'They kept the feast ... seven days with joy; for the Lord had made
them joyful.'--EZRA vi. 22.
Twenty years of hard work and many disappointments and dangers had at
last, for the Israelites returning from the captivity, been crowned by
the completion of the Temple. It was a poor affair as compared with
the magnificent house that had stood upon Zion; and so some of them
'despised the day of small things.' They were ringed about by enemies;
they were feeble in themselves; there was a great deal to darken their
prospects and to sadden their hearts; and yet, when memories of the
ancient days came back, and once more they saw the sacrificial smoke
rising from the long cold and ruined altar, they rejoiced in God, and
they kept the passover amid the ruins, as my text tells us, for the
'seven days' of the statutory period 'with joy,' because, in spite of
all, 'the Lord had made them joyful.'
I think if we take this simple saying we get two or three thoughts,
not altogether irrelevant to universal experience, about the true and
the counterfeit gladnesses possible to us all.