XII. HAPPINESS AND JOY. JOHN XV. 11.-" These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." CHRIST enters the world, bringing joy;-Good tidings of great joy, cry the angels, which shall be to all people. So now he leaves it, bestowing his gospel as a gift of joy,— These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you and that your joy might be full. This testament of his joy he also renews in his parting prayer. And now come I to thee, and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. "Man of sorrows" though we call him, still he counts himself the man of joy. Would that I could bring you into his meaning, when he thus speaks, and assist you to realize the unspeakable import which it has to him. It is an impression deeply rooted in the minds of men that the christian life is a life of constraint, hardship, loss, penance, and comparative suffering; Christ, you perceive, has no such conception of it, and no such conception is true. Contrary, to this, I shall undertake to show that it is a life of true joy, the profoundest and only real joy attainable,-not a merely future joy, to be received hereafter, as the reward of a painful and sad life here, but a present, living, and completely full joy, unfolded in the soul of every man whose fidelity and constancy permit him to receive it. To clear this truth and show it forth, in the proper light of evidence, it is necessary, first of all, to exhibit a mistake which clouds the judgments, almost or quite universally, of those who are not in the secret of the christian joy, as revealed to a religious experience. It is the mistake of not distinguishing between happiness and joy, or of supposing them to be really one and the same thing. It is the mistake, indeed, not merely of their judgment, but of their practice; for they all go after happiness without so much as a thought, more commonly, of any thing higher or better. Happiness, they assume, and in their practice say, is the real joy of existence, beyond which and different from which there is, in kind, no other. Now there is even a distinction of kind between the two, a distinction beautifully represented in the words themselves. Thus happiness, according to the original use of the term, is that which happens, or comes to one by a hap; that is, by an outward befalling, or favorable condition. Some good is conceived, out of the soul, which comes to it as a happy visitation, stirring in the receiver a pleasant excitement. It is what money yields, or will buy; dress, equipage, fashion, luxuries of the table; or it is settlement in life, independence, love, applause, admiration, honor, glory, or the more conventional and public benefits of rank, political standing, victory, power. All these stir a delight in the soul, which is not of the soul, or its quality, but from without. Hence they are looked upon as happening to the soul and, in that sense, create happiness. We have another word from the Latins, which very nearly corresponds with this from the Saxons; viz., fortune. For, whatever befell the soul, or came to it bringing it pleasure, was considered to be its good chance, and was called for tunate. I suppose, indeed, that there is no language in the world that does not contain this idea, just because all mankind are after benefits that will stir pleasure in the soul, without regard to its quality; after happiness, after fortune. But joy differs from this, as being of the soul itself, originating in its quality. And this appears in the original form of the word; which, instead of suggesting a hap, literally denotes a leap, or spring. Here again also the Latins had exult, which literally means a leaping forth. The radical idea then of joy is this; that the soul is in such order and beautiful harmony, has such springs of life opened in its own blessed virtues, that it pours forth a sovereign joy from within. The motion is outward and not toward, as we conceive it to be in happiness. It is not the bliss of condition, but of character. There is, in this, a well-spring of triumphant, sovereign good, and the soul is able thus to pour out rivers of joy into the deserts of outward experience. It has a light in its own luminous center, where God is, that gilds the darkest nights of external adversity, a music charming all the stormy discords of outward injury and pain into beats of rhythm, and melodies of peace. I ought, perhaps, to say that the original distinction between these two words, thus sharply defined, is not always regarded; I have traced the distinction only for the convenience of my present subject, and not because the words are always used, or must be, in this manner. In their secondary uses, words are often applied more loosely, and so it has fallen out with these, which are used, by the common class of writers indiscriminately, one for the other. Still it will be seen that one of our English poets, Mr. Coleridge, distinguished always for the exactness of his lan guage, uses them both in immediate connection, so as to preserve their exact distinction, without any apparent design to do so, or consciousness of the fact. Addressing a noble christian lady, he gives his conception of joy, as an all transforming, all victorious power, in virtuous souls, in terms like these: "O, pure of heart, thou needest not ask of me, This light, this glory, this fair, luminous mist, Life and life's effluence, cloud at once and shower, That wedding nature to us gives in dower A new earth and new heaven, We in ourselves rejoice." Immediately after, without any thought of drawing the contrast, he speaks of his own folly, with regret, because he was caught by the temptations of fortune and now endures the bitter penalty. "Fancy made me dreams of happiness; For hope grew round me like the twining vine, And fruits and foliage, not my own, seemed mine." The picture he draws for himself is the picture, alas! of the general folly of mankind. Their "fancy makes them dreams of happiness; " promising to bless them in what may be gathered "round" them in "fruits and foliage not their own;" that is, not of themselves but external. All good, they fancy, is in condition, not in character. They think of happiness, go after happiness, and have, alas! how generally, no thought of joy, And yet we have many and various symbols of joy about us, from which we might well enough take the hint, as it would seem, of some possible felicity that is freer and higher in quality than the mere pleasures of fortune, or condition. The sportive children, too full of physical life to be able even to restrain their activity; the birds of the morning pouring out their music simply because it is in them, ought to suggest the possibility of some free, manly joy that is nobler than happiness. Precisely this too we have been permitted, thank God, to look upon, in the examples of goodness, and to hear in the report of history; for history is holding up her holy examples ever before us, showing us the saints of God singing out their joy together in caves and dens of the earth at dead of night, showing too the souls of her martyrs issuing, with a shout, from the fires that crisp their bodies. Again, it is necessary, in order to a right conception of the meaning of christian joy, as now defined, that we discover how to dispose of certain facts, or incidents, which commonly produce a contrary impression. Thus, when the Saviour bequeathes his joy to us, and prays to have it fulfilled in us, it will naturally be remembered that he lives a persecuted and abused life, that he passes through an agony to his death, and dies in a manner most of all ignominious and afflictive. Where then is the joy of which he speaks, or which he prays to have bestowed upon us? Are burdens, toils, sorrows, persecutions, crucifixions, joys? To this I answer that they may, in one view, be such, and in his case actually were. He was a truly afflicted being, a man of sorrows in the matter of happiness; that is, in the outward condition, or befalling of his earthly |