June 18

I said of laughter, It is mad; and of mirth, What doeth it? - Ecclesiastes 2:2.

THE Christian’s joys are superior to the enjoyments of the men of the world. What are the joys the worldling feels,- what are they all but vanity and vexation of spirit? In the midst of their sufficiency they are in straits. We read of the “pleasures of sin:” these “are but for a season;” and as they are soon over, so they leave nothing but stains and stings behind. We read of the joy of the hypocrite, which is but for a moment. Some are said to rejoice in a thing of naught; for all that cometh is vanity: when they have succeeded in their enterprises, every thing within them still urges them to inquire, “Who will show us any good.” If they say they are happy, the experience of the Christian contradicts this; for he has walked in their way long enough to know that there is no peace to the wicked. If they seem to be happy in company, let them be separated from their companions and their dissipation, and left to think and to reflect, and where are their joys now?

But as for the Christians, they have meat to eat the worldling knows not of; they have a joy which strangers intermeddle not with; they rejoice in the possession of grace, and in the hope of the glory that is to be revealed. We have seen what the joy of the Christian can do. What doth the worldling’s joy? Doth it afford him any thing like satisfaction? Does it bear up his mind under the trials of life? Does it raise him above the dread of death and eternity? Is it not all a fleeting show, a shadowy good, and the offspring of ignorance? Are not the men of the world afraid to let one ray of divine truth fall upon their joy? Would not one serious thought of God-of eternity-strike it dead on the spot? Alas! do not the men of the world, who are seeking happiness in the pleasures, possessions, and distinctions of earth, find that even in laughter the heart is sorrowful, and the end of their mirth is heaviness,-and honours, and riches, and power, are but to them as so many toys or flowers thrown into the vehicle that is conveying the condemned criminal to the place of execution?

For “the wicked are like the troubled sea, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.” “There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.”