Psalm 100:2 Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing. Are you happy? I look upon the faces of the men and women I see as I pass along the crowded street as I meet them on the railway, or in the tram, in their business, or at their leisure, and how few faces comparatively look really happy! The most people one looks on seem to exist rather than to live. Why are people not happy? Is it right to be happy? Is it consistent for a Christian to be happy? Is religion designed to make us happy or unhappy, to depress life or to stimulate and fulfil it? I may take it that there is no being who exists who does not wish to be happy. Yet many a man and woman who in the abstract wishes to be happy rather takes a delight in being or feeling unhappy, in assuming that it is rather a proper thing not to realize happiness; and many men, while sincerely wishing to be happy, never take the smallest steps scientifically to discover the way of happiness, and to realize it in their own person. Then, again, ideas rule the world, and I have no doubt that the deficiency of happiness in our age is due to a religious idea. While science has advanced, religious conceptions have advanced very little beyond those of the savage. Our own age, so far from having escaped from its meshes, has deliberately reverted to mediaeval theology. The conviction prevails that religious people in particular ought to suffer and be more or less unhappy. Pain itself is thought to be pleasing to God. Because suffering is in the world we have no right to say that it is God's will it should remain there. We have grown out of many things, and we are to grow out of this. God is happy, and therefore we are destined to be happy. We shall grow happier as we grow nearer Christ. But how to be happy? I will tell you the secret. "The Kingdom of God is within you." Once realize that happiness is not going to be given you by anybody, that you have the power in yourselves, and you have learnt the mighty secret, you are on the first step of the path. You may be happy, you ought to be happy. Were you to range through the universe, and live through eternity, happiness can come no nearer to you while you ask it of any as a favour, or expect it as a gift. Begin the work within. You are your own self-creator, by the power which the Eternal has entrusted to you. Are you unhappy, what you lack is life. Illness, disease, moral, physical, mental, is want of life. We ought to be happy in all our activity. "Blessed is the man who has found his work, and can do it," says Carlyle. Our work is the manifestation and expression of our life. No work is well done which is not done joyfully, therefore joyousness is a very element of religious service. (C. E. Beeby, B.D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing.WEB: Serve Yahweh with gladness. Come before his presence with singing. |
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