Chapter 4
Chapter 4 The joy of true piety
Enough has been said, we trust, to rescue true piety from the aspersion so often cast upon it, that it produces gloom and despondency. We hope that none of our readers will again indulge such a thought; but if they discover in the countenance or conduct of its professors anything of this nature, they will refer it to the influence of something else besides piety. It may be the individual temperament, which, by nature sad, is gradually assuming, under the influence of piety, a more cheerful tone; or it may arise from some passing cloud which has temporarily overshadowed the believer’s mind; or, what is not uncommon, it may be a pensive and sorrowful feeling, in view of the folly and madness of the careless unthinking sinner. Impenitent reader, the gloom which you charge upon piety is often the outward sign of compassion for your soul. Interpret that look aright. Ascribe it not to Piety, except as she teaches her followers to pity the lost.
We shall attempt, in the subsequent pages, to lay open the sources of joy and felicity which the believer possesses; and endeavor to show, that if a Christian is not happy, it is from no deficiency in the provision, nor in the means of obtaining it. We shall take as our motto the exhortation of the apostle, "Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice." Here we are explicitly enjoined to be cheerful, happy—yes, even joyful. We are required to exhibit our piety under a pleasing aspect; to wear a smile even when others would weep; and to sing our song of triumph when others would sink in despair. Is Piety, then, at war with nature? Oh no! she only sustains that nature under the burdens which our apostate state has laid upon it. Piety forbids not the heart to melt for sorrows felt or witnessed. The tears which dropped into the grave of Lazarus, affirm this. But the sympathies of the man, only set off to the more advantage the moral support of the Christian; and while nature is dissolved in grief, Piety is near to wipe the falling tear, and throw around the soul her all-supporting arms. There is no stoicism in Piety. But her joy is calm, not boisterous; and her sympathies deep in proportion to the real amount of suffering experienced or anticipated.
Nevertheless, it is the duty of all true Christians to evince to the world that their piety has taken off from the soul "the garments of mourning," and clothed it in the spirit of gladness. How little of this rejoicing has been heard in the tabernacles of the righteous! How few Christians have felt that the apostle’s exhortation comes to them with anything like an imperative obligation personally to rejoice! Hence it is not to be wondered at, that the notion has obtained among the impious, that Christians are gloomy; and now if we would wipe off from piety this aspersion, we must put on a new aspect, and give vent to our pious feelings in songs of praise and thanksgiving. But mark, Christian reader, we are not in favor of a forced or artificial joy. If our joy is in God, and is the natural outflow of pious emotion, it will then give a right impression, and be admitted to come from a Divine source.
It appears evident that piety, to have its full effect upon the whole world, must come forth to the eyes of men with more of its joyous spirit. By this we do not mean that it must relax one iota of its strictness; nor subtract one particle from the weight of that cross which it imposes. It is not our aim to exchange its cheerfulness for levity; nor its abstinence from worldly gaieties for a participation in them. Its joy then would not surely be in God. But we intend to urge the importance of having the soul so imbued with the love of God and man, so settled in its own confidence of salvation, so full of heavenly hopes and anticipations, so dead to the world and so independent of its delights—that it shall wear something of a celestial air, and impress men both with the reality and the purity of its joy. In our day, it seems, alas! as if this bright feature was but seldom fully developed. Where is to be found the happy Christian? Where is the soul whose devotions partake more of the rapturous than the complaining spirit? On whose face now beams the smile of gladness? Who lives so near to heaven’s bright regions as to have his features gilded with its reflected glories? Surely Piety is designed, and has the power, thus to irradiate every soul on whom her influence falls. She comes from heaven, the region of felicity, to conduct the soul out of these "dismal deeps and dangerous snares," to fill it with joy unspeakable, and to guide it where no sorrows can ever be experienced. Who then should wear a brighter countenance than the Christian? Who has a right to sing such exulting strains, or to indulge in such glorious anticipations? With all due allowance for the varying temperaments of the pious, we still think that there is less Christian joy than the Bible warrants and even commands.
Look at the example of the apostle Paul, who, though pressed with more care and encompassed with more infirmities than any of his pious colleagues, exhibited this joyous spirit throughout his whole Christian course. I will challenge the gayest devotee of vanity to a comparison with him. View him when and where you will, he is the same buoyant and happy saint, whose deep, ardent piety doubles every joy, and converts even the occasions of sorrow into seasons of spiritual triumph. "Rejoicing in tribulation," was one of his mottos. What says earth’s votary to this? The worldling can be happy when all goes well with him; he can exult amid the prosperity of life; but cast him with the apostle into Philippi’s dungeon, or place him at Nero’s bloody tribunal, and see if his joy will hold out there.