fore!'
'Yes,' he says, 'and you shall hear it once again; so important is my
commandment that it shall be repeated a third time. So I again say,
"rejoice!"' Christian gladness is an important element in Christian
duty; and the difficulty and necessity of it are indicated by the urgent
repetition of the injunction.

I. So, then, the first thought that suggests itself to me from these
words is this, that close union with Jesus Christ is the foundation of
real gladness.

Pray note that 'the Lord' here, as is usually the case in Paul's
Epistles, means, not the Divine Father, but Jesus Christ. And then
observe, again, that the phrase 'Rejoice in the Lord' has a deeper
meaning than we sometimes attach to it. We are accustomed to speak of
rejoicing in a thing or a person, which, or who, is thereby represented
as being the occasion or the object of our gladness. And though that is
true, in reference to our Lord, it is not the whole sweep and depth of
the Apostle's meaning here. He is employing that phrase, 'in the Lord,'
in the profound and comprehensive sense in which it generally appears in
his letters, and especially in those almost contemporaneous with this
Epistle to the Philippians. I need only refer you, in passing, without
quoting passages, to the continual use of that phrase in the nearly
contemporaneous letter to the Ephesians, in which you will find that 'in
Christ Jesus' is the signature stamped upon all the gifts of God, and
upon all the possible blessings of the Christian life. 'In Him' we have
the inheritance; in Him we obtain redemption through His blood, even the
forgiveness of sins; in Him we are 'blessed with all spiritual
blessings.' And the deepest description of the essential characteristic
of a Christian life is, to Paul, that it is a life in Christ.

It is this close union which the Apostle here indicates as being the
foundation and the source of all that gladness which he desires to see
spreading its light over the Christian life. 'Rejoice in the
Lord'--being in Him be glad.

Now that great thought has two aspects, one deep and mysterious, one
very plain and practical. As to the former, I need not spend much time
upon it. We believe, I suppose, in the superhuman character and nature
of Jesus Christ. We believe in His divinity. We can therefore believe
reasonably in the possibility of a union between Him and us,
transcending all the forms of human association, and being really like
that which the cr