^ I do not believe there lives on God's earth a man who has lived through more sorrow, shame, toil, danger, drags and insult than I have. This I know, whatever tries other men, everything that had deadly power to try me came. For fifteen years, from thirty-three to forty-eight or fifty, I never knew real health, and had to work on in pain and weakness day by day. For thirty years the only thing I ever really longed for was led. It sounds mean, I dare say it is mean, but it is true, and I wish to tell you the truth ; whatever joy or sorrow came, the overwhelming sense of weariness and endless pain made bed, forgetfulness, the only human solace that satisfied. It is only in the last three years that I have begun to joy again in my waking life. Yet, strange contradiction to all this, I count myself blessed to have been allowed to live such a life. I felt the warrior joy of life and the conqueror's joy of getting the mastery. In my worst agony I could not pray to have it taken away, so utterly, by degrees, did I feel the power and light that came. And now all creation has opened out to me by living, and everything that I count happy I know to have come out of the self-mastery and training and truth which those years of anguish brought. My positive creed is an absolute unfaltering certainty of life triumphant."
^ Joy and blithe serenity which received death with no alarm or self-abasement were the marked characteristics of the early Christians. St. Luke throws a flood of light on the tone of their society — " drunken, but not with wine " ; intoxicated, so to speak, with the rushing influences of Pentecost — when he says that '• they did take their food with exultation and singleness of heart."
1 A. T. Pierson, The Heights of the Gospel, 204. ' Edward Thring, Head Master of Uppingham.
414 CHRISTIAN JOY
The words indicate their bounding gladness, their simplicity and smoothness of feeling, as of a plain without stones, or a field with- out furrows.^
Speak to me, heart of mine, old and weary of years. Labour and loss have been thine, pains and terrors and tears ; Why art thou now so light, making my tired feet Forget the steps of their pilgrimage and spring as if life were sweet ?
Why? Because life is sweet. Thy secret I know, I know, By the stream in the beautiful street the trees of gladness
grow, And under their fruitful boughs I see one Angel stand. So close, so close, that I sometimes think he lays a hand in
my hand
Bed Love still rules the day, white Faith enfolds the night. And Hope, green-mantled, leads the way by the walls of the
City of Light. Therefore I walk as one who sees the joy shine through Of the Other Life behind our life, like the stars behind the
blue.
IL
The Continuity of Chkistian Joy.
It is one of the most important features in Christian joy, that it is not of man, and that it cannot be undone. Sometimes it may be brighter and more glowing than at other times, and by contrast we will occasionally feel that there is very little of it stirring our hearts and beautifying our lives ; yet we are distinctly taught that, however faint and weak the gift that is in us may appear, if we only " stir it up," as the Apostle directs, we shall again go on our way rejoicing. Let us remember, then, that this spiritual joy continues for ever in the heart of him who has given himself to God, as it is God's gift and in its nature eternal. If it be ours, no one can deprive us of it, for He has attached His promise to it — " Your joy no man taketh from you,"
^ We sometimes speak as if the joy peculiar to childhood were but a dream, as though the best thing a man can do is to
^ Dean Fairar.
PHILIPPIANS IV. 4 415
associate with children in order to catch by reflection a fleeting ray of the sunshine which once rested on his own childhood. We sometimes speak as if the young man's joy, the sense of life, of boundless hope, of a widening horizon, must die out of heart and soul as a mere illusion. We speak as if the mature man's joy, the relish for work, the rejoicing activity can last only a certain time, that the joy of our work must cease with the newness of it. But do you not know that it is Christ's function to keep open the springs of life within us with the special joys which belong to each period of it ? To be children always with the hearts of children, that is the privilege He bestows on those to whom He gives a place in the household of God. We cannot be children when we pass from the care and home of our earthly father. But we never pass from the care and home of our Heavenly Father. We need not cease to be gay, to be free from care. Nay, we should not cease to be so. To look hopefully forward, to lean trustfully back, that is the attitude of children. Children do not question. No, I am wrong; they do question, but it is things they question. They never question love. They never question the power and wisdom of a parent. Their gladsomeness would go at once, the sunshine of their life would pass into shadow at once if they did. If we could renew our childhood we should be glad, and the command to rejoice always is simply a command to renew our childhood. God wants us to remove the stones and earth from this clearest, brightest spring of water, that it may bubble up afresh. To receive the Kingdom of Heaven as little children ; to walk and live in the Kingdom of Heaven as little children ; that is the secret of perpetual joy.^