lived upon earth, and gone back to heaven, and sent His Spirit to
dwell in you, you lock the door against the entrance of the
joy-bringing Messenger, and are sad and restless and discontented
because you have shut out the God who desires to abide in your hearts.

'They kept the feast with joy, because the Lord had made them joyful.'
Oh! how many Christian men and women there are, who in the midst of
the abundant and wonderful provision for continual cheerfulness and
buoyancy of spirit given to them in the promises of the Gospel, in the
gifts of Christ, in the indwelling of the Divine Spirit, do yet go
through life creeping and sad, burdened and anxious, perplexed and at
their wits' end, just because they will not have the God who yearns to
come to them, or at least will not have Him in anything like the
fullness and the completeness in which He desires to bestow Himself.
If God gives, surely we are bound to receive. It is an obligation upon
Christian men and women, which they do not sufficiently realise, to be
glad, and it is a commandment needing to be reiterated. 'Rejoice in
the Lord always; and again I say, rejoice.' Would that Christian
experience in this generation was more alive to the obligation and the
blessedness of perpetual joy arising from perpetual communion with
Him.

Further, another obligation is to recognise Him in all common mercies,
because He is at the back of them all. Let them always proclaim Him to
us. Oh! if we did not go through the world blinded to the real Power
that underlies all its motions, we should feel that everything was
vocal to us of the loving-kindness of our Father in heaven. Link Him,
dear friend! with everything that makes your heart glad; with
everything pleasant that comes to you. There is nothing good or sweet
but it flows from Him. There is no common delight of flesh or sense,