p. 67 | A Cheerful Religion

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 23, 1869

A Cheerful Religion.

LET men be taught to know there is as much religion in the good, robust, rejoicing, enthusiastic singing of God's praise, as in the sedate and doleful style that is usually styled the most devotional; let them know that the earnest prayer need not be a drawling jeremiad; let them feel that good gospel-preaching may be in a sprightly delivery of pleasant truths, more than in a whining recitation of inanities; let them believe that Christianity is a live thing, that it is in sympathy with the active, rejoicing spirit of our humanity, and it will be better commended to their acceptance.

Seriousness ought always to characterize the Christian. But seriousness does not consist in sullenness, moroseness, nor even in the sobriety that drives away smiles and the taste for rational pleasures. He is most serious who best brings an earnest, healthy, rejoicing nature to the performance of his duty. Men are most beautifully serious when truthful smiles are playing on their lips, and when their whole countenances are lighted up with a benignant joy.

It ought, therefore, to be the effort of professing Christians to pass through the world so happily as to light it up and fill it with joy. They ought to sing in the midst of judgments, and to sing loudly and cheerily and constantly amid their marvelous benefits. We pass to a kingdom, out of sadness and sorrow, where there will be no sorrow nor sighing. Passing to that place, let us cultivate the spirit that is to distinguish us when we arrive there, and show that we do really begin our Heaven on the earth.—United Presbyterian.