I. Look at that great and wonderful thought--God the joy-maker.

We do not often realise how glad God is when we are glad, and how
worthy an object of much that He does is simply the prosperity and the
blessedness of human hearts. The poorest creature that lives has a
right to ask from God the satisfaction of its instincts, and every man
has a claim on God--because he is God's creature--to make him glad.
God honours all cheques legitimately drawn on Him, and answers all
claims, and regards Himself as occupied in a manner entirely congruous
with His magnificence and His infinitude, when He stoops to put some
kind of vibrating gladness into the wings of a gnat that dances for an
hour in the sunshine, and into the heart of a man that lives his time
for only a very little longer.

God is the Joy-maker. There are far more magnificent and sublime
thoughts about Him than that; but I do not know that there is any that
ought to come nearer to our hearts, and to silence more of our
grumblings and of our distrust, than the belief that the gladness of
His children is an end contemplated by Him in all that He does.
Whether we think it of small importance or no, He does not think it
so, that all mankind should rejoice in Himself. And this is a
marvellous revelation to break out of the very heart of that
comparatively hard system of ancient Judaism. 'The Lord hath made them
joyful.'

Turning away from the immediate connection of these words, let me
remind you of the great outlines of the divine provision for
gladdening men's hearts. I was going to say that God had only one way
of making us glad; and perhaps that is in the deepest sense true. That