because He is the
Spirit of God. It is the saints, God's holy ones, who will shout for
joy.

And _happiness is essential to true holiness_. If you would be a holy
Christian, you must be a happy Christian. Jesus was anointed by God with
'the oil of gladness,' that He might give us 'the oil of joy.' In all
our efforts after holiness, the wheels will move heavily if there be not
the oil of joy; this alone removes all strain and friction, and makes
the onward progress easy and delightful. Study to understand the Divine
worth of joy. It is the evidence of your being in the Father's
presence, and dwelling in His love. It is the proof of your being
consciously free from the law and the strain of the spirit of bondage.
It is the token of your freedom from care and responsibility, because
you are rejoicing in Christ Jesus as your Sanctification, your Keeper,
and your Strength. It is the secret of spiritual health and strength,
filling all your service with the childlike happy assurance that the
Father asks nothing that He does not give strength for, and that He
accepts all that is done, however feebly, in this spirit. True happiness
is always self-forgetful: it loses itself in the object of its joy. As
the joy of the Holy Ghost fills us, and we rejoice in God the Holy One,
through our Lord Jesus Christ, as we lose ourselves in the adoration and
worship of the Thrice Holy, we become holy. This is, even here in the
wilderness, 'the Highway of Holiness: the ransomed of the Lord shall
come with singing; the redeemed shall walk there; everlasting joy shall
be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness.'

Do all God's children understand this? that holiness is just another
name, the true name, that God gives for happiness; that it is indeed
unutterable blessedness to know that God does make us holy, that our
holiness is in Christ, that Christ's Holy Spirit is within us. There is
nothing so attractive as joy: have believers understood it that this is
the joy of the Lord--to be holy? Or is not the idea of strain, and
sacrifice, and sighing, of difficulty and distance so prominent, that
the thought of being holy has hardly ever made the heart glad? If it has
been so, let it be so no longer. 'Thou shalt glory in the Holy One of
Israel:' let us claim this promise. Let the believing assurance that our
Loving Father, and our Beloved Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, who in
dove-like gentleness rests within us, have engaged to do th