the sunlight gleams on the pebbles at the
bottom. The abysses of ocean are dark, and have never been searched by
its light. I suspect the depth of the emotion which bubbles over into
words, and finds no difficulty in expressing itself. The joy which can
be manifested in all its extent has a very small extent. Christian joy
is unspeakable, too, because just as you cannot teach a blind man what
colour is like, and cannot impart to anybody the blessedness of wedded
love, or parental affection, by ever so much talking--and, therefore,
the poetry of the world is never exhausted--so there is only one way of
conveying to a man what is the actual joy of trusting in Christ, and
that is, that he himself should trust Him. We may talk till Doomsday,
and then, as the Queen of Sheba said, when she came to Solomon, 'the
half hath not been told.'

'He must be loved ere that to you
He will seem worthy of your love.'

It is unspeakable gladness springing from the possession of an
unspeakable gift.

'Glorified.' There is nothing more ignoble than the ordinary joys of
men. They are too often like the iridescent scum on a stagnant pond,
fruit and proof of corruption. They are fragile and hollow, for all the
play of colour on them, like a soap bubble that breaks of its own
tenuity, and is only a drop of dirty water. Joy is too often ignoble,
and yet, although it is by no means the highest conception of what
Christ's Gospel can do for us, it is blessed to think that it can take
that emotion, so often shameful, so often frivolous, so often lowering
rather than elevating, and can lift it into loftiness, and transfigure
it, and glorify it and make it a power, a power for good and for
righteousness, and for 'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report'
in our lives. And that is what trusting towards Christ will do for our
gladnesses.

Lastly, in one word, let me lay upon your consciences, as Christian
people

III. The Obligation of Gladness.

Peter takes it for granted that all these brethren to whom he is writing
have experience of this deep and ennobled joy. He does not say, 'You
ought to rejoice,' but he says, 'You do rejoice.' And yet a verse or two
before he said, 'Ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations.' So,
then, he was not blinking the hard, painful facts of anybody's troubled
life. He was not away upon the heights serenely contemptuous of the grim
possibilities that lurk down in the dark valleys. He took in