stian life ought to be joyful
because it is hopeful.

Now, I do not suppose that many of us habitually recognise it as a
Christian duty to be joyful. We think that it is a matter of
temperament and partly a matter of circumstance. We are glad when
things go well with us. If we have a sunny disposition, and are
naturally light-hearted, all the better; if we have a melancholy or
morose one, all the worse. But do we recognise this, that a Christian
who is not joyful is not living up to his duty; and that there is no
excuse, either in temperament or in circumstances, for our not being
so, and always being so? 'Rejoice in the Lord alway,' says Paul; and
then, as if he thought, 'Some of you will be thinking that that is a
very rash commandment, to aim at a condition quite impossible to make
constant,' he goes on--'and, to convince you that I do not say it
hastily, I will repeat it--"and again I say, rejoice."' Brethren, we
shall have to alter our conceptions of what true gladness is before
we can come to understand the full depth of the great thought that
joy is a Christian duty. The true joy is not the kind of joy that a
saying in the Old Testament compares to the 'crackling of thorns
under a pot,' but something very much calmer, with no crackle in it;
and very much deeper, and very much more in alliance with 'whatsoever
things are lovely and of good report,' than that foolish,
short-lived, and empty mirth that burns down so soon into black
ashes.

To be glad is a Christian duty. Many of us have as much religion as
makes us sombre, and impels us often to look upon the more solemn and
awful aspects of Christian truth, but we have not enough to make us
glad. I do not need to dwell upon all the sources in Christian faith
and belief, of that lofty and imperatively obligatory gladness, but I
confine myself to the one in my text, 'Rejoicing in hope.'

Now, we all know--from the boy that is expecting to go home for his
holidays in a week, up to the old man to whose eye the time-veil is
wearing thin--that hope, if it is certain, is a source of gladness.
How lightly one's bosom's lord sits upon its throne, when a great
hope comes to animate us! how everybody is pleasant, and all things
are easy, and the world looks different! Hope, if it is certain, will
gladden, and if our Christianity grasps, as it ought to do, the only
hope that is absolutely certain, and as sure as if it were in the
past and had been experienced, then our hea