are lakes of calm blue. We can choose whether we
look at the clouds or at the blue. _These_ are in the lower
ranges; _that_ fills infinite spaces, upwards and out to the
horizon. These are transient, eating themselves away even whilst we
look, and black and thunderous as they may be, they are there but for
a moment--that is perennial. If we are wise, we shall fix our gaze
much rather on the blue than on the ugly cloud-rack that hides it,
and thus shall minister to ourselves occasions for the noble kind of
joy which is not noisy and boisterous, 'like the crackling of thorns
under a pot,' and does not foam itself away by its very ebullience,
but is calm like the grounds of it; still, like the heaven to which
it looks; eternal, like the God on whom it is fastened. If we would
only steadfastly remember that the one source of worthy and enduring
joy is God Himself, and listen to the command, 'Rejoice in the Lord,'
we should find it possible to 'rejoice always.' For that thought of
Him, His sufficiency, His nearness, His encompassing presence, His
prospering eye, His aiding hand, His gentle consolation, His enabling
help will take the sting out of even the bitterest of our sorrows,
and will brace us to sustain the heaviest, otherwise crushing
burdens, and greatly to 'rejoice, though now for a season we are in
heaviness through manifold temptations.' The Gulf Stream rushes into
the northern hemisphere, melts the icebergs and warms the Polar seas,
and so the joy of the Lord, if we set it before us as we can and
should do, will minister to us a gladness which will make our lives a
perpetual feast.

But there is another thing that we can do; that is, we can clearly
recognise the occasions for sorrow in our experience, and yet
interpret them by the truths of the Christian faith. That is to say,
we can think of them, not so much as they tend to make us sad or
glad, but as they tend to make us more assured of our possession of,
more ardent in our love towards, and more submissive in our attitude
to, the all-ordering Love which is God. Brethren, if we thought of
life, and all its incidents, even when these are darkest and most
threatening, as being what it and they indeed are, His training of us
into capacity for fuller blessedness, because fuller possession of
Himself, we should be less startled at the commandment, 'Rejoice in
the Lord always,' and should feel that it was possible, though the
figtree did not blossom, and there was