^ C. C. AlbertsoD The Gospel According to Christ, 193.
446 GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD
in Heaven caring for His children, and the "hope full of im- mortality " which He disclosed, ought to be the happiest of men and to show it.
^ No wonder the Christian has joy. No wonder the Apostle Peter could exclaim, " Believing, ye rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full of glory" (1 Pet. i. 8). Believing, we rejoice. In other words, faith produces joy. The relation is that of inseparability, of cause and effect. The believing is the cause of the rejoicing. Faith brings gladness. Trusting brings happiness. Let us not fail to notice also the nature of the joy faith produces. It is " unspeakable." That is, it is unspeakably great. It is also in its nature not a noisy, but " a deep and silent thing." In this sense, too, it is " unspeakable." And that is the reason, we doubt not, why it is so often mistaken for the opposite. Because it is calm and sometimes even grave, the world thinks it severe. But, as has been said, " The gods approve the depth and not the tumult of the soul." Joy may be a very quiet thing, a " calm rapture," as Jonathan Edwards once defined it.^
Old sorrows that sat at the heart's sealed gate
Like sentinels grim and sad. While out in the night damp, weary and late, The King, with a gift divinely great,
Waited to make me glad;
Old fears that hung like a changing cloud
Over a sunless day; Old burdens that kept the spirit bowed, Old wrongs that rankled and clamoured loud —
They have passed like a dream away.
In the world without and the world within
He maketh the old things new; The touch of sorrow, and stain of sin. Have fled from the gate where the King came in,
From the chill night's damp and dew.
Anew in the heavens the sweet stars shine,
On earth new blossoms spring; The old life lost in the Life divine, "Thy will be mine, my will is thine,
Is the new song the new hearts sing.^
^ G. ?.. F. Hallock, The Christian Life, 128. * Mary Lowe Dickinson
ST. JOHN X. lo 447
4. The abundant life is a life of eternal duration, — This is the most familiar aspect of the life which Christ came to give. Its most common title is " eternal life." Now " eternal " is not the exact equivalent of "everlasting"; it is more than everlasting; but it includes the idea of endlessness. The life in Christ can never cease to be. Here in the body, in whatever degree we possess that life, it must come to an end as far as its continued expression through these bodies of flesh and blood is concerned. But there is something in that life that has never found expres- sion, and that cannot find expression, in and through these bodies. There is something in its depths, not of man merely, but of God, something, not finite only but infinite, not merely temporal but eternal. This is why the true life that Christ called men to is always described as " eternal life." It is life above and beyond time and sense. It is eternal because it is nothing less than the life of God in us.
^ You have seen the aged, whose hearts expanded with their years into even wider and more unselfish affections; whose passions seemed to have been filtered away in life's discipline ; over whom the floods of trial had swept only to leave their rich- ness behind ; who had passed through struggle into peace ; whose serene virtues, as the sun makes bright whatever it shines on, inspired all around with a higher justice and humanity; whose hopeful faith loved to make excursions into that world which they approached; who lived in an atmosphere of beneficent, trusting, and devout thought — you have seen them going down that valley, often so dark, but not dark to them, because there shone into it from above a heavenly light — and here was life. The body might be dying, but the breaking up of the senses only seemed to reveal more and more the soul's light. I have seen such persons die, and laid in the grave, and yet in a few days the remembrance of that event seemed gone from the mind. I could never think of them except as alive. It seemed as if you might meet them at every turn, so entirely did the spiritual life in them overtop and embrace in its radiance, and keep out of view, all the circumstances of mortality. This is life. And more of it is often seen in the patience and submission and cheerful trust of those who can only wait God's will than in those who with their grasping and struggling energies shake the world. The true life is not in length of days ; that is but an inferior life which beats in the throbbing blood and flames in the whirl and tempest of the passions.^
- E. Peabody.
448 GREATEST THING IN THE WORLD
We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feeliags; not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives