Let a man truly know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and he will be
a happy man; and the deeper he drinks into the Spirit of Christ, the
happier will he become. That religion which teaches misery to be a duty
is false upon the very face of it, for God, when He made the world,
studied the happiness of His creatures. You cannot help thinking, as you
see everything around you, that God has sedulously, with the most strict
attention, sought ways of pleasing man. He has not merely given us
absolute necessaries, He has given us more; not simply the useful, but
even the ornamental. The flowers in the hedgerow, the stars in the sky,
the beauties of nature, the hill and the valley–all these things were
intended not merely because we needed them, but because God would show how He loved us, and how anxious he was that we should be happy. Now, it is not likely that the God who made a happy world would send a miserable
salvation. He who is a happy Creator will be a happy Redeemer; and those
who have tasted that the Lord is gracious, can bear witness that the
ways of religion “are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are
peace.” And if this life were all, if death were the burial of all our
life, and if the shroud were the winding-sheet of eternity, still to be
a Christian would be a bright and happy thing, for it lights up this
valley of tears, and fills the wells in the valley of Baca to the brim
with streams of love and joy.