no fruit in the vine, though
the flocks were cut off from the pastures, and the herds from the
stall, yet to rejoice in the God of our salvation. Rightly understood
and pondered on, all the darkest passages of life are but like the
cloud whose blackness determines the brightness of the rainbow on its
front. Rightly understood and reflected on, these will teach us that
the paradoxical commandment, 'Count it all joy that ye fall into
divers temptations,' is, after all, the voice of true wisdom speaking
at the dictation of a clear-eyed faith.

This text, since it is a commandment, implies that obedience to it,
and therefore the realisation of this continual festal aspect of
life, is very largely in our own power. Dispositions differ, some of
us are constitutionally inclined to look at the blacker, and some at
the brighter, side of our experiences. But our Christianity is worth
little unless it can modify, and to some extent change, our natural
tendencies. The joy of the Lord being our strength, the cultivation
of joy in the Lord is largely our duty. Christian people do not
sufficiently recognise that it is as incumbent on them to seek after
this continual fountain of calm and heavenly joy flowing through
their lives, as it is to cultivate some of the more recognised
virtues and graces of Christian conduct and character.

Secondly, we have here--

II. The Christian life is a continual feeding on a sacrifice.

'Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. Wherefore let us keep the
feast.' It is very remarkable that this is the only place in Paul's
writings where he articulately pronounces that the Paschal Lamb is a
type of Jesus Christ. There is only one other instance in the New
Testament where that is stated with equal clearness and emphasis, and
that is in John's account of the Crucifixion, where he recognises the
fact that Christ died with limbs unbroken, as being a fulfilment, in
the New Testament sense of that word, of what was enjoined in regard
to the antitype, 'a bone of him shall not be broken.'

But whilst the definite statement which precedes my text that Christ
is 'our Passover,' and 'sacrificed for us' as such, is unique in
Paul's writings, the thought to which it gives clear and crystallised
expression runs through the whole of the New Testament. It underlies
the Lord's Supper. Did you ever think of how great was the
self-assertion of Jesus Christ when He laid His hand on that
sacredest of Jewish rites, wh