There is a natural adaptation or provision in the Gospel, both by what
it brings to us and by what it takes away from us, to make a calm, and
settled, and deep gladness, the prevalent temper of the Christian
spirit. In what it gives us, I say, and in what it takes away from us.
It gives us what we call well a sense of acceptance with God, it gives
us God for the rest of our spirits, it gives us the communion with Him
which in proportion as it is real, will be still, and in proportion as
it is still, will be all bright and joyful. It takes away from us the
fear that lies before us, the strifes that lie within us, the
desperate conflict that is waged between a man's conscience and his
inclinations, between his will and his passions, which tears the heart
asunder, and always makes sorrow and tumult wherever it comes. It
takes away the sense of sin. It gives us, instead of the torpid
conscience, or the angrily-stinging conscience--a conscience all calm
from its accusations, with all the sting drawn out of it:--for quiet
peace lies in the heart of the man that is trusting in the Lord. The
Gospel works joy, because the soul is at rest in God; joy, because
every function of the spiritual nature has found now its haven and its
object; joy, because health has come, and the healthy working of the
body or of the spirit is itself a gladness; joy, because the dim
future is painted (where it is painted at all) with shapes of light
and beauty, and because the very vagueness of these is an element in
the greatness of its revelation. The joy that is in Christ is deep and
abiding. Faith in Him naturally works gladness.
I do not forget that, on the other side, it is equally true that the
Christian faith has as marked and almost as strong an adaptation to
produce a solemn _sorrow_--solemn, manly, noble, and strong. 'As
sorrowful, yet always rejoicing,' is the rule of the Christian life.
If we think of what our faith does; of the light that it casts upon
our condition, upon our nature, upon our responsibilities, upon our
sins, and upon our destinies, we can easily see how, if gladness be
one part of its operation, no less really and truly is sadness
another. Brethren! all great thoughts have a solemn quiet in them,
which not unfrequently merges into a still sorrow. There is nothing
more contemptible in itself, and there is no more sure mark of a
trivial nature and a trivial round of occupations, than unshaded
gladness, that rests on no deep foundations of quiet, patient grief;
grief, because I know what I am and what I ought to be; grief, because
I have learnt the 'exceeding sinfulness of sin'; grief, because,
looking out upon the world, I see, as other men do not see, hell-fire
burning at the back of the mirth and the laughter, and know what it is
that men are hurrying to! Do you remember who it was that stood by the
side of the one poor dumb man, whose tongue He was going to loose, and
looking up to heaven, _sighed_ before He could say, 'Be opened'?
Do you remember that of Him it is said, 'God hath anointed Thee with
the oil of gladness above Thy fellows'; and also, 'a Man of sorrows,
and acquainted with grief'? And do you not think that both these
characteristics are to be repeated in the operations of His Gospel
upon every heart that receives it? And if, by the hopes it breathes
into us, by the fears that it takes away from us, by the union with
God that it accomplishes for us, by the fellowship that it implants in
us, it indeed anoints us all 'with the oil of gladness'; yet, on the
other hand, by the sense of mine own sin that it teaches me; by the
conflict with weakness which it makes to be the law of my life; by the
clear vision which it gives me of 'the law of my members warring
against the law of my mind, and bringing me into subjection'; by the
intensity which it breathes into all my nature, and by the thoughts
that it presents of what sin leads to, and what the world at present
is, the Gospel, wheresoever it comes, will infuse a wise, valiant
sadness as the very foundation of character. Yes, joy, but sorrow too!
the joy of the Lord, but sorrow as we look on our own sin and the
world's woe! the head anointed with the oil of gladness, but also
crowned with thorns!
These two are not contradictory. These two states of mind, both of
them the natural operations of any deep faith, may co-exist and blend
into one another, so as that the gladness is sobered, and chastened,
and made manly and noble; and that the sorrow is like some
thundercloud, all streaked with bars of sunshine, that pierce into its
deepest depths. The joy lives in the midst of the sorrow; the sorrow
springs from the same root as the gladness. The two do not clash
against each other, or reduce the emotion to a neutral indifference,
but they blend into one another; just as, in the Arctic regions, deep
down beneath the cold snow, with its white desolation and its barren
death, you will find the budding of the early spring flowers and the
fresh green grass; just as some kinds of fire burn below the water;
just as, in the midst of the barren and undrinkable sea, there may be
welling up some little fountain of fresh water that comes from a
deeper depth than the great ocean around it, and pours its sweet
streams along the surface of the salt waste. Gladness, because I love,
for love _is_ gladness; gladness, because I trust, for trust
_is_ gladness; gladness, because I obey, for obedience is a meat
that others know not of, and light comes when we do His will! But
sorrow, because still I am wrestling with sin; sorrow, because still I
have not perfect fellowship; sorrow, because mine eye, purified by my
living with God, sees earth, and sin, and life, and death, and the
generations of men, and the darkness beyond, in some measure as God
sees them! And yet, the sorrow is surface, and the joy is central; the
sorrow springs from circumstance, and the gladness from the essence of
the thing;--and therefore the sorrow is transitory, and the gladness
is perennial. For the Christian life is all like one of those sweet
spring showers in early April, when the rain-drops weave for us a mist
that hides the sunshine; and yet the hidden sun is in every sparkling
drop, and they are all saturated and steeped in its light. 'The joy of
the Lord' is the natural result and offspring of all Christian faith.
II. And now, secondly, the 'joy of the Lord' or rejoicing in God, is a
matter of Christian duty.
It is a commandment here, and it is a command in the New Testament as
well. 'Neither be ye sorry, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.'
I need not quote to you the frequent repetitions of the same
injunction which the Apostle Paul gives us, 'Rejoice in the Lord
always, and again I say, Rejoice'; 'Rejoice evermore,' and the like.
The fact that this joy is enjoined us suggests to us a thought or two,
worth looking at.
You may say with truth, 'My emotions of joy and sorrow are not under
my own control: I cannot help being glad and sad as circumstances
dictate.' But yet here it lies, a commandment. It is a duty, a thing
that the Apostle enjoins; in which, of course, is implied, that
somehow or other it is to a large extent within one's own power, and
that even the indulgence in this emotion, and the degree to which a
Christian life shall be a cheerful life, is dependent in a large
measure on our own volitions, and stands on the same footing as our
obedience to God's other commandments.
We _can_ to a very great extent control even our own emotions;
but then, besides, we can do more than that. It may be quite true,
that you cannot help feeling sorrowful in the presence of sorrowful
thoughts, and glad in the presence of thoughts that naturally kindle
gladness. But I will tell you what you can do or refrain from
doing--you can either go and stand in the light, or you can go and
stand in the shadow. You can either fix your attention upon, and make
the predominant subject of your religious contemplations, a truth
which shall make you glad and strong, or a half-truth, which shall
make you sorrowful, and therefore weak. Your meditations may either
centre mainly upon your own selves, your faults and failings, and the
like; or they may centre mainly upon God and His love, Christ and His
grace, the Holy Spirit and His communion. You may either fill your
soul with joyful thoughts, or though a true Christian, a real, devout,
God-accepted believer, you may be so misapprehending the nature of the
Gospel, and your relation to it, its promises and precepts, its duties
and predictions, as that the prevalent tinge and cast of your religion
shall be solemn and almost gloomy, and not lighted up and irradiated
with the felt sense of God's presence--with the strong, healthy
consciousness that you are a forgiven and justified man, and that you
are going to be a glorified one.
And thus far (and it is a long way) by the selection or the rejection
of the appropriate and proper subjects which shall make the main
portion of our religious contemplation, and shall be the food of our
devout thoughts, we can determine the complexion of our religious
life. Just as you inject colouring matter into the fibres of some
anatomical preparation; so a Christian may, as it were, inject into
all the veins of his religious character and life, either the bright
tints of gladness or the dark ones of self-despondency; and the result
will be according to the thing that he has put into them. If your
thoughts are chiefly occupied with God, and what He has done and is
for you, then you will have peaceful joy. If, on the other hand, they
are bent ever on yourself and your own unbelief, then you will always
be sad. You can make your choice.
Christian men, the joy of the Lord is a duty. It is so because, as we
have seen, it is the natural effect of faith, because we can do much
to regulate our emotions directly, and much more to determine them by
determining what set of thoughts shall engage us. A wise and strong
faith is our duty. To keep our emotional nature well under control of
reason and will is our duty. To lose thoughts of ourselves in God's
truth about Himself is our duty. If we do these things, we cannot fail
to have Christ's joy remaining in us, and making ours full. If we have
not that blessed possession abiding with us, which He lived and died
to give us, there is something wrong in us somewhere.
It seems to me that this is a truth which we have great need, my
friends, to lay to heart. It is of no great consequence that we should
practically confute the impotent old sneer about religion as being a
gloomy thing. One does not need to mind much what some people say on
that matter. The world would call 'the joy of the Lord' gloom, just as
much as it calls 'godly sorrow' gloom. But we are losing for ourselves
a power and an energy of which we have no conception, unless we feel
that joy is a duty, and unless we believe that not to be joyful in the
Lord is, therefore, more than a misfortune, it is a fault.
I do not forget that the comparative absence of this happy, peaceful
sense of acceptance, harmony, oneness with God, springs sometimes from
temperament, and depends on our natural disposition. Of course the
natural character determines to a large extent the perspective of our
conceptions of Christian truth, and the colouring of our inner
religious life. I do not mean to say, for a moment, that there is one
uniform type to which all must be conformed, or they sin. There is
indeed one type, the perfect manhood of Jesus, but it is all
comprehensive, and each variety of our fragmentary manhood finds its
own perfecting, and not its transmutation to another fashion of man,
in being conformed to Him. Some of us are naturally fainthearted,
timid, sceptical of any success, grave, melancholy, or hard to stir to
any emotion. To such there will be an added difficulty in making quiet
confident joy any very familiar guest in their home or in their place
of prayer. But even such should remember that the 'powers of the world
to come,' the energies of the Gospel, are given to us for the very
express purpose of overcoming, as well as of hallowing, natural
dispositions. If it be our duty to rejoice in the Lord, it is no
sufficient excuse to urge for not responding to the reiterated call,
'I myself am disposed to sadness.'
Whilst making all allowances for the diversities of character, which
will always operate to diversify the cast of the inner life in each
individual, we think that, in the great majority of instances, there
are two things, both faults, which have a great deal more to do with
the absence of joy from much Christian experience, than any
unfortunate natural tendency to the dark side of things. The one is,
an actual deficiency in the depth and reality of our faith; and the
other is, a misapprehension of the position which we have a right to
take and are bound to take.
There is an actual deficiency in our faith. Oh, brethren! it is not to
be wondered at that Christians do not find that the Lord with them is
the Lord their strength and joy, as well as the Lord 'their
righteousness'; when the amount of their fellowship with Him is so
small, and the depth of it so shallow, as we usually find it. The
first true vision that a sinful soul has of God, the imperfect
beginnings of religion, usually are accompanied with intense
self-abhorrence, and sorrowing tears of penitence. A further closer
vision of the love of God in Jesus Christ brings with it 'joy and
peace in believing.' But the prolongation of these throughout life
requires the steadfast continuousness of gaze towards Him. It is only
where there is much faith and consequent love that there is much joy.
Let us search our own hearts. If there is but little heat around the
bulb of the thermometer, no wonder that the mercury marks a low
degree. If there is but small faith, there will not be much gladness.
The road into Giant Despair's castle is through doubt, which doubt
comes from an absence, a sinful absence, in our own experience, of the
felt presence of God, and the felt force of the verities of His
Gospel.
But then, besides that, there is another fault: not a fault in the
sense of crime or sin, but a fault (and a great one) in the sense of
error and misapprehension. We as Christians do not take the position
which we have a right to take and that we are bound to take. Men
venture themselves upon God's word as they do on doubtful ice, timidly
putting a light foot out, to feel if it will bear them, and always
having the tacit fear, 'Now, it is going to crack!' You must cast
yourselves on God's Gospel with all your weight, without any hanging
back, without any doubt, without even the shadow of a suspicion that
it will _give_--that the firm, pure floor will give, and let you
through into the water! A Christian shrink from saying what the
Apostle said, 'I _know_ in whom I have believed, and am persuaded
that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him until that
day'! A Christian fancy that salvation is a future thing, and forget
that it is a present thing! A Christian tremble to profess 'assurance
of hope,' forgetting that there is no hope strong enough to bear the
stress of a life's sorrows, which is not a conviction certain as one's
own existence! Brethren! understand that the Gospel is a Gospel which
brings a present salvation; and try to feel that it is not
presumption, but simply acting out the very fundamental principle of
it, when you are not afraid to say, 'I _know_ that my Redeemer is
yonder, and I _know_ that He loves me!' Try to feel, I say, that
by faith you have a right to take that position, 'Now, we _know_
that we are the sons of God'; that you have a right to claim for
yourselves, and that you are falling beneath the loftiness of the gift
that is given to you unless you do claim for yourselves, the place of
sons, accepted, loved, sure to be glorified at God's right hand. Am I
teaching presumption? am I teaching carelessness, or a dispensing with
self-examination? No, but I am saying this: If a man have once felt,
and feel, in however small and feeble a degree, and depressed by
whatsoever sense of daily transgressions, if he feel, faint like the
first movement of an imprisoned bird in its egg, the feeble pulse of
an almost imperceptible and fluttering faith beat--then that man has a
right to say, 'God is mine!'
As one of our great teachers, little remembered now said, 'Let me take
my personal salvation for granted'--and what? and 'be idle?' No; 'and
_work_ from it.' Ay, brethren! a Christian is not to be for ever
asking himself, 'Am I a Christian?' He is not to be for ever looking
into himself for marks and signs that he is. He _is_ to look into
himself to discover sins, that he may by God's help cast them out, to
discover sins that shall teach him to say with greater thankfulness,
'What a redemption this is which I possess!' but he is to base his
convictions that he is God's child upon something other than his own
characteristics and the feebleness of his own strength. He is to have
'joy in the Lord' whatever may be his sorrow from outward things. And
I believe that if Christian people would lay that thought to heart,
they would understand better how the natural operation of the Gospel
is to make them glad, and how rejoicing in the Lord is a Christian
duty.
III. And now with regard to the other thought that still remains to be
considered, namely, that rejoicing in the Lord is a source of
strength,--I have already anticipated, fragmentarily, nearly all that
I could have said here in a more systematic form. All gladness has
something to do with our efficiency; for it is the prerogative of man
that his force comes from his mind, and not from his body. That old
song about a sad heart tiring in a mile, is as true in regard to the
Gospel, and the works of Christian people, as in any other case. If we
have hearts full of light, and souls at rest in Christ, and the wealth
and blessedness of a tranquil gladness lying there, and filling our
being; work will be easy, endurance will be easy, sorrow will be
bearable, trials will not be so very hard, and above all temptations
we shall be lifted, and set upon a rock. If the soul is full, and full
of joy, what side of it will be exposed to the assault of any
temptation? If the appeal be to fear, the gladness that is there is an
answer. If the appeal be to passion, desire, wish for pleasure of any
sort, there is no need for any more-the heart is _full_. And so
the gladness which rests in Christ will be a gladness which will fit
us for all service and for all endurance, which will be unbroken by
any sorrow, and, like the magic shield of the old legends, invisible,
impenetrable, in its crystalline purity will stand before the tempted
heart, and will repel all the 'fiery darts of the wicked.'
'The joy of the Lord is your strength,' my brother! Nothing else is.
No vehement resolutions, no sense of his own sinfulness, nor even
contrite remembrance of past failures, ever yet made a man strong. It
made him weak that he might become strong, and when it had done that
it had done its work. For strength there must be hope, for strength
there must be joy. If the arm is to smite with vigour, it must smite
at the bidding of a calm and light heart. Christian work is of such a
sort as that the most dangerous opponent to it is simple despondency
and simple sorrow. 'The joy of the Lord is your strength.'
Well, then! there are two questions: How comes it that so much of the
world's joy is weakness? and how comes it that so much of the world's
notion of religion is gloom and sadness? Answer them for yourselves,
and remember: you are weak unless you are glad; you are not glad and
strong unless your faith and hope are fixed in Christ, and unless you
are working from and not towards the sense of pardon, from and not
towards the conviction of acceptance with God!