here men who had work to do for God; men who had come into a city made desolate by sin; men who, helped from on high, were to make that sin-ruined place the seat and city of their God again; men who in themselves had no strength to do it; men who, although they had the promised help of Jehovah, were to experience, even as others, that such help is not packed in bundles and given out of the stores of heaven to be undone when wanted by the hand of a hasty prayer, but is rather a thing which is to flow out on a life which feels it dwells in God, which realises the depth of sin and the joy of pardon, and which knows the fulness of that love which gives again so largely what is so utterly undeserved. God would help Israel: he would give power to them, but that power was to be derived through a process which, from its very nature, would lead and keep them close to him. The promise to inhabit again the waste places was to be fulfilled, as divine promises ever are, through holiness. Holiness stopping, joy would stop; and joy stopping, strength would stop. So, as you see, Nehemiah states not only a thing which was then true, but a lasting principle which stands for ever a rule in the life of God's people "The joy of the Lord is their strength." Brethren, we feel a sacred interest in this thought. Our hearts greet this old saying of God's servant even across the broad plain of two thousand three hundred years, and no sooner do we hear him conclude than we say, "Amen." The words touch us. They are spirit and they are life. Not only did they quicken Jewish souls of old, but they quicken ours to-day. Like the corpse which, cast into the prophet's grave, and touching his dead bones, lived again, so our enervated hearts brought into sympathetic contact with these words are quickened and inspirited anew. The words may be dead enough to some as a bit of history, and such may see them a thing buried deep in the grave of a long past. But they are not history only. To us they are scarcely history at all. They are a living, breathing thought, sent warm and fresh from out the great heart of God, and like the life, breathed of old into the body of man, they live in his immortality. The body may die, but the soul lives on, and time may have faded into this old history, but it has not faded, and never will fade, the truth which it contains. I am speaking to ministers, and shall make this paper bear as largely and practically as I can on our own position and work. Our ministry has hindrances. How will this joy help us to overcome them? Our ministry needs positive strength. In what manner will the joy of the Lord supply us? Then, our experience teaches, too painfully, that the joy of the Lord is a thing much easier talked about than possessed. How can we get and keep this blessed means of strength? Those are the three thoughts on which I wish to speak, and principally on the first I. THINGS THAT ARE LIKELY TO WEAKEN OUR MINISTRY, AND THE MANNER IN WHICH THE JOY OF THE LORD WILL HELP US TO OVERCOME THEM. So far as concerns our weaknesses, like pretty much all else that comes from within, and around, and beneath, their name is legion. Some belong to us in common with all believers, while others are peculiar to us as ministers. We must not lose sight of the former, and think only on the latter, for the simple reasons that providence gives us a heritage. in each, and our ministry is open to the influence of both. We have our headaches and sicknesses, our domestic duties, anxieties and bereavements, and I fear it must be added for some, even times of hunger for daily bread are not wanting. Our ministry is not out of the reach of these trials. Though shared in common by our people, they touch us in the same weak nature that our people wear. Whatever wounds the man tries the Christian, and whatever tries the Christian makes the minister feel his weakness. Though in some cases it almost appears to be thought otherwise, the occupant of the pulpit is just as vulnerable to these barbed arrows of every-day life as the dweller in the pew. I have the most unaffected sympathy for worthy brethren, who, called to some of these sufferings by the providence of heaven, and to others of them by the selfish providence of an inconsiderate people, are not only expected to maintain a ministry of strength, but to maintain that in the midst of keen sufferings by many unregarded and by most unknown. They are not unknown to God, brethren, and we can add the further consolation, that they are not by him unregarded. Even as of old, he still says, "I know their sorrows," and providing for you, he helps you to respond, "The joy of the Lord is my strength." But how your strength? Where trial makes weakness, and where the weakness, as all this does, gets into our ministry, how is joy to prevent hindrance? The answer is not difficult. Joy in the Lord says, "How much the affliction falls below my deserts !" No joy, and we murmur and complain, "How hard to bear; how much more tried am I than my fellows; how full of woe is my cup; my soul is weary of my life." No joy, and we talk like that. But joying in Jesus, the strain is written in another cleff, and traverses the stave the other way. Joy says, "In hell to-day but for my Saviour; in woe unutterable but for him." Like Job, we sit smitten on the ground poor and sore, and while one messenger of sorrow chases another, and pours out the vial of bitterness into the already full cup of grief, joy smiles her calm smile, and sings on her low sweet song, "Blessed be the name of the Lord." Friends turn enemies; a dearer one says, "Curse God and die," but the joy that can sing, "I know that my Redeemer liveth," adds yet in firmer note, "Though he slay me yet will I trust in him." Providence permits and men catalogue up a great bill of bitterness to the flesh, long as Paul's; but joy sits face to face with it all, repeats it over and feels the smart again in the repetition; but remembering how much more was deserved, cries, "These light afflictions! These light afflictions !" O brethren, if we joy in Jesus, we shall see the meed of sin, for true joy looks very close at guilt, and the damnation guilt deserves, and so looking, so feeling, sorrow such as this will not drag us down, nor make our tongue for Jesus feeble. Joying in the Lord too, we look at the riches we possess, and so lose sight of what is painful. You cannot look at the same time on the glories of the star-covered heavens, and on the gloom of the darkened earth. Joy feeds on mercy, and love, and the treasures these send, and she cannot look on the riches and the poverty together. The jailor of Philippi is more in prison when walking on guard without than Paul and Silas, thrust into its innermost depths, with feet made fast in the stocks. He hears the earthquake and is overwhelmed with fear; they with hearts heavenward need it not. He, frightened to madness for fear of punishment to come would have killed himself; they actually in punishment forget the stocks, and think not of the prison at all. "Stone walls" make no prison for them, and "iron bars" no cage. They are thinking of Jesus, and of how much they have in him; therefore they see not their sorrow, but sing praises to God instead. Filled with love to Jesus, brethren, we have little of our faculties left for sorrow in the flesh. The emotions that are singing in heaven cannot at the same time be weeping on earth. Rejoicing in Jesus we shall cry each of himself, "A sinner pardoned, all guilt put away, remembered no more for ever, perfect in Christ Jesus, an heir of God, a joint heir with Christ, Christ himself mine, things present and to come mine, life mine, death mine, mine the cross, the grave, the skies, all things mine, and I his." Trouble cannot stay the tongue of a heart like that. It will preach, and must preach and Christ will be its theme. Joying in the Lord, we see further, that however great our present sorrow, it will not last long. This for a little while, then heaven. Joy not only says, "These light afflictions," but goes on to add, "which are but for a moment." Ten years ago I stood in the hovel of an old Christian woman, who had seen what we call better days. Her age was over eighty, and her poor wasted person looked as though she might be even more. She was in the extremest poverty. With a calm spirit she told me of her early life and present sorrows. Even her children who lived not a mile away had utterly forsaken her, and I could see that her mother's heart still felt it keenly. They had come to her, and begged of her so long as she had aught to give, and that gone, they went too. I shall not soon forget her closing words, nor the look of light which beamed from that withered face as she summed it all up in the old lines of our hymn "Though painful at present, 'twill cease before long, The man who can look within the gates of heaven like that, will find himself strong to bear the burdens and overcome the difficulties of earth. He will be strong to rejoice in Jesus, and through rejoicing strong to preach Jesus. I named just now difficulties peculiar to us as ministers, but as one of our brethren is to follow me on a similar subject, I will not say much on that. We have a temptation to regard ourselves as spiritually prosperous beyond our people. Notwithstanding that we may have an average humility, and confess day by day, with a bitter sense of reality, the feebleness of our piety, there is danger of an assumption, that we, of all about us, are nearest to God. We ought to be nearest, and perhaps, the consciousness of that leads us to conclude that we are so. The feeling for the most part is latent. It does not grow to words. It is one of those things which the devil never uncovers fully lest it frightens us. And, perhaps, here the most sincere are the most in danger. I need not say that a spirit of this kind, largely cherished, must blast any ministry. "Pharisee" and "Unfruitful" are synonyms in this matter. If we go about wearing even the air of "Stand aside, I am holier than thou,” we must hinder success. Joy in the Lord will do much to prevent this conceit. Nothing so much tends to humility as true spiritual joy. Humility is the very life of joy, it is the air she breathes, the food she eats, and even the raiment which she wears. It is the poor in spirit who inherit the kingdom of heaven, and that not only in the future, but now. Joy finds her all in Christ, and every song she raises is about him, about what he is, what he pardons, and what he gives. Nothing sooner cuts the throat of joy than self-righteousness. Spiritual pride and holy joy are the rank weed and the tender flower, and they will not grow together. We often remind each other, and I fear still oftener remind ourselves, of the danger of a spirit of mere routine. The holy gospel, committed to our trust by him who "counted us faithful, putting us into the ministry," is taught coldly. We find ourselves vainly attempting to keep it before our people in its heavenly freshness, and wake again and again to the consciousness that we have embalmed it with feelings of duty, like a mummy in our hearts, instead of preserving it in the spirit of holy joy. Fair tree of life though it is from which we are to pluck fruit for the feeding, and leaves for the healing of the nations, he who gathers with the hand of duty corrupts the one and withers the other ere he gives and applies them. The joy of the Lord is not simply one of the things, but instrumentally is perhaps the only thing which will deliver us from routine. He whose heart is full of love to Christ, and full of joy in the word of Christ, will be comparatively free from such a ministry as this. His soul, at least, will not drag round in the miserable seven days' circle of weekly duties, but will make him, or ever he is aware, like the chariots of Ammi-nadib. To mention but one more of these things which occasion weakness, our ministry is in danger of being toned down to a pitiable feebleness by the critical spirit of the age. You have to meet with this influence not only in books, and abroad in the world, but in your congregations, in the leading spirits around you, and in your closest friends. It is bad enough when your hearers are Athenianised into a constant looking for 66 some new thing;" it is worse even than that when they are largely subject to that modern form of possession called the "spirit of propriety," in which the devil still, as of old, cries out at the sight of an earnestly presented Saviour; and, did it speak truthfully, would, possibly, in some cases, cry now as then, "I beseech thee, torment me not before my time." There are some in most of our congregations, and many more around us, who seem to think the sermon is successful in proportion as you succeed in saying nothing wrong. Listen to them, and they will almost make you feel that the outspoken plainness which they call vulgarity is the blackest of all sins, and refinement the brightest of all virtues. Enthusiasm, and even common earnestness, are frightful shapes, ever to be avoided. We bless God that there are not so many of these men as there were, but there are still enough to do us harm if we are wanting in the counteracting influence of holy joy. These are the men who, if we are not careful, will gradually lead us to mention even the name of Jesus coldly, and make us talk of the kingdom of heaven and all its riches in the phlegmatic spirit with which you might discuss a problem of Euclid. Younger brethren in the College will not misunderstand me; do not be vulgar. The gospel is not successful in proportion as we are clowns, but it ever has been successful in proportion as its preachers are earnest, and, if one of two things must be chosen, my advice would be, say the whole sermon bottom upwards, rather than cultivate the great ambition which, big as it is, manages to find a resting-place in the success of saying nothing wrong. Fops never do much in the business of this world but spend money, and to say the very least thing of mere ministerial correctness and niceties, if they are our staple commodity, we must be Christless and fruitless labourers. Though I have spoken like this, I feel this influence, and probably you feel it, whether you have discovered it or not. A spirit of this kind is like the subtle foulness which lurks in a corrupted atmosphere: you discover the cause and source as you feel the pangs of disease. Again, nothing will preserve us from contagion like the joy of the Lord. This, truly and really felt, will not only preserve us from the evil, but prevent us from rushing to an opposite extreme. Full of this joy we shall be able to look very calmly on all opinions of men, and to preach the gospel at once in tenderness and gentleness, and yet in earnestness and power. I have spoken too long on this negative aspect of the matter to allow of time to say anything on II. THE WAY IN WHICH THE JOY OF THE LORD WILL SUPPLY A POSITIVE STRENGTH FOR OUR MINISTRY. I can only indicate what I would have gladly extended. For one thing, nothing, in labour, is ever strong that has not joy. Your studies as students will be successful as they are a pleasure. John Howard was successful as he delighted in relieving the wretchedness of the prisoners he visited. And so, all the world over, joy in work means strength in work. Joy, too, supposes faith; and faith, even when mistaken, is still strength; much more is it strength to us who have not only the impetus which comes through confidence in the issue, but a loving God, who directly responds to our faith, and says, "Whatsoever ye ask, believing, it shall be done unto you." Joy also knows the Lord, and "the people that do know their God shall be strong and do exploits." Let us be well assured of this brethren, that no ministry will ever be strong that wants joy in the Lord. Oh, how the Lord himself felt that when about to leave the disciples to the great work of beginning to preach his kingdom! You know the length, and tenderness, and power of that wonderful discourse in the three chapters of John. You know how the Saviour turned aside from the sufferings of his own soul, troubled even at the table, to speak thus to them. The disciples must be thought of, and these words uttered, though the Saviour had to forget his own sorrow. What does he say is the purpose of those words? Mark it well, brethren, and let the saying sink deep down into your hearts: "These things have I spoken unto you that your joy might be full." Ah! Christ knew that a joyless ministry must be barren. Humanly, joy had been his own strength, for he loved to save, and he well knew that they would do nothing without. Paul felt its power and necessity, and cried aloud to his beloved Philippians, "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say |