Yet here and there across the pages of history shines the light of a good life pointing us the true way, and how by losing ourselves we find ourselves. The bearing of the Cross which Jesus enjoined upon His followers is far other than that asceticism which monk and nun and Puritan have wasted many a precious life to attain. We have not to give [p.30] up the pleasant thing because it is pleasant, or because it gives only a mundane and transitory joy. Joy is good, and not to be avoided, but welcomed. We have to give up the pleasant thing ourselves, others may take it in our stead; or give up a large measure of it that they may share it with us. We do not lose the joy, or pretend that it is unreal and transitory as the monk may. It is very real, and we feel it in a sense we could not do before, because our fellows share it or have it in place of us, and our life is their life. Gladness which they feel we must feel too. This is the difference between the monk of the desert and Francis of Assisi, the apostle of the joy of Christ . The monk battles with himself to maintain his vow of poverty; he is constantly giving up in not possessing things for himself, or in renouncing pleasures which attract him. St. Francis in possessing nothing has all things, for all are God's and his fellows', and he is theirs. The wide world is his cloister, and everything which he can do to gladden his brother gives joy to himself. True Christianity like his is full of an infectious sense of the joy of life. Whenever such men go there comes to others some touch of their spirit, as crumbs drop from a full table. This faith that joy in itself is good does not mean that there may not be needful for us all some form of true asceticism, training in withholding from things good in themselves and from pleasures we desire, quite apart from the surrendering [p.31] of them to others. But needful as this is, it is good only as training for an end beyond itself, and not for the mere sake of abstinence. We refrain that we may be masters of our wills, that we may keep control of habit, that our bodies may be the instrument of our spirits; such fasting as this only fits us more fully for the joy of service.