And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the
righteous into life eternal.
No one should waste time in waiting for some great opportunity for service; there are opportunities everywhere. It is impossible for man to render any service to Jehovah Himself. There is nothing that we can do for Him except to love Him with heart and mind and soul and strength. It is to the neighbour that we pay the debt that we owe to the Heavenly Father; it is through the neighbour that we publish to the world our real selves. This is, like music, an universal language that all can understand.
Nietzsche, the atheistic philosopher, gave to one of his books the title "Joyful Wisdom"—an absurd misnomer. That which he mistook for joy was the delirium of an unbalanced mind. The philosophy of Christ might with propriety be called Joyful Wisdom; it leads one into the path of happiness that is real and permanent.
Carl Hilty, a Swiss writer, has published a book entitled "Happiness," in which he points out that, as those have the poorest health who spend their time travelling from one health resort to another looking for it, so those are least happy who do nothing but hunt for pleasure. He insists that to be happy one must have employment for the hands, the head and the heart. The hands must be busy, the mind must be occupied, and the heart must be satisfied.
Christ leads His followers into happiness through this route. No one who partakes of His spirit can be an idler. The world is full of work awaiting labourers; the harvest is ripe. Those who try to imitate Christ will be planning for the extension of His Kingdom and for the comfort of God's creatures. The heart of the Christian—the center of life and love—will find satisfaction in being in sympathetic touch with all that is good and noble.
I have dwelt upon this point because the worldly are in the habit of picturing the Christian life as gloomy and forbidding. It is a libel; a long-faced Christian is a poor Christian, if a Christian at all. "Be of good cheer," is a Christian salutation; Christ used it repeatedly. In Matthew 9:2 He said to the man sick of the palsy, "Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee."
In Matthew 14:27 He quieted the fears of His disciples, "Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid." In John 16:33 He inspired the Apostles, "Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."
Here we have three of the greatest sources of happiness—Forgiveness of sins: the presence of the Saviour and triumph over the world.
In Acts we find Him using the same words in addressing Paul and later
Paul uses them in encouraging his companions.
Religion—real, heartfelt religion—transforms its possessor. It moulds the disposition and disposition determines expression. No beauty doctor can make a face as winsome as the face of one whose heart overflows with loving kindness; just as no face specialist can impose from without such lines of strength and intelligence as can be written upon it by the thoughts that pass through the brain.