al love and kindness but too often draw us away from our joy in
Him. But with Paul the sources which we too often find antagonistic were
harmoniously blended, and flowed side by side in the same channel, so
that he could express them both in the one utterance, 'I rejoiced in the
Lord greatly that now at the last your care of me hath flourished
again.'

We do not sufficiently realise the Christian duty of Christian joy,
some of us even take mortified countenances and voices in a minor key as
marks of grace, and there is but little in any of us of 'the joy in the
Lord' which a saint of the Old Testament had learned was our 'strength.'
There is plenty of gladness amongst professing Christians, but a good
many of them would resent the question, is your gladness 'in the Lord'?
No doubt any deep experience in the Christian life makes us aware of
much in ourselves that saddens, and may depress, and our joy in Him must
always be shaded by penitent sorrow for ourselves. But that necessary
element of sadness in the Christian life is not the cause why so many
Christian lives have little of the buoyancy and hope and spontaneity
which should mark them. The reason rather lies in the lack of true union
with Christ, and habitual keeping of ourselves 'in the love of God.'

II. Paul's apology for reiteration.

He is going to give once more old and well-worn precepts which are often
very tedious to the hearer, and not much less so to the speaker. He can
only say that to him the repetition of familiar injunctions is not
'irksome,' and that to them it is 'safe.' The diseased craving for
'originality' in the present day tempts us all, hearers and speakers
alike, and we ever need to be reminded that the staple of Christian
teaching must be old truths reiterated, and that it is not time to stop
proclaiming them until all men have begun to practise them. But a
speaker must try to make the thousandth repetition of a truth fresh to
himself, and not a wearisome form, or a dead commonplace, by freshening
it to his own mind and by living on it in his own practice, and the
hearers must remember that it is only the completeness of their
obedience that antiquates the commandment. The most threadbare
commonplace becomes a novelty when occasions for its application arise
in our own lives, just as a prescription may lie long unnoticed in a
drawer, but when a fever attacks its possessor it will be quickly drawn
out and worth its weight in gold.

III. P