p. 195 | Joy in God. Rom. 5:11 by Thomas Chalmers

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 27, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 13.

Joy in God. Rom. 5:11.

By Thomas Chalmers

THERE is much, we think, to be gathered from the consideration, that joy in God forms one of the exercises of a Christian mind—a habit or condition of the soul into which every believer is or ought to be translated—a spiritual eminence that may be gained, even in this world, and where the heart of man may experience a relish, and imbibe a rapture, which the world most assuredly knoweth not. To feel as if you were in the company of God—to have delight in this feeling—to triumph in God as you would do in a treasure that had come into your possession—to dwell upon Him in fancy and with fondness, just as one friend dwells on the pleasing remembrance of another—to reach the ecstasies of devotion, and find that the minutes spent in communion with the heavenly and unseen witness, are far the sweetest and the sunniest intervals of your earthly pilgrimage—to have a sense of God all the day long, and that sense of him in every way so delicious as to make the creation seem vain and tasteless in the comparison—to have his candle shining in your heart, and a secret beatitude in him of which other men have no comprehension—to bear about with you that cheerful trust in him, and that cherished regard for him which children have for a father in whose love they rejoice, and of whose good will they are most thoroughly assured—to prize the peaceful Sabbaths and the sacred retirements, when your soul can wing its contemplation toward his sanctuary, and there behold the glories of his character, at the very time that you can exult in confidence before him—thus to be affected towards God, and thus to glory and be glad in him, is certainly not a common attainment; and yet we do not see how any true saint, any genuine disciple can be altogether a stranger to it. "Rejoice evermore," says the apostle of the New Testament; and "the Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice," says the venerable patriarch of the Old.

It is easy to walk in the rounds of a mechanical observation, it is easy to compel the hand to obedience, against the grain and inclination of the heart. It is very easy to bear towards God the homage of respect, or fearfulness, or solemn emotion; and to render him the outward obeisance, and even something of the inward awe, of worship. It is somewhat natural to feel the dread of his majesty, or to be visited by a sense of his terrors, or to be checked by the thought of his authority and power. And, under the weight of all this impressive seriousness, it is even somewhat natural and easy to pray. But it has been well remarked, that praise is not so natural, or so common, nor withal so easy as prayer; that delight in God is a rarer and a loftier condition of the soul than devoutness of feeling to God—that the sigh of repentance may be heard to ascend towards him in many cases, while the singing of the heart towards him may only break forth in very few.—Chalmers on Romans.