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and do not love thee as I would; yet that little love that I have for thee is so dear to me that I have only one regret that it is not intenser; but little as it is, I would not part with it for all the gems, and pearls, and treasures of the world that now is; and I can only hope that when I shall see thee, who hast loved me as thou hast, I shall then love thee as I now desire, and as I ought?

LECTURE XXIII.

PATCHES OF SUNSHINE.

A HAPPY purpose is power. When it rests on strong foundations it writes itself legibly in sunshine.

“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels."—ISAIAH lxi. 10.

It seems to be the purpose and hope of the child of God in its universal, if of the Israelite in its primary application, to rejoice in God, and to joy in the God of his salvation. A vow to be happy is a vow worth making; the only question it becomes us to solve, and in which we feel the deepest possible interest, is, Is it possible to be happy? and secondly, if it be possible to be happy now or hereafter, is it our duty to be so? I am sure all must be struck in reading the Word of God with exhortations to rejoice: "They shall rejoice all the day long." "Rejoice in the Lord; and again I say," the apostle repeats, "rejoice." "The kingdom of heaven," we are told, "is righteousness;" that is one third; 66 peace," that is another third; "joy," that is the last third, and the complement of the whole. It is quite plain, then, that if we do not rejoice, if we are not happy, there is something wrong in us, or there is some misapprehension on our part. It is not because there is not a spring from which we may drink copious draughts, nor because there is not a God in whom we may rejoice and our souls be joyful. But some one will ask, do you by this remark mean to say that people can be insensible to the ills, and cala

mities, and troubles that flesh and blood are heir to? I do not believe that you can be insensible to griefs, and sorrows, and aches, and ills, that brood like birds of night, and flap their wings over earth's sunniest spots, and that continually. God does not bid us be Stoics; he has made our nerves of flesh and blood, not iron wires; he has made us sensitive to a pin point; and it is not inferred, nor justly inferred, nor is it taught in the Gospel, that we are not to be sensible to all that we see around us, or to all that we feel within us. The Psalmist, for instance, was an eminent Christian, yet he says: "Rivers of water run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law." Jeremiah, who was a Christian, and a rejoicing Christian, though his name by very thoughtless people is used to denote all that is melancholy, said: "Oh that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people.' So we read that Nehemiah's countenance was sad at the desolation of the place of his father's sepulchre. And that we must feel, and that it is not sinful to feel, we have a precedent in that short but sublimely expressive text, the evidence of grief expressed as well as felt, "Jesus wept." That text has sanctified the tears of weeping eyes and bound up the hearts that have been broken. But if we are to be sensible to these sorrows or to these ills, what is meant then by rejoicing? I answer, that our grief is because of the sin that we feel, the sorrows that we see, the troubles that are ploughed into that world in which we have a local habitation and a name. We cannot help being sad. But then, compensatory in the midst of this, neutralizing and overflowing this, there is a stream from that river which makes glad the city of our God. We rejoice in what God is; we rejoice in what God has done for us; we rejoice in what God has promised; and the grounds of joy so completely outnumber and so thoroughly outweigh all the springs and elements of grief, that the Christian says, "I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall be joyful in my God."

Let me try to show why you should be glad. We are all willing enough to be glad, and we are all sorry enough that we cannot be so happy as we would be; and there is no doubt there are a great many things in this gloomy world of ours to make us sad; no one can doubt it; but then I maintain there are a great many more things elsewhere to make us joyful. But if you persist in picking up every sere and withered leaf that has fallen from the tree, and pass by every green one and every bright blossom that God puts in your way, you do wrong. There is something in human nature very odd in this matter, that it will try to gather elements of sadness, grounds of lugubrious lamentation, and refuse those springs of joy, those elements of gladness, that God has strewn everywhere over the area of creation-Providence and the Bible. Let me try to show you that there are some reasons why we should rejoice in God, and joy in the God of our salvation. Take creation. I do not mean to say that the earth is now as it was. I think that man must be very stupid or very unenlightened who believes that the earth is now, at this moment, as God made it. It is no such thing; it is all blotted, and marred, and broken up. One day it will be restored, but that day is not yet come. But take it as it is; we sinned, we forfeited all; and if God had made this earth a desert, swept by a ceaseless north-east wind, and laid it under a sheet of snow, and left us on that earth to make the best of our weary, cold, miserable pilgrimage through it, he would have even then not have let fall upon us all the curse that we had provoked. But let us look at this earth of ours, on which we have forfeited all, and where we have no right to anything. What remains of pristine beauty are there still! how many sweet, sunny spots are in this orb of ours! how many landscapes of surpassing loveliness! A sight of the flowers thrown forth by the earth in June is almost like a glimpse of Paradise. Those beautiful scenes of rock, and hill, and valley, and alp, and glen, have lingering on them, as if reluctant to depart, the unspent rays of

Paradise, earnests in their way that Paradise will again return. A poet has said—

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever."

And he that looks upon all the things of beauty that are around us, if he will only open his eyes and let his heart out of the prison in which he keeps and cribs it, will see in this world of ours, with all its defects, a great many lovely, joyous, and joy-creating things. That is one reason why we should rejoice even now. My Father “made them all;" and to rejoice in this is to act as a Christian. I remember saying one day in a lecture that wherever I see a bit of heather it is to my mind suggestive of joyful and happy emotions. A А secular and irritable writer was exceedingly shocked at it, that I should derive any joy from a heather blossom. I am not ashamed to say I derive joy from the first cowslip in spring, from the first crocus in March, from the first snowdrop in January, from the first violet in February-these things are to me full of beauty and creative of joy. And why should not I rejoice in what God has made, and in what remains of Paradise? And why should I look with a sepulchral face and a gloomy heart upon things so bright and beautiful as these? "A thing of beauty is still a joy for ever."

I think we ought to rejoice in God because we see and feel so many blessings running through all God's providential government, and out of evil we discover him so often educing good. We look upon things that happen to us absolutely. If you do so, you will say with the patriarch of old," All these things are against me." So they feel and so you must conclude when you look at them absolutely, in themselves. But if you will look at the worst things that betide you, assuming you are Christians, your bitterest griefs, your sorest bereavements, your heaviest tribulations, in the sunshine of the countenance of God, you discover"Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh out for us a far more exceeding, even an

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