of Christian experience, unless you verify them for yourselves by the
plain way of practice. Doing as Christ bids us, and doing that
habitually, and doing it gladly, then, and only then, are we in no
danger of losing ourselves on the heights, or of forgetting that
Christ's mission has for its last result the influencing of character
and of conduct. 'If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My
love, even as I have kept My Father's commandments, and abide in His
love.'

III. Lastly, note the joy which follows on this practical obedience.
'These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain,' (or
'might _be_') 'in you, and that your joy might be full.'

'My joy might be in you'--a strange time to talk of His 'joy.' In
half an hour he would be in Gethsemane, and we know what happened
there. Was Christ a joyful man? He was a 'Man of sorrows' but one of
the old Psalms says, 'Thou hast loved righteousness ... therefore God
hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows.' The
deep truth that lies there is the same that He here claims as being
fulfilled in His own experience, that absolute surrender and
submission in love to the beloved commands of a loving Father made
Him--in spite of sorrows, in spite of the baptism with which He was
baptized, in spite of all the burden and the weight of our sins--the
most joyful of men.

This joy He offers to us, a joy coming from perfect obedience, a joy
coming from a surrender of self at the bidding of love, to a love
that to us seems absolutely good and sweet. There is no joy that
humanity is capable of to compare for a moment with that bright,
warm, continuous sunshine which floods the soul, that is freed from