"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."

As creeds encroached upon the simple truths of Christ's religion, as ritual and formalism began to take the place of the vital essence of Christianity, it came to be taught and believed that a dejected mien, a stern manner, and a general atmosphere of gloom were indications of true discipleship. This unfortunate teaching has lasted almost up to the present time and has been responsible for much of humanity's sickness and failure. Even our Puritan forefathers, though they saw this much, that religion brought civil liberty, did not apparently see that it meant also freedom from those false beliefs about God, and about man's relations to his creator, which deceived men by making them suppose they were serving God acceptably when they assumed a dejection they would much rather be without.

Christian Science comes today to emphasize Jesus' religion of happiness, and to restate Paul's Christian dogma, "The fruit of the Spirit is ... joy." Mrs. Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 309), "Scientists sometimes take things too intensely," and elsewhere she agrees with Talmage that "there are wit, humor, and enduring vivacity among God's people." Nor will the witty, humorous, and vivacious Christian be mistaken for what Garrick calls "our present joking, giggling race." "True joy," he says, "consists in gravity and grace."

There are, of course, as many different opinions as to what constitutes happiness, as there are individuals, but Archbishop Tillotson seems to sum it up satisfactorily when he says, "Every moment we feel our dependence upon God, and find that we can neither be happy without Him, nor think ourselves so." A pagan moralist gives a metaphysical touch to his definition of happiness as being "no other than soundness and perfection of mind." When this is taken in conjunction with Paul's admonition to "let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus," we can see how it is that happiness, like everything else in the kingdom of heaven, "is within you." The French philosopher must have caught a glimpse of this great truth when he wrote, "Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things themselves; we are happy from possessing what we like, not from possessing what others like."

Inasmuch as the Christian is endeavoring to set his affections "on things above, not on things on the earth," his happiness will be found in a divine affection, in a spiritualized consciousness. This is the transformation of tastes and habits which the Christian Scientist is endeavoring to bring about, and as it goes on, he finds that his standards of joy have changed, that what he formerly wanted and took pleasure in, he no longer cares for. But he has lost no pleasure, he has sacrificed no joy, he has given up nothing worth while, he has simply and only changed his concept of joy; and whereas his notions of happiness once involved merely a material or personal sense of being, they now are beginning to reach out for the enduring and permanent.

Christian Science thus shows how it is that happiness is subjective, a thing of consciousness, rather than a condition depending upon circumstances external to the individual. As Burns has said,—

Its no' in books, its no' in lear,
To make us truly blest;
If happiness has not her seat
And center in the breast,
We may be wise, or rich, or great,
But never can be blest.

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