XX REJOICE IN THE LORD This is a high-sounding note which, in our day, we so seldom seem to reach. I am not sure but we should be right if we said that joy was the highest attainable Christian grace, the final achievement of godliness. It has a bright eye, a sweet smile, a radiant countenance. It resembles perfect physical health. A man in robust health, unconscious of head, or heart, or lungs, or liver, or any other organ, has quiet and clear vision, something of color in his cheek, supple limbs, firm step. There is a freeness and springiness about him which is contagious. Health implies the effective and normal working of all the physical and mental faculties and powers. And so joy may be regarded not so much as a thing in itself, as the result and sign of the existence, cooperation, of other things. It implies the possession of firm faith, buoyant hope, and ardent love in the spirit of the man who has it. Of course it may be simulated, as an oil painting may be by an oleograph, or as real flowers by wax or paper flowers. But I am speaking of the real thing, that which you find in Paul, or in Samuel Rutherford's letters, or occasionally in individuals of our own time whose rest in God has seemed to be like that of a flower simply delighting in the embrace of the sunshine. I have known a few people of this kind and they have always been a wonder and a delight to me. I knew a minister who, on the very Sabbath after the death and burial of his best beloved daughter, went into his pulpit and preached from this very text. It was the only thing he could do. He could not rejoice in the loss of his daughter who had been the light of his eyes. He could not rejoice in his desolated home. He could not rejoice in his own tottering helplessness. But he could rejoice in one who had conquered death and had opened to his beloved child the gate of everlasting life. He could rejoice in the revelations Christ had made of the immediate transition to Paradise. And what better medicine could a bleeding heart have! "When all created streams are dried Thy fulness is the same; With this will I be satisfied, And glory in thy name." Now I know perfectly well that to try to stimulate people to joyfulness is waste of effort. Neither happiness nor joy can be had for the direct seeking. They are both fruit on the tree. Before you can get the fruit, you must have the tree and the ground in which to plant it and the sun and the rain and the congenial atmosphere. There is not, nor can there be, joy in the soul of that kind of man called |