THE ERA OF JOY.

"And the angels said unto them, Fear not; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord."—Luke ii., 10, 11.

This is the only day of the year consecrated purely to joy. We are not what the ecclesiastical origin of the Christmas Day was, nor what notions have environed it in other times. In itself it is the day for the celebration of joy. There are many days celebrated in all nations to commemorate important events in the history of those nations. There are days of thanksgiving to God, or of joyfulness, as the expression of gratitude for the history of single years, or for great deliverances, or for eminent blessings conferred. But Christians all the world over, on this day, whatever language they speak, under what government soever they live, join to celebrate it as the day of joy. It does not yet appeal to the whole population of the globe; but the time shall come when every tribe, and tongue, and nation, and people, in every island, and on every continent, shall join together to celebrate this one columnar day of joy. All the world eastward has been, and is still, aroused; and all the world westward as the progress of the sun goes on, is being aroused to the celebration of this day. Whatever men believe respecting Christ, when they analyze their thought and feeling they agree that this advent is to be hailed with joy. Whether he be angelic, or divine, or very God, or only eminent man, his coming is universally admitted to have been a fact of supreme importance in the history of the world.

The angel proclaimed joy to the shepherds, and declared to them that it should be a joy to all people. The priest in the temple predicted joy to the wondering parents; and Jesus himself, among his earliest words, represented himself as the one predicted to right the wrong, to expel cruelty and suffering, and to bring light, liberty, and peace to the world.

This day, therefore, celebrates an era of joy; and the whole Christian world to-day makes itself happy-or should. One day there is of SUNDAY MORNING, Dec. 25, 1870. LESSON: LUKE 11. 1-20. HYMNS (Plymouth Collection); Nos. 215, 212, 200.

the three hundred and sixty-five, set apart, not only for joyfulness, but to remind the world that the true religion bears joy as its ripest fruit. It will then be some benefit, I hope, if I take the occasion of this day to speak upon the joy-producing power of Christianity.

Continuous joy in any faculty indicates the highest condition of health in that faculty; and continuous joy in every part of the mind. will be the sign, when it shall take place, of perfection in that mind. For although, as we are accustomed to regard it, pleasure or joy is not the sign of goodness, yet in the larger analysis, and in a higher way of looking at it, it may be said that the power of continuous joy in any faculty is the sign of perfect health in that faculty; and that the power of continuous joy in all the soul is the evidence that the soul itself is in a state of perfectness, and that joy is the test. Not low measures, not occasional joys, not collateral and incidental flushes of this experience, but the power of the man's nature to work it out steadfastly, is the sign and token of perfectness in part and in whole. It is therefore the final test of excellence. The capacity of fullness is the ultimate end of being: not the aim of the present, which is a developing period; but the ultimate end.

The possibility of joy continually and in the whole soul is conditioned, however, upon a state of perfect development and training which will be intermediate, and whose experience will not be like the experience of the final and ripe state. We have now only the language of education-an education in which there is much incidental suffering: yet all suffering is but the chisel's edge shaping an uncouth block to the forms of beauty and to the proportions of grace.

Let us ask, then, first, What is Christianity itself, that is said to have this power of producing joy, and whose legitimate and characteristic fruit is joy? Historically and narrowly considered, Christianity is the system made up by the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. That merely tells us, however, where the name came from, and what in general are the instruments. In a larger statement, Christianity is that system of influence, which was designed of God, and which is destined to educate the whole human race to perfect manhood. It is that whole system of influences of every kind whatsoever, whether evolved heretofore, or now developing, or yet to be unfolded, by which God designs to perfect the individual and the race into manhood. It is the divine education of the race to its full capacity.

This is Christianity. It was indicated by Christ, who was the supremest Teacher in this great system. It takes its name worthily from him. But all of Christianity was not taught by Christ. Its seed forms, its germs, were all in Him; but the unfolding, as He himself declared, belonged to a later period.

"The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard-seed."

He said to his disciples,

"I have many things to say unto you; but ye cannot bear them now." There was a vast amount of truth that lay coiled and folded in the mind of Jesus that was not spoken.

Not, then, merely the historical facts of the Gospel, but all the vast facts of creation when they shall have grown and been unfolded through time; the whole scheme, for instance, of the natural globe, or the material world; the whole evolution of divine providence in human society; the whole work of civilization as it shall take place under the divine guidance-all of this belongs to Christianity.

The definition of Christianity is found, not in the instruments, but in the thing for which the instruments are employed. The perfect manhood of the race in Christ Jesus-that is Christianity. Christianity is not to be sought for in its doctrines, nor in its ordinances, nor in its institutions, by which it secures certain things. It is to be sought for in the things which these doctrines, ordinances, and institutions secure, or work out. That is the final condition of the nature of man himself. Just as fast as the ages find out then any truths or any processes which, applied to man, lift him toward God, all these truths newly developed, and all these processes newly evolved, fall into a the ranks and become a part of Christianity. For Christianity is the final sum of all influences that tend to produce a perfect manhood in the

race.

The design of Christianity was announced by Christ; and great elementary tendencies were established or developed; but it was not pretended, it was not taught, it was not even intimated, that the whole of Christianity was made known at that time. The whole creation is God's, and therefore Christ's. The world was made by him, "and And all things without him was not anything made that was made."

were made, in the whole globe, and in all its history, to converge, and through the ages in long sequences to work out that which after all is the sum and substance and heart of Christianity-the purification, the elevation, and the sanctification of the manhood of the world. And all that goes toward the development of true manhood, and the elevation of the race, whether we have just learned it, or whether it was known in the apostolic day, belongs to Christianity. Men go back to the apostles, as if things were perfect in proportion as they go back. You might just as well go back to acorns for timber for ships, on the supposition that the further you go back toward the seed the nearer you come to timber. Christianity was never so imperfect as when Christ himself lived; and the Christianity of the world was never so narrow as when the apostles handled it. The perfection of Christianity is not in its seedform, but in its blossoms and in its fruit; and they come with the generations hereafter, when not single ones, nor sections, nor handfuls,

nor first-fruits are being developed by the power of these great agencies, but when nations shall be born in a day, and when races shall be knit together, and all of them shall be lifted up by the final form of divine influence into perfect manhood. And it is the realization of this great conception of a world's manhood that is the aim of Christianity; and this is that which it is working toward, and with a larger and larger volume of truth and of influence, through every successive great period of time.

The passage which I have often quoted, and which I shall never quote enough, in Philippians, embraces the same idea:

"Whatsoever things are true."

He has been telling a great many things that are true, and unfolding them; and he then says, "But not these alone-whatever things are true. When men have thought; when new philosophies have arisen; when controversies have cleared the chaff from the wheat; when, after ten thousand years of unfolding nature and the development of man in civil society, and all probings and experiments, shall have brought around a glorious circle of truth, so that there shall be a thousand stars where once there was but one in the horizon, whatsoever is true all that belongs to Christianity." That is the meaning of the whole passage:

"Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things,"

-Ponder, accept, these things. In the long flight of years, as God shall, on the one and on the other side, ripen new fruits, develop new intelligences, bring forth sweeter harmonies of social life, lift up the standard more and more, men are not to stand carping and saying, "Your Christianity did well enough for the old time; but it is outgrown. There are better things now than the old Christianity ever brought into the world." Paul says, "Christianity does not mean just the things that I have attained. It is not limited to just the things that I am telling you. It includes the ever-increasing evolution by which God means to complete the development of the race, on the whole globe, in all periods of time. And whatever is true is of Christ; and whatever is just, or ever shall be; and whatever is pure, or ever shall be; and whatever is beautiful, or of good-report among men-be in a mood, if you have any virtue or any sensibility, to accept that as a part of your fealty to Christ, and of your faith in God." That was the apostle's creed; and that is the creed which goes on forever augmenting, never abandoning the old, knitting the future to the past, and still making new discoveries-not discoveries of new truths, but of new blossoms on old branches.

THE ERA OF JOY.

Now it can be made intelligible how the joy which is the aim of Christianity may be really that which was predicted by the angels to all people; and how Christianity itself is a state designed to produce joy; and yet, how sorrow, which is the instrument largely employed in producing it, may still fill so large a place as it has filled in the history of the world. For when men say that Christianity tends to produce joy, we are instantly pointed to the wretched condition of things which exists; and men say, "Two thousand years! and where is your joyfulness?" Men say, "Christianity produce joy? Have there ever been such bloody wars as Christianity has produced? Have there ever been such quarreling and dissensions as Christianity has produced? Where is your joy? Besides," they say, "though these flighty angels may have said something about joy, what did the Master himself say? He said, 'Take up your cross and follow me.' He said, 'In this world shall suffer tribulation.' What saith the Scripture? It says 'They that will live godly shall suffer persecution."" And therefore it strikes the sad ear of those that are despondent, or of those that look only on one side of this question, very strangely, when I declare that it is the aim of Christianity to produce joy; when I say that Christianity is the joy-producing state of the universe.

ye

But I do not say that it instantly produces joy. I do not say that it produces joy always. I do not say that it is not subject to the per versions which belong to the whole scheme of this life. I merely say that it is attempting to work in man such a growth and such a development as shall bring him into the capacity and into the condition in which joy shall be the natural end of each faculty, and of the whole of the faculties. While he is being educated into it I concede that there is much suffering; but it is not suffering for the sake of suffering. It is not aimless, void and useless suffering. It is a suffering which chastises disobedience into obedience; which transforms faults into virtues ; which discharges the dross, and brings out the pure gold. That is the divine idea of suffering in the world.

The woman of the house says, "I will have neatness in this household." And behold her on her knees on the floor (I am speaking of the old-fashioned times); and behold the floor all covered with dirt and soap and water; and behold the man that wanted neatness wading for his life, as it were, through the flood of suds and filth. And yet, through dirt she does get neatness. First comes the scrubbing; and after the scrubbing comes the dry and cleanly floor. And so it is with all processes of cleansing or polishing. Brilliance is what is wanted on the shield. And so it is burnished. But the substances by which that brilliance is brought out are blackening and disfiguring.

The workman's period is not always the enjoying period. It is