'Twixt gleams of joy and clouds of doubt
Our feelings come and go ; Our best estate is tossed about
In ceaseless ebb and flow.
1 T. L. Cuyler. " E. W. Barbour, Thoughts, 2.
PHILIPPIANS IV. 4 411
No mood of feeling, form of thought,
Is constant for a day ; But Thou, 0 Lord, Thou changest not:
The same Thou art alway.
I grasp Thy strength, make it mine own,
My heart with peace is blest ; I lose my hold, and then come down
Darkness and cold unrest.
Let me no more my comfort draw
From my frail hold of Thee ; In this alone rejoice with awe,
Thy mighty grasp of me.
Out of that weak, unquiet drift
That comes but to depart. To that pure Heaven my spirit lift
Where Thou unchanging art.
Lay hold of me with Thy strong grasp,
Let Thine Almighty arm In its embrace my weakness clasp,
And I shall fear no harm.
The purpose of eternal good
Let me but surely know ; On this I'll lean, let changing mood
And feeling come or go;
Glad when Thy sunshine fills my soul;
Not lorn when clouds o'ercast ; Since Thou within the sure control
Of love dost hold me fast.^
3. This joy is independent of circumstances. — Eeal joy must be independent of outward changes. The longing to attain a state of life superior to the accidents of time and change shows this. The wisest men have spoken of following the right in the face of all consequences as the source of the highest and purest joy of man. The fellowship of Christ's joy gives this. It is a joy un- disturbed by sorrow ; it may seem to be weakened, but it is in
1 J. C. Shairp.
412 CHRISTIAN JOY
reality strengthened, by suffering. So those men found it to whom Christ said that their joy should be full. They never fully understood what He meant until they suffered. Peter came to feel it, not when looking into the silent depths of the Sea of Galilee in the calm evening, and remembering Him who once walked there, but when made a " partaker of the sufferings of Christ." It was not when rising to some lofty region of thought, wherein his " fiery pulse beat fast " with the contempla- tion of the Everlasting, that Paul felt this deep blessedness, but when cast down, forsaken, always bearing about in his body the sufferings of Christ, and while glorying in infirmity, that he knew the "peace which passeth understanding." So with the followers of the Saviour now. Changes, disappointments, battles, sufferings, only deepen the joy which springs from the utter surrender of self, and which finds its expression in the cry, " Thy will, 0 Father, be done." And even death itself, which damps out the joy of all other men, consummates the blessedness of those who, through fellowship of life, are partakers of the joy of Christ.
^ Stevenson prescribed cheerfulness for books as well as for people : "As I live I feel more and more that literature should be cheerful and brave-spirited, even if it cannot be made beautiful and pious and heroic. The Bible, in most parts, is a cheerful book ; it is our little piping theologies, tracts, and sermons that are dull and dowie." And all this was not the easy outflow of health and animal spirits, bidding other people be gay because the mantle of gaiety clung without effort to his own shoulders. It was the sturdy creed of a harassed, suffering invalid, with death constantly at his elbow ; a body hampered and restricted, denied what it most coveted, kept in a subjection that at moments bent the spirit but never broke it. No one ever had more obstacles between him and his ideal, or brought a more unfaltering courage to surmount them, or could say with a greater sincerity, "sick or well, I have had a splendid life of it, grudge nothing, regret very little." i
^ Paul " rejoiced in his bonds " in Christ Jesus, because, being chained to a soldier, he was enabled to speak the gospel message to that soldier; and, having a new guard chained to him every day, he was enabled in the course of due time to speak in turn to the whole of the Praetorian G-uard. What a blessed triumph it is, when a man rejoices in fetters, thanks God for his bonds 1 The
^ J. A. Hammerton, Stevensoniana, 223.
PHILIPPIANS IV. 4 413
veiy clanking of the chains of the Apostle Paul had a voice for his Master ! When Dober, the Moravian missionary, first went down to St. Thomas to labour for the blacks, and was told that he could never get a chance to reach and teach the slaves there because he was not a slave himself, he said, " We will sell ourselves into slavery and work by their side." Dober rejoiced in bonds for Christ Jesus if those fetters could be the means of telling the gospel story. Paul and Silas rejoiced in the stocks if the stocks could be the means of a wider preaching of the gospel ; and Paul writes that his own imprisonment, and his own boldness in preaching Christ notwithstanding his imprisonment, became the means of inspiring courage and confidence in more timid souls, so that many other brethren were waxing bold and confident to speak the Word of God in the face of opposition.^