Where does Joy come from? I knew a Sunday scholar whose conception
of Joy was that it was a thing made in lumps and kept somewhere
in Heaven, and that when people prayed for it, pieces were somehow
let down and fitted into their souls. I am not sure that views
as gross and material are not often held by people who ought to be
wiser. In reality, Joy is as much a matter of Cause and Effect as
pain. No one can get Joy by merely asking for it. It is one of
the ripest fruits of the Christian life, and, like all fruits, must
be grown. There is a very clever trick in India called the mango
trick. A seed is put in the ground and covered up, and after diverse
incantations a full-blown mango-bush appears within five minutes.
I never met any one who knew how the thing was done, but I never
met any one who believed it to be anything else than a conjuring
trick. The world is pretty unanimous now in its belief in the
orderliness of Nature. Men may not know how fruits grow, but they
do know that they cannot grow in an hour. Some lives have not even
a stalk on which fruits could hang, even if they did grow in an
hour. Some have never planted one seed of Joy in all their lives;
and others who may have planted a germ or two have lived so little
in sunshine that they never could come to maturity.
Whence, then, is joy? Christ put His teaching upon this subject
into one of the most exquisite of His parables. I should in any
instance have appealed to His teaching here, as in the case of Rest,
for I do not wish you to think I am speaking words of my own. But
it so happens that He has dealt with it in words of unusual fullness.
I need not recall the whole illustration. It is the parable of
the Vine. Did you ever think why Christ spoke that parable? He
did not merely throw it into space as a find illustration of general
truths. It was not simply a statement of the mystical union, and
the doctrine of an indwelling Christ. It was that; but it was
more. After He had said it, He did what was not an unusual thing
when He was teaching His greatest lessons--He turned to the disciples
and said He would tell them why He had spoken it. It was to tell
them
How to get joy.
"These things I have spoken unto you," He said, "that My Joy might
remain in you, and that your Joy might be full." It was a purposed
and deliberate communication of His
Secret of Happiness.
Go back over these verses, then, and you will find the Causes of
this Effect, the spring, and the only spring, out of which true
Happiness comes. I am not going to analyze them in detail. I ask
you to enter into the words for yourselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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