Glad service.
"Serve the Lord with gladness." So sings the psalmist, and his teaching has been echoed by the wisest of human teachers. "Give me the man who sings at his work;" so writes Carlyle.
"A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires in a mile-a."
So teaches Shakespeare. Now glad service is what God asks for here. But—
I. IT IS ALL TOO RARE. That it is so is evident; for:
1. Look at the countenances of those who profess to serve God. How grave, gloomy, austere, they seem! how seldom they ripple out into sunny smiles! This characteristic of the Puritans has had not a little to do with the disfavour in which they have long been and are still held by our countrymen generally. A common epithet for earnestly religious persons was that they were "serious people." Certainly they were not thought to "serve the Lord with gladness."
2. Read their writings. Their hymns, even, are either sad or stern, and as to their books and sermons, they are fall of grave, earnest, and often terrible teaching; but "gladness" is conspicuous chiefly by its absence. And their prayers are the same. As if God were a tyrannical Taskmaster, and not our loving Father.
3. Listen to their teachings. How much too dull and sombre these are!
4. Observe their worship. How bare and uninspiring! how destitute of beauty and brightness! how much too often it depresses rather than uplifts!
5. Ask our own consciences. Must they not own the general absence of gladness in our service of the Lord?
6. If it be asked—Why is this gladness so rare? the answer is that with some the sense of sin, the remembrance of their much transgression, is ever before them; with others, the mystery of life, the presence of earthly sorrow; with others, the tyranny of inward sin; with others, misunderstanding and misreading of the Gospel; and with yet others, and most, the want of real trust in God. We are so slow to take God at his word, and when he says he has forgiven us, to believe that he has really done so.
II. BUT GLADNESS IN THE LORD, THOUGH SO RARE, IS YET MOST REASONABLE. Whether we think:
1. Of the Lord whom we serve. How good and gracious he is!
2. Or of the service itself. How healthful, right, blessed beth for ourselves and for others!
3. Or of the wages. "The recompense of the reward." We are all little better than eleventh-hour workers, and yet for us there is the whole day's wage.
III. AND ALONE EFFECTUAL.
1. It is so in our secular work. Slave work, task work, is never like that of free men. All the heart is taken out of it if it be not glad service such as only free men can render.
2. Yet more in the service of the Lord. See the elder son in the parable of the prodigal. He had no joy in his service, and hence how harsh and unloving he became! This is why St. Paul is forever rejoicing that we are not under law, but under grace. So only will real service be rendered.
IV. AND IT OUGHT TO BE. See in that same parable the father's reply, "Son, thou art ever," etc. He was surprised at such a spirit in his son; it ought to have been so different. But if it was wrong for that elder brother, who never transgressed, how much more wrong for us who have transgressed, and yet have been freely forgiven! Pray, therefore, not only that you may serve the Lord, but that you may serve him "with gladness."—S.C.