happiness, thankfulness, merriment. You do not know half--no, not
the thousandth part of God's love and mercy to you, and you never
will know. So do not be afraid of being too happy, or think that you
honour God by wearing a sour face, when He is heaping blessings on
you, and calling on you to smile and sing. But "let your moderation
be known unto all men." There is a right and a wrong way of being
merry. There is a mirth, which is no mirth; whereof it is written,
in the midst of that laughter there is a heaviness, and the end
thereof is death. Drunkenness, gluttony, indecent words and jests
and actions, these are out of place on Christmas-day, and in the
merriment to which the pure and holy Lord Jesus calls you all. They
are rejoicing in the flesh and the devil, and not in the Lord at all;
and whosoever indulges in them, and fancies them merriment, is
keeping the devil's Christmas, and not Jesus Christ's. So let your
moderation be known to all men. Be MERRY AND WISE. The fool lets
his mirth master him, and carry him away, till he forgets himself,
and says and does things of which he is ashamed when he gets up next
morning, sick and sad at heart. The wise man remembers that, let the
occasion be as joyful a one as it may, "the Lord is at hand."
Christ's eye is on him, while he is eating, and drinking, and
laughing. He is not afraid of Christ's eye, because, though it is
Divine it is a human, loving, smiling eye; rejoicing in the happiness
of His poor, hard-worked brothers here below. But he remembers that
it is a holy eye, too; an eye which looks with sadness and horror on
anything which is wrong; on all drunkenness, quarrelling, indecency;
and so on in all his merriment, he is still master of himself. He
remembers that his soul is nobler than his body; that his will must
be stronger than his appetite; and so he keeps himself in check; he
keeps his tongue from evil, and his stomach from sottishness, and
though he may be, and ought to be, the merriest of the whole party,