Article July 24, 1909 Issue

"REJOICE EVERMORE"

WILLARD S. MATTOX

Time was when a gloomy austerity was mistaken for a sign of religion, but that time is happily fast disappearing. Men are coming to see that a cheerful visage and a cheerful mental state are not inconsistent with true religious devotion, and that, in fact, to be religious one must needs be happy. In a certain sense, one might even say unhappiness is irreligion, since it implies either lack of confidence in God and a belief in evil,—a belief in some nature opposed to good,—or else it implies that God is the originator and sender of the things that cause unhappiness.

The early Christians were happy. They were not oppressed by the demands of a dismal creed that bade them assume a somber manner as a substitute for genuine piety. Jesus' keen analysis and incisive language laid bare and rebuked the cant of the scholasticism of his time. He said, "When ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward."

To the immediate followers of Jesus, and to the early converts to Christianity, it was quite natural to be happy. They were familiar with Paul's saying, "The fruit of the Spirit is ... joy:" that is to say, the inevitable result of an understanding of Spirit, the necessary product of spirituality, or a right consciousness of things as they are, is joy. And whenever we find an absence of joy,—whenever we find sadness or discouragement, anxiety or fear, we have, according to the Pauline standards, little evidence of religion, little evidence of that proper comprehension of a loving Father which would express itself in calm joy, in an equable poise that is the "fruit of the Spirit."

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