joy help me to come near to God? Does it interfere with my communion
with Him? Does it aid me in the consecration of myself? Does my
conscience go with it when my conscience is most awake? Do I recognise
Him as the Giver of the thing that is so blessed? If we can say Yes!
to these questions, we can venture to believe that our blessedness
comes from God, and leads to God, however homely, however sensuous and
material may be its immediate occasion. But if not, then the less we
have to do with such sham gladness the better. 'Even in laughter the
heart is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness.' The
alternative presented for the choice of each of us is whether we will
have surface joy and a centre of dark discontent, or surface sorrow
and a centre of calm blessedness. The film of stagnant water on a pond
full of rottenness simulates the glories of the rainbow, in which pure
sunshine falls upon the pure drops, but it is only painted corruption
after all, a sign of rotting; and if a man puts his lips to it it will
kill him. Such is the joy which is apart from God. It is the
'crackling of thorns under a pot'--the more fiercely they burn the
sooner they are ashes. And, on the other hand, 'these things have I
spoken unto you that My joy might remain in you, and that your joy
might be full.'

It is not 'for seven days' that we 'keep the feast' if God has 'made
us joyful,' but for all the rest of the days of time, and for the
endless years of the calm gladnesses of the heavens.



HEROIC FAITH

'I was ashamed to require of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen