Across whose dusky mounds forlorn
Can rise no resurrection morn,
The sombre mien, the funeral weed,
That darkly match so dark a creed;
But be thy brow turned bright on all.
Thy voice like some clear clarion call.
Pealing o'er life's tumultuous van
The keynote of the hopes of man.
While o'er thee flames through gain, through loss, —
That fadeless symbol of the cross !^
^ Paul Hamilton Hayne.
The Strength of Joy.
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Literature.
Cox (S.), Biblical Expositions, 124.
Dewhurst (E. M.), The King and His Servants, 15.
Dods (M.), Footsteps in the Path of Life, 144.
Grubb (G. C), Unsearchable Riches, 131.
Hamilton (J.), Faith in God, 303.
Hoare (E.), Great Principles of Divine Truth, 204.
Hull (E. L.), Sermons preached at King's Lynn, ii. 109.
Kelman (J.), Ephemera Eternitatis, 113.
Kemble (C), Memorials of a Closed Ministry, ii. 171.
Leach (C), Old yet Ever New, 242.
Mackay (H. O,), Miniature Sermons, 9.
Mackennal (A.), The Life of Christian Consecration, 146.
Maclaren (A.), Creed and Conduct, 83.
„ Expositions : 2 Kings, etc., 379.
„ Sermons preached in Manchester, i. 136.
Matheson (Q.), Bests by the River, 270. Moody (D. L.), New Sermons, Addresses, and Prayers, 412. Smellie (A.), In the Hour of Silence, 139.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xvii. (1871), No. 1027. Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), xviii. No. 1142. Wilson (S. L.), Helpful Words for Daily Life, 129. Christian World Pulpit, iv. 248 (Woodford) ; viii. 314 (Mackennal) ; xxi.
122 (Bum) ; xxxix. 6 (Hocking). Church.Family Newspaper, Feb. 24, 1911, 148 (Willink). Churchman's Pulpit : Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, xii. 181 (Burn),
185 (Hull). Gontempora/ry Pulpit, Ist Ser., iv. 163 (Burn). Examiner, July 9, 1903, 36 (Jowett).
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V
The Strength of Joy.
The joy of the Lord is your strength.— Neh. viii. lo.
In reading the Holy Scriptures, or hearing them read in the services of the Church, we fail to notice one outstanding feature common both to the Old Testament and to the New, and that is the extraordinary frequency with which we meet with short sentences which arrest our attention, and challenge our admiration alike by the simplicity of the words employed, and by the profundity of the thought expressed. Of no other literature of any age or of any country can this be said in equal degree, and even our oft- quoted poets, with Shakespeare immeasurably the foremost of them all, pale into insignificance before the Bible as the greatest mine that the world has ever known of priceless gems of pregnant and beautiful thought. Such a sentence is the text. It stands out as one of perhaps the first five or six most striking sentences in the whole Bible. Had Nehemiah left us no other message than just this one utterance, his name would still stand high among the great names of the human race, who through' the wizardry of felicitous phrase have enriched all succeeding ages by the power of an inspiring thought.
1. Some forty thousand of the Jews had returned from the Babylonian captivity. They had built their little temple amid the ruins of Jerusalem, and resumed the worship of the Lord's house. But they were few, oppressed, and in great misery. They groaned under the tyranny of the Persian satraps. The neigh- bouring Samaritans plundered their barns and fields. Their city was as yet undefended by fortified gates, and fell an easy prey to the troops of banditti who scoured the desolate country. " The city was large and great: but the people were few therein, and the houses were not builded." They complained in their prayer
5o8 THE STRENGTH OF JOY
that they were slaves in the land given to their fathers. They said, " It yieldeth much increase unto the kings whom thou hast set over us because of our sins ; also they have dominion over our bodies, and over our cattle, at their pleasure, and we are in great distress." In their distress they turned to Jehovah. They hungered to hear the Divine Law, which many of them had never heard, copies being so scarce with them and life so hard. They met in the street before the Water-Gate; and Ezra, the scribe, brought out the Law and read it to them, and gave them the sense, and caused them to understand the meaning. As they listened, they wept. The contrast between what they had been, and what they were, was too much for them. Once a great nation prosper- ing under the Divine care, they were now a few poor slaves dwelling in a desolate undefended city, tilling a few ravaged fields, withering away, as it seemed; under the Divine curse. They fairly broke down. There was a rain of tears. Their very hearts melted within them.
2. Nehemiah, the brave governor, saw that this was no fit mood for men who had so much to do and to bear. Grief would only unman them. And so he bade the scribe shut his book, and said to the people, " Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto him for whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy unto our Lord : neither be ye grieved ; for the joy of the Lord is your strength." What he meant was that, if man was against them, God was with them and for them ; and that if they were glad and rejoiced in His presence and grace, that would be a much better preparation for the hard work they had to do than vainly regretting a past that could not be recalled.