Joy and Power Part 1

Joy & Power.

by Henry van d.y.k.e.

THE PREFACE

The three messages which are brought together in this book were given not far apart in time, though at some distance from one another in s.p.a.ce. The one called Joy and Power was delivered in Los Angeles, California, at the opening of the Presbyterian General a.s.sembly, May 21, 1903. The one called The Battle of Life was delivered on Baccalaureate Sunday at Princeton University, June 7. The one called The Good Old Way was delivered on Baccalaureate Sunday at Harvard University, June 14. At the time, I was thinking chiefly of the different qualities and needs of the people to whom I had to speak. This will account for some things in the form of each message. But now that they are put together I can see that all three of them say about the same thing. They point in the same direction, urge the same course of action, and appeal to the same motive. It is nothing new,--the meaning of this threefold message,--but it is the best that I have learned in life. And I believe it is true,--so true that we need often to have it brought to remembrance.

Henry van d.y.k.e

Avalon, July 5, 1903

JOY AND POWER

St. John viii. 17: If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.

I ask you to think for a little while about the religion of Christ in its relation to happiness.

This is only one point in the circle of truth at the centre of which Jesus stands. But it is an important point because it marks one of the lines of power which radiate from Him. To look at it clearly and steadily is not to disregard other truths. The mariner takes the whole heavens of astronomy for granted while he shapes his course by a single star.

In the wish for happiness all men are strangely alike. In their explanations of it and in their ways of seeking it they are singularly different. Shall we think of this wish as right, or wrong; as a true star, or a will-o'-the-wisp? If it is right to wish to be happy, what are the conditions on which the fulfilment of this wish depends? These are the two questions with which I would come to Christ, seeking instruction and guidance.

I. The desire of happiness, beyond all doubt, is a natural desire. It is the law of life itself that every being seeks and strives toward the perfection of its kind, the realization of its own specific ideal in form and function, and a true harmony with its environment. Every drop of sap in the tree flows toward foliage and fruit. Every drop of blood in the bird beats toward flight and song. In a conscious being this movement toward perfection must take a conscious form. This conscious form is happiness,--the satisfaction of the vital impulse,--the rhythm of the inward life,--the melody of a heart that has found its keynote.

To say that all men long for this is simply to confess that all men are human, and that their thoughts and feelings are an essential part of their life. Virtue means a completed manhood. The joyful welfare of the soul belongs to the fulness of that ideal. Holiness is wholeness. In striving to realize the true aim of our being, we find the wish for happiness implanted in the very heart of our effort.

Now what does Christ say in regard to this natural human wish? Does He say that it is an illusion? Does He condemn and deny it? Would He have accepted Goethe's definition: "religion is renunciation"?

Surely such a notion is far from the spirit of Jesus. There is nothing of the hardness of Stoicism, the coldness of Buddhism, in Christ's gospel. It is humane, sympathetic, consoling. Unrest and weariness, the fever of pa.s.sion and the chill of despair, soul-solitude and heart-trouble, are the very things that He comes to cure. He begins His great discourse with a series of beat.i.tudes. "Blessed" is the word.

"Happy" is the meaning. Nine times He rings the changes on that word, like a silver bell sounding from His fair temple on the mountain-side, calling all who long for happiness to come to Him and find rest for their souls.

Christ never asks us to give up merely for the sake of giving up, but always in order to win something better. He comes not to destroy, but to fulfil,--to fill full,--to replenish life with true, inward, lasting riches. His gospel is a message of satisfaction, of attainment, of felicity. Its voice is not a sigh, but a song. Its final word is a benediction, a good-saying. "These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full."

If we accept His teaching we must believe that men are not wrong in wishing for happiness, but wrong in their way of seeking it. Earthly happiness,--pleasure that belongs to the senses and perishes with them,--earthly happiness is a dream and a delusion. But happiness on earth,--spiritual joy and peace, blossoming here, fruiting hereafter,--immortal happiness, is the keynote of life in Christ.

And if we come to Him, He tells us four great secrets in regard to it.

i. It is inward, and, not outward; and so it does not depend on what we have, but on what we are.

ii. It cannot be found by direct seeking, but by setting our faces toward the things from which it flows; and so we must climb the mount if we would see the vision, we must tune the instrument if we would hear the music.

iii. It is not solitary, but social; and so we can never have it without sharing it with others.

iv. It is the result of G.o.d's will for us, and not of our will for ourselves; and so we can only find it by giving our lives up, in submission and obedience, to the control of G.o.d.

For this is peace,--to lose the lonely note Of self in love's celestial ordered strain: And this is joy,--to find one's self again In Him whose harmonies forever float Through all the spheres of song, below, above,-- For G.o.d is music, even as G.o.d is love.

This is the divine doctrine of happiness as Christ taught it by His life and with His lips. If we want to put it into a single phrase, I know not where we shall find a more perfect utterance than in the words which have been taught us in childhood,--words so strong, so n.o.ble, so cheerful, that they summon the heart of manhood like marching-music: "Man's chief end is to glorify G.o.d and enjoy Him forever."

Let us accept without reserve this teaching of our Divine Lord and Master in regard to the possibility and the duty of happiness. It is an essential element of His gospel. The atmosphere of the New Testament is not gloom, but gladness; not despondency, but hope. The man who is not glad to be a Christian is not the right kind of a Christian.

The first thing that commended the Church of Jesus to the weary and disheartened world in the early years of her triumph, was her power to make her children happy,--happy in the midst of afflictions, happy in the release from the burden of guilt, happy in the sense of Divine Fatherhood and human brotherhood, happy in Christ's victory over sin and death, happy in the a.s.surance of an endless life. At midnight in the prison, Paul and Silas sang praises, and the prisoners heard them. The lateral force of joy,--that was the power of the Church.

"'Poor world,' she cried, 'so deep accurst, Thou runn'st from pole to pole To seek a draught to slake thy thirst,-- Go seek it in thy soul.'

Tears washed the trouble from her face!

She changed into a child!

'Mid weeds and wrecks she stood,--a place Of ruin,--but she smiled!"

Much has the Church lost of that pristine and powerful joy. The furnace of civilization has withered and hardened her. She has become anxious and troubled about many things. She has sought earthly honours, earthly powers. Richer she is than ever before, and probably better organized, and perhaps more intelligent, more learned,--but not more happy. The one note that is most often missing in Christian life, in Christian service, is the note of spontaneous joy.

Christians are not as much calmer, steadier, stronger, and more cheerful than other people as they ought to be. Some Christians are among the most depressing and worryful people in the world,--the most difficult to live with. And some, indeed, have adopted a theory of spiritual ethics which puts a special value upon unhappiness. The dark, morbid spirit which mistrusts every joyful feeling, and depreciates every cheerful virtue, and looks askance upon every happy life as if there must be something wrong about it, is a departure from the beauty of Christ's teaching to follow the dark-browed philosophy of the Orient.

The religion of Jesus tells us that cheerful piety is the best piety.

There is something finer than to do right against inclination; and that is to have an inclination to do right. There is something n.o.bler than reluctant obedience; and that is joyful obedience. The rank of virtue is not measured by its disagreeableness, but by its sweetness to the heart that loves it. The real test of character is joy. For what you rejoice in, that you love. And what you love, that you are like.

I confess frankly that I have no admiration for the phrase "disinterested benevolence," to describe the main-spring of Christian morals. I do not find it in the New Testament: neither the words, nor the thing. Interested benevolence is what I find there. To do good to others is to make life interesting and find peace for our own souls. To glorify G.o.d is to enjoy Him. That was the spirit of the first Christians. Was not St. Paul a happier man than Herod? Did not St. Peter have more joy of his life than Nero? It is said of the first disciples that they "did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart."

Not till that pristine gladness of life returns will the Church regain her early charm for the souls of men. Every great revival of Christian power--like those which came in the times of St. Francis of a.s.sisi and of John Wesley--has been marked and heralded by a revival of Christian joy.

If we want the Church to be mighty in power to win men, to be a source of light in the darkness, a fountain of life in the wilderness, we must remember and renew, in the spirit of Christ, the relation of religion to human happiness.

II. What, then, are the conditions upon which true happiness depends?

Christ tells us in the text: If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.

This is the blessing with a double if. "If ye know,"--this is the knowledge which Christ gives to faith. "If ye do,"--this is the obedience which faith gives to Christ. Knowing and Doing,--these are the twin pillars, Jachin and Boaz, on which the house of happiness is built.

The harmony of faith and life,--this is the secret of inward joy and power.

You remember when these words were spoken. Christ had knelt to wash the disciples' feet. Peter, in penitence and self-reproach, had hesitated to permit this lowly service of Divine love. But Christ answered by revealing the meaning of His act as a symbol of the cleansing of the soul from sin. He reminded the disciples of what they knew by faith,--that He was their Saviour and their Lord. By deed and by word He called up before them the great spiritual truths which had given new meaning to their life. He summoned them to live according to their knowledge, to act upon the truth which they believed.

I am sure that His words sweep out beyond that quiet upper room, beyond that beautiful incident, to embrace the whole spiritual life. I am sure that He is revealing to us the secret of happy living which lies at the very heart of His gospel, when He says: If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.

i. "If ye know,"--there is, then, a certain kind of knowledge without which we can not be happy. There are questions arising in human nature which demand an answer. If it is denied we can not help being disappointed, restless, and sad. This is the price we have to pay for being conscious, rational creatures. If we were mere plants or animals we might go on living through our appointed years in complete indifference to the origin and meaning of our existence. But within us, as human beings, there is something that cries out and rebels against such a blind life. Man is born to ask what things mean. He is possessed with the idea that there is a significance in the world beyond that which meets his senses.

John Fiske has brought out this fact very clearly in his last book, Through Nature to G.o.d. He shows that "in the morning twilight of existence the Human Soul vaguely reached forth toward something akin to itself, not in the realm of fleeting phenomena, but in the Eternal Presence beyond." He argues by the a.n.a.logy of evolution, which always presupposes a real relation between the life and the environment to which it adjusts itself, that this forth-reaching and unfolding of the soul implies the everlasting reality of religion.

The argument is good. But the point which concerns us now is simply this. The forth-reaching, questioning soul can never be satisfied if it touches only a dead wall in the darkness, if its seeking meets with the reply, "You do not know, and you never can know, and you must not try to know." This is agnosticism. It is only another way of spelling unhappiness.

"Since Christianity is not true," wrote Ernest Renan, "nothing interests me, or appears worthy my attention." That is the logical result of losing the knowledge of spiritual things,--a life without real interest, without deep worth,--a life with a broken spring.

But suppose Renan is mistaken. Suppose Christianity is true. Then the first thing that makes it precious, is that it answers our questions, and tells us the things that we must know in order to be happy.

Christianity is a revealing religion, a teaching religion, a religion which conveys to the inquiring spirit certain great and positive solutions of the problems of life. It is not silent, nor ambiguous, nor incomprehensible in its utterance. It replies to our questions with a knowledge which, though limited, is definite and sufficient. It tells us that this "order of nature, which const.i.tutes the world's experience, is only one portion of the total universe." That the ruler of both worlds, seen and unseen, is G.o.d, a Spirit, and the Father of our spirits. That He is not distant from us nor indifferent to us, but that He has given His eternal Son Jesus Christ to be our Saviour. That His Spirit is ever present with us to help us in our conflicts with evil, in our efforts toward goodness. That He is making all things work together for good to those that love Him. That through the sacrifice of Christ every one who will may obtain the forgiveness of sins and everlasting peace. That through the resurrection of Christ all who love Him and their fellow-men shall obtain the victory over death and live forever.

Now these are doctrines. And it is just because Christianity contains such doctrines that it satisfies the need of man.