re baptized into His
death and resurrection as ours; and Christ Himself, the Risen Living
Lord, leads us triumphantly into the experience of the power of His
death. And so, to the believer who truly lives by faith, and seeks not
in his own strugglings to crucify and mortify the flesh, but knows the
living Lord, the deep resurrection joy never for a moment forsakes Him,
but is his strength for what may appear to others to be only painful
sacrifice and cross-bearing. He says with Paul, 'I glory in the cross
through which I have been crucified.' He never, as so many do, asks
Paul's question, 'Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?'
without sounding the joyful and triumphant answer as a present
experience, 'I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.' 'Thanks be to
God, which always leadeth us in triumph in Christ.' It is the joy of a
Present Saviour, of the experience of a perfect salvation, the joy of a
resurrection life, which alone gives the power to enter deeply and fully
into the death that Christ died, and yield our will and our life to be
wholly sanctified to God. In the joy of that life, from which the power
of the death is never absent, it is possible to say with the Apostle
each moment, 'As dying, and, behold, we live; as sorrowful, yet always
rejoicing.'

Let us seek to learn the two lessons: Holiness is essential to true
happiness; happiness essential to true holiness. _Holiness is essential
to true happiness._ If you would have joy, the fulness of joy, an
abiding joy which nothing can take away, be holy as God is holy.
Holiness is blessedness. Nothing can darken or interrupt our joy but
sin. Whatever be our trial or temptation, the joy of Jesus of which
Peter says, 'in whom ye now rejoice with joy unspeakable,' can more than
compensate and outweigh. If we lose our joy, it must be sin. It may be
an actual transgression, or an unconscious following of self or the
world; it may be the stain on conscience of something doubtful, or it
may be unbelief that would live by sight, and thinks more of itself and
its joy than of the Lord alone: whatever it be, nothing can take away
our joy but sin. If we would live lives of joy, assuring God and man and
ourselves that our Lord is everything, is more than all to us, oh, let
us be holy! Let us glory in Him who is our holiness: in His presence is
fulness of joy. Let us live in the Kingdom which is joy in the Holy
Ghost; the Spirit of holiness is the Spirit of joy,