasing you can rejoice without ceasing.
But can I pray without ceasing? Not if by prayer you mean only words
of supplication and petition, but if by prayer you mean also a mental
attitude of devotion, and a kind of sub-conscious reference to God in
all that you do, such unceasing prayer is possible. Do not let us
blunt the edge of this commandment, and weaken our own consciousness
of having failed to obey it, by getting entangled in the cobwebs of
mere curious discussions as to whether the absolute ideal of
perfectly unbroken communion with God is possible in this life. At
all events it is possible to us to approximate to that ideal a great
deal more closely than our consciences tell us that we ever yet have
done. If we are trying to keep our hearts in the midst of daily duty
in contact with God, and if, ever and anon in the press of our work,
we cast a thought towards Him and a prayer, then joy and hope and
patience will come to us, in a degree that we do not know much about
yet, but might have known all about long, long ago.
There is a verse in the Old Testament which we may well lay to heart:
'They cried unto God in the battle, and He was entreated of them.'
Well, what sort of a prayer do you think that would be? Suppose that
you were standing in the thick of battle with the sword of an enemy
at your throat, there would not be much time for many words of
prayer, would there? But the cry could go up, and the thought could
go up, and as they went up, down would come the strong buckler which
God puts between His servants and all evil. That is the sort of
prayer that you, in the battle of business, in your shops and
counting-houses and warehouses and mills, we students in our studies,
and you mothers in your families and your kitchens, can send up to
heaven. If thus we 'pray without ceasing,' then we shall 'rejoice
evermore,' and our souls will be kept in patience and filled with the
peace of God.