“Why should we think youth’s draught of joy,
If pure, would sparkle less?
Why should the cup the sooner cloy
Which God hath deigned to bless?”
Any man is a cynic who condemns all amusement as evil and inconsistent with the truest Christian life. Such teaching might have been accepted in the days of ascetic sternness and rigor, when piety meant contempt for all the joys and pleasures of life, when devotees thought to merit salvation by macerating their flesh, by breaking the chords of natural affection and by spurning every happy experience as sinful. Then holiness was moroseness, self inflicted pain was a sweet savor to God, and pleasure was guilt. There have also been phases of undoubted piety in later days in which similar abnormal developments of Christian life have appeared either as the result of devotion to some stern doctrine or produced by the sore stress and strain of existence under which gladness died away and life became hard and colorless in its very intensity.
In many lives misconceptions of the true ideal of Christian character have tended to illiberal views regarding pleasure. The loyal and earnest Christian seeks ever to imitate Christ. Our conceptions of his character and life reproduce themselves, therefore, in our ethics and living. A somebre Christ makes a somber religion. A joyous and joy approving Christ produces a sunny religion.
It has been said from time immemorial that Jesus never smiled. The prevalent conception of him has been of a man clothed in deep sorrow, grief laden, tearful, on whose face no ripple of gladness ever played. Wherever this conception has prevailed it has colored the lives of all who sought closely to follow Christ. The result has often been a gloomy religious spirit which sought to repress its natural joy. Mirth has seemed irreverent and all amusements have been regarded as incompatible with sincere piety.
But as men have read more deeply into the heart and spirit of the gospel this view of Christ has been found to be superficial. Amid all his sorrows, under all the deep shadows that hung over his life, Christ carried ever a heart of joy. Exteriorly his life was hard and full of grief, but the hardness did not crush his spirit. He did not carry his griefs in his face. His heart was like one of those fresh water springs that burst up in the sea, ever sweet under all the salt bitterness. Wherever he moved there were joy and gladness. Not one misanthropic word ever fell from his lips. He did not frown upon the children’s plays, upon the marriage festivities, or upon the sweet pleasures of home. A benign joyfulness plays over nearly every chapter of his blessed life. The true conception of Christ’s character is of a deeply serious man, earnest, thoughtful, living an intense life, but never sombre, gloomy or cynical, the deep earnestness of his character struck through with a quiet joy and the calm, steady light of a holy peace.
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