Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 August 1879 — Gladness. [ARTICLE]

Gladness.

Bishop of Rochester In Good Words. Now I say, and distinctively as a Christian teacher, that joy is reasonable and becoming and necessary and unspeakably helpful. Reasonable, for it is one of the perfections of Qod; and man, being made in the image of Qod, may be expected to resemble Him in it. We observe it in • thousand tilings: the song of the birds, the mirth of children, the instinct of humor, the cheek dimpling into a smile, the soul’s glee expressing itself in laughter; here are but a few of the signs that joy is a faculty of man. And if becoming in all of us, how charming and suitable is it in the young! As our years grow, and our memory becomes charged With anguish, and the setons of sorrowful associations give us quick twists of pain, and down the bill we travel to the river at the foot, with but few of those who climbed it in our company, or even stood with us on the summit, joy is not so quick or so unmlxed as once it was; even ftrheu we take it, the

oM q»rM. Kemsgone. JtlUttV ’ but not the gladness, of youth. But the young, for whom life has but fear cares, otuiscieuoe but few memorV but few disappointment*, judgment hot few problems, behind it childhood. 2nd in front manhood, with the grandeur of enterprise and the wine of hope, joy is i ot only natural but suitable. Ajjyoung thing) are full of toy; and Hewu made them means them to be. TboMirden* are at hand, and will be here soon enough. Do not has ten them. \Do not wise to bear them till they oome. And this it is which not only makes joy neoessary, but also explains the abundance and excess of it, which tells us how it to that not so mnch for middle age, oppressed with its sombre and fatiguing commonplaces, not for old age, with its work done and its dismissal near, but for S‘i, vigorous and buoyant, joy to so and so brisk. It to to help the young to grow, and to make their start, and to bear their disappointments, and to part with their illusions, and to face their discipline, and to remedy their mistakes. The little baric to on the shore, and it needs a vigorous shove to push It into the water, and then a steady breeze to fill the sails and float it out over the bar into the deep sea. And this is what joy does, and nothing else like it. making the will vigorous, the heart nouyant, coloring the imagination in the hues of the trobics, and cajoling the reason into mistaking the possible for the real.