The joy of service

Front matter

J i

Chap. Copyright No,

Shelf M .08

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Joy of Service i

II. The Duty of Joy 14

Chapter I. The Joy Of Sekvice

Take joy home,

And make a place in thy heart for her;

And give her time to grow, and cherish her;

Then will she come and sing to thee

When thou art working in the furrow; ay,

It is a comely fashion to be glad ;

Joy is the grace we say to God.

Jean Ingelow.

There are many sources of joy. All men are in quest of happiness, and upon a thousand paths the shoeprints of the seekers are found. There is nothing available in all the world, nothing which holds the slightest promise or hope of happiness, that has not been tried by some one eager to find the magic secret.

We are accustomed to say that the only true, deep, unfailing joy is that which we may find in God. The Bible has many promises of happiness, but they all point to spiritual and eternal sources. We read of the joy of the Lord, of rejoicing in God; Christ promises his own joy to his followers. Joy, therefore, is the inheritance of the Christian, — he has a right to claim it. Yet not all Christians are happy. Many whose faith in Christ is unmistakable have joy only in the quiet lulls of life. They are easily disturbed. The song of to-day is choked with tears to-morrow. It is worth our while to try to find the secret of true and abiding Christian joy. We often hear it said that trust in God yields joy, or that a blameless life produces happiness. There is one kind of living, however, which more than any other contains the master secret of joy. It is a life of service. It begins in consecration to Christ : we must, first of all, be his servants. It includes trust, — reposing upon God. But there can be no continued quiet confidence if there be no activity in Christian life. Still water stagnates.

Even trust without action soon loses its restfulness.

Work itself is always a helper of happiness. Indolence is never truly happy. The happiest man is the busy man. Even physical health depends largely upon regular occupation. No man, able for duty, who is not busy, can be truly or deeply happy. The idle man may be living a life of pleasure, but it is not a life of real happiness. Work is a condition of joy. It is a blessing that most people, when sorrow comes, dare not pause to indulge their grief. Their duties are waiting for them, waiting so clamorously that they cannot linger even for the tender sentiment of sorrow. There is scarcely time to wait for the funeral to be over, after a bereavement, before imperative tasks must receive attention. It is well that it is so. The necessary activity keeps the heart from breaking, and preserves the life from the morbidity which so often sorrow produces when the hands lie folded.

Work is therefore a secret of happiness. It saves the heart from being overcharged.

The emotions which otherwise would lie pent up, to the hurt of the life, find vent and are wrought out in activities which bless others, while they produce health and wholesomeness in him who performs them. No worse mistake can be made by one in grief than to drop life's duties and tasks out of the hands, and cut one's self off from the common duties and ministries of life. God's comfort is not found in this way. Joy comes not back to him who nourishes his sorrow in idle brooding; it is found only in the earnest and faithful doing of every duty. Work has saved many a life from despair in time of great grief.

But there is something higher and diviner yet than even work alone. Work may be selfish. It may be solely for the advancement of one's own interests, without any thought of another's benefit or comfort. Even then there is blessing in it ; for it fills the hands and occupies the thoughts — there is good in occupation itself. But if we add to work the element of serving, with love and thought of others, we have one of the noblest of all the secrets of joy.

Serving comes from loving ; it is love's expression. Serving that is not inspired by love yields no joy. Love that does not serve is not love at all. The measure of self-denial that one is ready to suffer is the measure of the love that is in one's heart. Love that will not sacrifice is only a sentiment, a fair blossom from which no fruit comes. Love is ready always for serving.

Wherever we see life in its best forms and developments, it has in it the element of service. In every glimpse of heavenly life shown to us in the Bible, we find service as the highest expression of the life's spirit. The angels who appear, coming and going between heaven and earth, are always engaged in service for some of God's children. Their mission is described in one sentence : "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?" They come to earth expressly to serve. We know that the angels possess the secret of joy ; they are represented as praising God continually. It is the joy of service that fills their hearts. Never a thought of self poisons their pure gladness.

The greatest and highest of all beings is God himself. His is the life which had no beginning, and shall have no ending. All other life — all angel life, all human life — flows from the one great fountain. Yet God lives not for himself. God is love, and the very essence of love is always service. He is ever giving out blessing and good to men. Every revealing of God shows him to us as a God who serves his creatures. He thinks ever of their good. He works continually in providence, in most thoughtful, gentle serving. The highest reach of the divine serving was in the incarnation, when God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.

Then, in the story of the life of Christ, where we have the revealing of the divine character in all its beauty, we find the most wonderful serving. Never did any other man live for his friends as Jesus lived for his. He

THE JOY OF SERVICE. J

kept nothing back from them. On the last night of his life, as if to express his love in a way that never could be forgotten, we see him clad as a servant, washing his disciples' feet. No picture of Jesus in all the Gospels is truer to the very heart of his life than this. He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. He took on him the form of a servant, to show the divine spirit. A little later he actually gave his life in his matchless service of love. Thus this divinest of all ideals of life is seen serving even unto the uttermost. .

We know that in this serving, Jesus found deep and holy joy. It used to be taught that he was a sad man. There was a tradition that he never smiled. But this conception of Jesus could not have been true. He was indeed a man of sorrows, but there was in his heart a deep joy which even his sorrows could not quench. He spoke distinctly and repeatedly of his joy and of his peace. One of the New Testament writers tells us that it was for the joy set before him that he endured the cross, despising the shame.

We can readily think of many sources in the joy of Christ. His fellowship with his Father was never broken, nor even most faintly shadowed for a moment. He was sinless ; there was never in his heart the least trace of that sorrow which mars the sweetest human joy, the consciousness of having done evil. His perfect faith made all spiritual things eternal realities to him, more real than the rocks and hills and trees and paths of earth. He never groped in the darkness of doubt and fear, as at times the holiest saints on earth must do when faith's vision grows dim. He saw the ultimate meaning of all sorrow, and looked to the end and final harvest of all sacrifice and loss. He was never discouraged ; he knew that his work would not fail. He had full confidence in the future of his ministry, and in the ultimate triumph of his kingdom.

Yet it is evident that the richest of all the sources of the joy of Christ was in his love and service. It was the joy of doing good, of giving comfort, of saving the lost, that meant the most to him. The travail of his soul was forgotten in the knowledge that a world would be redeemed by his blood.

This joy of service Christ bequeathed also to his followers, — "that my joy may be in you." There are other sources, too, of Christian joy, — forgiveness, childship in God's family, hope, divine fellowship ; but the joy that comes from serving is the purest and fullest of all. We have a hint of this in the Master's word, " It is more blessed to give than to receive. ,, This is a much deeper saying than we usually think it to be. There is much giving to us that is very wonderful. There are many and great spiritual blessings which come to us as gifts. Salvation is all of grace ; we earn nothing that we receive. We have the gift of pardon, of life, of the Holy Spirit, of the inheritance in glory ; but it is more blessed for us to give than to receive even these divine gifts. The richest, truest, deepest, realest blessing that can come

IO THE JOY OF SERVICE.

to any heart is the blessing of giving, of do* ing, of suffering, of sacrificing for others, of serving them in love.

The joy of service is therefore the sweetest, holiest joy possible. After the best happiness that can come through all other pure sources, human or divine, the joy that means the most to the heart and life is that which is found in loving and serving others in the name of Christ.

Without this element no other joy is complete. God's best gifts to us would not make us deeply and securely happy, if we only received and enjoyed them, and did not become servants of others with them. Even communion with God would fail to bring us true and abiding blessing, if we went not out from the holy presence on ministries of love to those who need. No blessing we keep for ourselves alone can give us deep and holy gladness. No vision of angels, no theophany, can produce such thrills of rapture in the heart as are enjoyed in some lowly service of love.

There is a beautiful legend which tells that

THE JOY OF SERVICE. II

one shepherd was kept at home, watching a fevered guest, the night the angels came to Bethlehem with the announcement of the birth of Jesus, and sang their songs of joy. The other shepherds saw the heavenly host, heard their song, and beheld the glory. Returning home, their hearts were wondrously elated. But all the night Shemuel sat alone by the restless sufferer, and waited. His fellow-shepherds pitied his deprivation, — that he missed the vision and the glory which they had seen. But in his lowly serving Shemuel had blessing and reward of his own. He missed, indeed, the splendor of that night in the fields, and in his serving he gave his own life ; but his eyes saw then a more wondrous glory than that which his fellow-shepherds had seen.

" Shemuel, by the fever-bed, Touched by beckoning hands that led, Died and saw the Uncreated ; All his fellows lived, and waited."

He had waited by the bed of sickness while they saw the glory; now they waited amid earth's dull scenes, while he witnessed the glory of the Eternal. So it is always in life in this world. Those who sit by fever-beds, and minister to human need in its countless forms, seem to miss much that is very beautiful. Their holy ministry keeps them away from places of honor, even from scenes of spiritual ecstasy. While at their common tasks they see not the angel hosts nor hear the music. Absorption in the duties of human love in the home, or among the poor, causes men and women to miss much that the world esteems. But meanwhile there is a higher reward, not only in store at the end, but even now, for those who serve. They enter more fully and deeply into the joy of the Lord ; and then, in heaven, they will be received into holier fellowship, closer to Christ.

After all, only that life is worth living which has in it the spirit and quality of service and sacrifice. Dora Greenwell says, " I have often felt a significance in the fact that nothing belonging to Christ's kingdom tells much upon the world which has not in it the element of sacrifice, and of Christlike willingness to participate in pain. A righteous man may effect much good through beneficent deeds and wise and kind plans for the benefit of others ; but it is to the man for whom some, peradventure, would even dare to die, the man who himself, if need were, would die for men, that the hearts of men cleave."

It is only life itself that is worth giving to others. That which we do for others or give to them, and which costs us nothing, has small blessing or help in it for them. A man may speak to us eloquently ; but if it is only words that he speaks, we are no richer for listening to them. Only when we serve in love, giving out life itself in our ministry, do we either find deep joy for our own heart, or make others truly happier or more blessed.

Chapter II. The Duty Of Joy

Be like the bird that, halting in her flight,

Awhile on boughs too slight, Feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings,

Knowing she hath wings.

Victor Hugo.

They are in the habit of saying in the East that in India the flowers yield no fragrance, the birds do not sing, and the women never smile. In a sense, it is almost literally true. Flowers, even of the richest hues, give out but little perfume ; birds of brightest plumage utter only piercing notes instead of sweet songs ; and the faces of the women are sad as they go about, enduring their sorrowful lot. All this is suggestive of the spiritual condition of a country where the gospel of Christ is not known.

Christianity brings joy. The message of the angel to the shepherds was, " I bring you good tidings of g*eat joy, which shall be to all people." Joy was born into the world that Christmas night when Jesus began his life on the earth. He came to bless men, to comfort sorrow, to open prisons, to lift the lost up to heaven. Jesus talked much about joy. He had a wondrous joy of his own. He was called a man of sorrows — never was there any other sorrow like unto his sorrow. Yet all the while there was in his heart a deep joy which nothing could disturb. Before he went away he bequeathed his joy to his disciples, and prayed that their joy might be full.

Christians should have joy. But Christian joy is not happiness, as the world understands that word. Happiness is on the surface. It depends upon things that happen, and is easily disturbed. During a great battle the soldiers noticed, perched on a tree, a bird which sang whenever the roar of battle was hushed for a few moments. But when the terrific noise began again, the bird was silent. So it is with earthly happiness ; it sings in the brief pauses of life's struggles, but is silent while the strife goes on.

Christian joy, however, is too deep to be affected by this world's occurrences. It is like those fresh-water springs beside the sea, over which the brackish tides pour, but whose waters are sweet as ever when the tides recede. It is joy which the world can neither give nor take away. It lives in the heart under the bitterest sorrows, and sings its songs in the darkest nights.

Joy is not merely a privilege which a Christian may enjoy — it is also a duty. It is a fruit of the Spirit, and not a mere accident of temperament, or a mere index of experience. Christian life should always be victorious. We are to be more than conquerors through him that loved us. The experience told so exuberantly in the following lines ought not to be impossible many days in any truly victorious life, —

" Give me joy, give me joy, O my friends! For once in my life has a day Passed over my head and out of my sight, And my soul has naught to unsay.

THE DUTY OF JOY. I?

No querulous word to the fair little child

Who drew me from study to play ; No fretful reply to the hundred and one

Who questioned me, gravely and gay ; No word to the beggar I fain would take back,

No word to the debtor at bay ; No angry retorts to those who misjudge,

And desire not a nay, but a yea: No word, though I know I remember them all,

Which I would, if I could, e'er unsay. Give me joy, give me joy, O my friends !

For the patience that lasted all day."

Christians are to be light, and light is a symbol of joy. Gloom, therefore, in the life of any friend of the Master is a contradiction of Christlikeness. It is our duty to be cheerful, joyful, songful, whatever the circumstances or experiences may be. We should never yield to discouragement, to depression, to disheartenment. If we let the darkness into our soul, it will darken our eyes, and mar the beauty of our life. Discouragement is dangerous. It robs a man of strength and skill, and makes him faint in the struggle. It chills his heart, takes the enthusiasm out of his life, and imperils all his career. One of the firm resolves of every man should be, never to be discouraged, since discouragement is defeat.

Then we owe it to the world, also, to live a life of victorious joy. We are to be a blessing to others, and there is no other way in which we can do so much for those about us as by being habitually joyful. If we go about with sad words on our lips, disheartening words, we make it harder for others to live heroically and worthily. The influence of one depressed spirit on others cannot be estimated. Their burdens seem heavier, the road seems steeper to them, and the struggle seems sorer, because our hands hang down, the light fades from our eye, and our lips speak discouragingly.

But if we go through life, singing happy songs as we go, songs of joy and gladness, they will become inspiration in the hearts of those who hear them. Men will grow braver, hope will come out of discouragement, and defeat will be changed to victory. Burdens will seem lighter, battles less fierce, and tasks easier, as the joyous notes of our songs ring out on the air. Ella Wheeler Wilcox writes, —

" Smile upon the troubled pilgrims

Whom you pass and meet ; Frowns are thorns, and smiles are blossoms,

Oft, to weary feet.

Do not make the way seem harder

By a sullen face ; Smile a little, smile a little,

Brighten up the place."

We have no right to make life harder for others. It is a sin against humanity to do so. The law of love forbids it. He who makes it harder for a brother to live nobly, and do his work well, has sinned against one of Christ's little ones — therefore, against Christ himself. We dare not go about among our fellows saying discouraging things, dispiriting things ; for, if we do, we are imperilling those whose burdens are already as heavy as they can bear. One discouraging word may cause them to sink down and perish.

The law of love bids us bear one another's burdens, and there is no other way in which i we can do this so effectively as by living a life of victorious joy ourselves. He who goes among men throughout the day with glad heart and cheerful face, speaking to every one he meets some encouraging word, saying something uplifting in every ear, is a wonderful inspirer of strength, courage, and hope, in men. He is a divine minister of good to others. He makes every one a little braver and stronger. Weary plodders on the dusty way pluck up fresh energy after meeting him. Fainting ones awake to new courage when his hopeful words have fallen upon their ears. The influence of such a habitual encourager can never be measured. It is a noble thing to live thus.

There are few lessons which are needed more than this teaching that joy is a duty. The mass of Christian people seem to pay no heed to it. There really are not many joyful Christians. It would seem as if a large number of them think there is a virtue in sadness and gloom. They make no attempt to live victoriously, but yield to every discouragement, and allow it to get into their heart. Even the little ills, which full-grown men should be ashamed to be affected by, they allow to master them. Even strong men are made wretched by a slight indisposition, by a little disappointment, or by hearing of some other's success.

Then, what is worse, they not only let their own spirits be disturbed by these trivial incidents of pain or inconvenience, but they must needs make every one they meet share their miserable dispiriting. They carry the dark shadow of their unhappy feeling on their face. They chafe and fret when things do not go well. They pout and sulk like spoiled children when they do not get their own way. If they have not slept well, or if they have a headache, or a cold, or a discomfort of any kind, however trivial, they compel every one who salutes them courteously throughout the day to listen to the recital of all the tiresome story of their maladies.

Could any habit be more utterly selfish than this ? Do persons imagine that the neighbors who inquire kindly after their health have any pleasure in listening to such an unwholesome tale of woe, often about nothing but some imaginary ailment ? Does any one think that he has a right to pour such a burden of complaining into any human ear ? Every noble man is ready to extend sympathy in any case of real trouble ; but there is no call for sympathy in such ailments as make up the staple of the complaints which many of us have to tell our neighbors about. This is one of the human habits concerning which it were well if some power would " the giftie gie us to see oursel's as others see us." We only tire out our friends, and make it harder for them to live, while at the same time we add to our own wretchedness. For such miseries will grow if we nurse them, until by and by they become giants, and bind us hand and foot in hopeless bondage.

Far better is it for one to seal his lips resolutely and persistently against all such morbid talk, and speak only glad, joyous, encouraging things. This is one of the childish things we should put away as we become men, if we find ourselves indulging in it. It is unmanly and it is most unlovely. It is a grievous sin against others to inflict upon them our miserable hypochondrias. We should be scatterers of light, not of darkness ; of good, not of evil ; of inspiring influence, not of that which can only make life harder for every one we meet.

Well would it be for us all if we learned the lesson that joy is a duty. God wants us to be happy ; and if we live as we should live, we shall be happy. This is not saying that we shall have no sorrow, or that life will be always easy and pleasant for us ; but we may at least be always overcomers. We have reason to rejoice, whatever our circumstances and our condition may be. There is an inner life, a life hid with Christ in God, which should be unconquerable in a Christian, though all earthly things are swept away. There is a world beyond this sphere, — a world where no storms beat, and where nothing hurtful ever shall come ; why should we be so affected by what takes place here, where we are staying but a little time ?

Life is made up of habits. We ask God to help us to keep sweet and to live joyfully. He is ready to do it, but the way he would help us is in little lessons which we must learn for ourselves. He will never take out of our life all our miserable ways at one time, and put in place of them a full set of lovely ways, as one might change the works of a watch. That is not God's way of remaking us. We are scholars in Christ's school, and are to learn of him. No pupil can master an art or a science in a day : it takes months and years. We cannot learn in a day to live joyfully and victoriously ; but we can get a lesson to-day and another to-morrow, letting no day pass without its line. Meanwhile, God will help us continually, encouraging every effort, permitting us to fail in no lesson. If only we are diligent and persistent, the most cheerless of us can at last so learn the habit of joy, that we shall fill our days with song. Susan Coolidge tells us how all such lessons are learned : —

How does the soul grow ? Not all in a minute. Now it may lose ground, and now it may win it ; Now it resolves, and again the will faileth ; Now it rejoiceth, and now it bewaileth ; Now its hopes fructify, then they are blighted ; Now it walks sunnily, now gropes benighted, Fed by discouragements, taught by disaster. So it goes forward, now slower, now faster, Till, all the pain past, and failures made whole, It is full-grown, and the Lord rules the soul."

CHAPTER III. THUNDER, OR ANGEIi'S VOICE

" Whither leads this pathway, little one ? " — "It runs just on and on, is never done."

" Whither leads this pathway, mistress fair ? " — " That path to town, sir ; to the village square."

" Whither leads this pathway, father old ? " — 11 To the white quiet of the churchyard fold."

Different persons continually give a different answer to the same question. Our eyes are alike, and yet no two persons see the same picture on the canvas. Our ears are constructed on the same pattern, and yet no two hear the same song as they listen side by side to the singer. The world is not the same to any two persons. We carry within us a mysterious power, which interprets to us whatever we see or hear of the sights and voices of the outside world ; and this power is distinct

THUNDER, OR ANGEVS VOICE. 2*J

in each one. Thus it happens continually that the same voice falls upon the ears of two different persons, and is altogether different to the two. Each hears what his own soul is prepared for hearing.

We have an illustration of this in the story of Christ. One day a voice was heard in the temple. It was a divine voice speaking from heaven. The people standing about the Master heard it, and were strangely impressed by it. Yet they were not all impressed in the same way. Some thought it thundered ; the voice awed and terrified them. Others thought an angel had spoken. It was the same sound ; the difference was in those who heard it. The mood of their spirit gave tone to the voice.

It is always so ; our own heart makes our world for us, and fills and peoples it, and the music we hear is modulated as it passes over the chords of our own soul. If you hold a smooth sea-shell to your ear, you hear a strange, murmuring sound, which we used to be told in childhood was a sort of reminiscence of the ocean's roar. The fancy is that the shell, having lain long amid the waves, the music of the sea has hidden in its magic chambers, and that this is what you hear when you hold the shell to your ear.

This pretty fancy is dispelled, however, when you learn that, instead of the music of the ocean, the sound you hear is caused by the beating of your own heart, the throbbing of the blood in your fingers. Lay the shell on a table, and put your ear to it, and there is no music ; you hear the murmur only when you hold the shell in your hands.