Spiritual Joy # 4

Spiritual Joy # 4

Joy will assist you in the wayfare of the Christian life, and cause you, like the traveler who sings on his journey through the forest and the plain - to overcome the tediousness of your way, by the songs of the Lord. "The joy of the lord is your strength," said Ezra, the scribe, when he checked the sorrows of the Jews, and laid down a principle as applicable to the Christian as to any other enterprise - and what great or good thing under the sun was ever achieved without joy? In the working out of our salvation, there must be not only "fear and trembling," but hope and joy. Spiritual joy is the oil to the wheels of obedience. It is this which braces up the soul for action, and carries it forward through difficult and self-denying duties.

How can be best vanquish the world, that ever present, and every where present foe, which comes in so many forms, and with such golden pleas? How, but by a heart already well pleased with its own happiness in Christ. Spiritual joy is the world's vanquisher! And how easy, how perfect in its triumph! The heart by holy joy rises above the world, sees it below, covered with smoke and dust, and finds itself in a brighter, purer, happier region, with the cloudless sun above, and all around filled with his glory. What has the world to offer comparable to that which a rejoicing faith has found in Christ? What has 'worldly ambition' to offer that can vie with this? He may spurn the favor of the crowned prince, and put his crown aside as a bauble, who is rejoicing in hope of an incorruptible crown of life and glory!

And then think of the importance of this spiritual joy in the dark season of affliction. Many of you have no other earthly joy - will you not covet this spiritual joy? If piety does not shed its light upon your spirit, you are in total darkness. And this can illuminate the darkest scene of human woe - it has irradiated the dark abode of poverty, the gloomy chamber or affliction, the desolate abode of the widow, the dreary dungeon of the captive, and made the martyr sing on the scaffold, or at the stake. Habakkuk's exulting strain has been uttered by multitudes and amidst blighted harvests, and empty stalls, they have joyed in God, and rejoiced in the God of their salvation. Mourners, dry your tears, and hush your sobs - and dissipate your fears at the Cross, and before the eternal throne! With nothing else to rejoice in, you have God, Christ, and salvation! And is this nothing?

You are called, in this extraordinary age, to the great enterprise of the world's conversion; and in order to achieve it, you must make sacrifices of time, money, and ease. And hos is this to be done? A happy church will be a working church. Nothing great was ever yet achieved under the sun, but by a heart glad and free. It is the joyous mind that aims at great things, expects great things, and accomplishes great things. The apostles and first disciples, though persecuted men, were joyous men. They counted it all joy even to fall into divers temptations. They astonished the world with the spectacle of moral heroes, who could smile at chains, imprisonment, and death, and who could go singing to meet the lictor's rod and axe, and to encounter the lions of the amphitheater. Religion appeared in all its power and glory as a superhuman principle, a something heavenly and divine, in such a scene, and many were converted to the faith by the martyr's joy as well as by his testimony.

Christians, imitate these examples. Do not tell the world you are happy, but appear so. Verify the assertion by your own experience, so often made, and so often expressed by Christians themselves, that the church of Christ is the seat of blessedness. Be in spirit a refutation of the world's slander upon religion, in the assertion that it is a sour, unhappy, gloomy spirit; a specter coming from the place of tombs, and cruel superstition to haunt and infest the abodes of the living. A happy church would, almost by its very appearance, without its labor, convert the nations. The church, radiant with peace as it reflected the beams of the Sun of righteousness, and verdant with holiness, would attract the eye, and guide the feet of the weeping, wandering tribes of the earth to itself, as to the place of repose. The first beams of the millennial morning will be seen in this heavenly effulgence resting upon the church.

Therefore be happy Christians as well as holy ones. Exemplify in this, as in every other respect, the spirit of the gospel. Be like your Divine Master, in the purity, simplicity, and joyfulness, with which you devote yourselves to the service of mankind. Anticipate the felicities of heaven here below. You stand in the porch of the celestial temple - appear like men who not only hear the songs within, but expect soon to see the everlasting gates thrown open to admit you to God's presence, where there is fullness of joy, and to His right hand, where there are pleasures forevermore!

~John Angell James~

(The End)