Man’s Heritage Of Joy

The consciousness of the Christian Scientist is like some sweet, still garden, wherein each day is unfolding new blossoms of thought, nourished by the dews of faith, refreshed by the winds of hope, and quickened into life and beauty by the warm sunshine of love. It is a place of perpetual springtime. As the world awakens each year from its long winter’s sleep, so do mortals, too long asleep in material beliefs, awaken sooner or later under the transforming touch of Truth to find themselves in a new world of loveliness, the “new heaven” and the “new earth” of John’s prophetic vision. The activity which unlocks the frozen shallows of the brooks, which flings green garlands on every bough and coaxes the anemone to uncurl its shy petals in the sunshine, is but a type of that spiritual activity which makes “the wilderness and the solitary place” of some starving human consciousness to bud and “blossom as the rose.”

Mrs. Eddy asks, “Who that has felt the loss of human peace has not gained stronger desires for spiritual joy?” Then she adds, “The pains of sense quickly inform us that the pleasures of sense are mortal and that joy is spiritual” (Science and Health, p. 265). Joy, then, being spiritual, is but a part of man’s eternal heritage. God’s obedient idea has a right to be happy, because it is ever knowing and doing the Father’s will. It is just as natural for man to be happy as it is for a bird to sing. Joy is a spiritual possession, and it necessarily follows that it is impartially and universally bestowed, — an ever present fact, as changeless and eternal as the Mind from which it emanates.

But what says mortal mind to all this? It flatly contradicts it, of course, just as it attempts to contradict and reverse everything that is true. It says that joy is far from being a universal possession, but is instead some rare gift allotted to a favored few. It says that joy is not the normal state of man, but the abnormal. It insists that man is naturally “of few days, and full of trouble.” Job once believed this, but it was before he had learned to differentiate between frail humanity and the perfect man of God’s creating. Popular opinion on this subject has not greatly changed since that day when beggared self-righteousness, shorn of all it held most dear, sat in dust and ashes, listening to the false sympathy of false friends.

Job was supposed to be happy when he was at ease in personal sense, and to be unhappy as soon as this sense of ease was taken from him. The world in general agrees with Job; it says that a man’s happiness consists “in the abundance of the things which he possesseth,” so it straightway goes to work to accumulate “things.” It says that joy is synonymous with wealth, power, fame, worldly success, gratified ambition, ample leisure for self-indulgence,—all that stands for “the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” It therefore spends its short span of time in pursuing these, as children pursue some dancing will-o’-the-wisp, yet all the while knowing that when this evanescent thing called happiness is once attained, it will be retained only so long as chance and change decree, and that at any moment a sudden turn of that elusive weather-vane called “circumstance” may send it floating provokingly away into the distance.

How it rests one, after thinking of these things, to remember that the man who had as little in material possession as any one of whom the world has ever known, once included “my joy” in the rich legacy which he left to his disciples. In the hour before Gethsemane, Christ Jesus said to those sorrowing hearts, “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” His joy, when he was about to be crucified! Yet as we read those matchless words spoken that day in the “upper room” at Jerusalem, we feel sure that in the face of him who uttered them there must have shone that look of holy joy which shines in the faces of all who follow him, because it is clear and undisturbed radiance of right thinking.

The only sort of joy which really exists, loses not one iota of its pure serenity through the empty flutter of passing events. Paul once wrote that he rejoiced in tribulation. Joy does not mean that one has run away from trouble; it means that he has overcome it. Joy has proven the affluence of its God, and is giving thanks. It is not the untried, undisturbed tranquility of a garden bathed in June sunshine; rather is it this same garden uplifting fragrant chalices of gratitude because of the refreshing of the rain. It is the rainbow blossoming into beauty against the blackness of disappearing storm-clouds. It is the smile that shines through tears. It is that which has had its starless midnight and at dawn has heard the thrush’s song.

In a certain quiet room there stands a vase of iridescent glass, delicately sensitive to the tint of any flower confided to its care. All day long it sparkles like a fleck of imprisoned rainbow, flinging out soft blues and purples and opalescent rose color, a thing of perpetual beauty, changing its hues each hour as the sunshine shifts its point of view. But it is when the sunshine goes away and evening shadows creep into the room that it grows most beautiful of all in the eyes of its possessor; for while it loses its color, it still shines on, like some clear, steady little star, long after everything else around it has melted into darkness. Thus it reminds one of the true Christian Scientist, lifting his gaze above the clouds of sense, rejoicing in the sunshine, merging himself with delicate self-effacement into the general harmony of his surroundings, a source of unfailing light and gladness to all about him.

In “Miscellaneous Writings” our Leader says: “The lives of great men and women are miracles of patience and perseverance. Every luminary in the constellation of human greatness, like the stars, comes out in the darkness to shine with the reflected light of God” (p. 340). “Your joy,” said Jesus, “no man taketh from you.” Then shine on, little star! Who knows how many are watching for your light? Who knows how many, now wandering afar in the darkness, shall see your steady glow, and come out from among the shadows to find, as you have found, the eternal sunshine of Love’s abiding presence?