"Some people couldn't have faces any longer if they thought God was dead. They ought to pray to stop looking so sour. If they smile it looks like it hurts them, and you're always glad when they stop smiling. If Paul and Silas had had such long faces as some church members have on them when they went into the Philippian jail, the jailer would never have been saved. There never was a greater mistake than to suppose that God wants you to be long-faced when you put on your good clothes. You'd better not fast at all if you give the devil all the benefit. God wants people to be happy.
"The matter with a lot of you people is that your religion is not complete. You have not yielded yourself to God and gone out for God and God's truth. Why, I am almost afraid to make some folks laugh for fear that I will be arrested for breaking a costly piece of antique bric-à-brac. You would think that if some people laughed it would break their faces. I want to tell you that the happy, smiling, sunny-faced religion will win more people to Jesus Christ than the miserable old grim-faced kind will in ten years. I pity any one who can't laugh. There must be something wrong with their religion or their liver. The devil can't laugh.
"'Oh, laugh and the world laughs with you,
Weep and you weep alone;
'Tis easy enough to be pleasant
When life moves along like a song;
But the man worth while is the man who can smile
When everything goes dead wrong.'
"Don't look as if religion hurt you. Don't look as if you had on a number two shoe when you ought to be wearing a number five. I see some women who look as if they had the toothache. That won't win anyone for Christ. Look pleasant. Look as if religion made you happy, when you had it.
"Then there is music. When you get to heaven you'll find that not all have been preached there. They have been sung there. God pity us when music is not for the glory of God. Some of you will sing for money and for honor, but you won't sing in the church. Much of the church music today is all poppycock and nonsense. Some of these high-priced sopranos get up in church and do a little diaphragm wiggle and make a noise like a horse neighing. I don't wonder the people in the congregation have a hard time of it."