But now He is making us ready to receive Him, that it may be expedient for us that He should come back again.

In the meantime, do not let fancy paint ideal impossibilities. Your state is very critical. What you have now is God's last and God's best. Let every one remember their privilege and their responsibility. You have at this moment that within you, which, on God's own testimony, places you in a better and a more responsible position, than if you could have knelt with Mary at Jesus's feet, or laid your head with John upon Jesus's bosom.

V.

Christian Joy.

"Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice.”—PHILIPPIANS iv. 4.

WE

E are often taught that the privilege of a believer is peace, and his luxury joy. It is said that joy is the feeling of a young Christian, peace of an old one,— that we should cultivate, indeed, a rejoicing spirit, but that we are responsible for peace. Is this a true distinction? Is peace more a duty than joy? Is there any command to peace, in the Bible, half as express and absolute as there is to joy? Is there any duty, or any state of mind, more strictly ordered in the whole Bible than joy?

It would be well worth your while to collect all the passages in the Bible which speak of joy; and I marvel if you would not return from that search with a very different impression as to what the mind of God is about joy, and with a far higher apprehension of its application than you had before.

But if it be a duty, if it be a command, surely, there are very few commands which are worse kept. I do not wonder that the Church should have selected this as her last Advent note. We need to have it very much impressed upon us. For how little real joyousness there is among Christians. I am not, of course, speaking of the pleasures of Christians, when they take pleasure, as anybody else

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takes pleasure. But how small a measure of joy there is in the religion of the greater part of the Church ;-in our prayers, how little praise! in our services, how little animation! in our conversation, how little holy mirth! in our views, how little hope! Most people, when they talk about religion, always speak about their distresses and their sins. Our meetings, when we meet in social life, as Christians, are not half as joyous as the world's.

Or take us even at our highest festival of the blessed sacrament of the Lord's Supper. How little would a stranger entering in amongst us, at that time, suppose that we were engaged in a feast! What gravity, well nigh to melancholy!-what strictness, even running into severity! what sobriety, taking a tone of sadness! At least, we give others the impression that it is so; and that to a very great and a very prejudicial extent. And the worst of it is, that the more pious anything is, the more it generally wears a tinge of sadness.

I deeply sympathize with the feelings which have led up to what we must nevertheless call the breaking of a command. In a world so very full of sorrow, where there is scarcely a home that has not a deep bitterness,—with hearts always telling us more and more of our own wretched sinfulness,—and with a struggle, a dreadful struggle, always going on within, -with heaven often, as it seems, getting further and further off,-in a dispensation of obscurities, I know well what it is to feel,-"How can I be at peace? how can I sing the Lord's song in a strange land? how must I not weep and fast, and go heavily,— seeing the Bridegroom is taken away from me till He comes?"

And yet He said, who had experience of all these

things deeper than you,-"that your joy may be full." And He who best knows the anatomy of the human heart, -all its tendernesses, and all its capabilities, says to you, "Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice."

And was not it because He knew the exceeding difficulty of the duty that He embodied it into a sacred imperativeness, and to a most stringent law, and gave it the force of that solemn reiteration, "Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice?"

It is answered, But may not a Christian "rejoice in the Lord," all the while that he is not rejoicing, but rather grieving, about other things? And so long as he is inwardly happy in Christ, is not he fulfilling the direction, whatever may be his general demeanour, or appearance, or however contrary his feelings in other things may be?

They who say that, do not understand the meaning of the expression, "In the Lord." It is an expression which is often appended to duties. For example, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord." It does not mean,—though it is often taken to mean,-" Obey your parents in so far as they order you what is in the Lord;" but it means, "Obey your parents, as being yourself in the Lord, and because you are in the Lord, and as becomes those who are in the Lord, and for the Lord's sake." And concerning both these commandments, the things we are directed to do "in the Lord,”—it is remarkable that to each there is a parallel, in which those words were left out. For if in the Ephesians it is, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord,"—in the Colossians it runs, "Children, obey your parents in all things;" and if in the fourth verse of this chapter it is, "Rejoice in the Lord alway,"-in the Thessalonians we have it with no limitation,-" Rejoice evermore."

Therefore, I cannot hold that it is designed to tell us only that we are to rejoice in Christ, but that, being in Christ, we are to be in a rejoicing spirit always, about all things. And therefore we cannot take one iota from the commandment as it stands, the application is universal, Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice."

"Hard words!" some of us will be fain to say. But let us see their meaning, and then judge whether God is. justified in them.

At an immense and inconceivable cost, God has saved us. He saved us that we might be happy. Has not God a right to expect at our hands the recompense which will make Him happy, when He sees us so? Did not He do it for it? If you had done a millionth part as much for a man, to make him happy, would not you feel yourself aggrieved you did not see him happy? And shall Christ have died to purchase our joy with His blood, and then shall He look down from His throne, and wait for the result, and not find it?

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And again, the end of a man is the image of God. What is God? Perfect, absolute, cloudless, unshaded happiness! Where, then, does God see His likeness? In the downcast look? In the heavy heart? No; but in the heart that dances,-in the note that sings,-in the countenance that plays in the sunbeam.

Or take it thus. Who has influence, that great purpose of life? Is not it the happy,—almost always the happy? Are you not most influenced by the happy? When do you do anything well? Is not it when you are happy? Is not it in proportion as you are happy that you do anything well? And where are you going? For what are you rehearsing? Is not it a happy world,-happy service, with happy angels;-how happy! Therefore,