The happiness of Christian activity.
I. ONCE MORE JESUS PROVES HIS DESIRE FOR HUMAN HAPPINESS. This is amply proved by his putting the thought of human happiness in the forefront of his teaching in the sermon on the mount. There he evidently made it his business to show men, in a way not to be misunderstood, that human happiness is not a mere subordinate result of Christianity, a something that may be present or absent. Human happiness is an essential part of Christianity. If Christ is not making his people happy, increasingly and exuberantly happy, there is something wrong in their connection with him. For this is just one of the aims of Jesus, to take away misery and dullness and ennui, and put happiness in their place.
II. THERE IS NO HAPPINESS IN MERE KNOWLEDGE. There may be a great deal of pleasure in the acquiring of it, but it is quite possible that so much time may have been spent in acquiring knowledge that other things may have been neglected. We may very easily shut ourselves up from our fellow-creatures, and lose many an opportunity of doing good that would have made us far happier than any pleasure of the mere intellect.
III. WE MUST TAKE CARE THAT WE DO REALLY UNDERSTAND WHAT JESUS WANTS us TO Do. His words are not as maps of the country through which we have to travel; they are rather finger-posts showing the direction. Each finger-post sends you on to another. The words of Jesus are meant to secure within us a certain inward spirit; if that be secured, the proper outward actions will follow as a natural consequence. We have not yet comprehended one very important warning to Christian disciples unless we have been made to feel, from reading the Gospels, how easy it is to misunderstand Jesus. His most important words, his most significant deeds, were to be meditated over, seen in their position as parts of the living whole of truth.
IV. THERE IS NO HAPPINESS IN MERE DOING. To leave the right thing undone, and to do the wrong thing, equally lead to misery. Increase of activity, unless the right principles and methods underlie it, only means increase of mischief and misery. We must not be deceived by mere external activity. There may be a great deal of real doing—doing such as Jesus counts doing, where there is little to show men. The right spirit must pervade and suffuse the doing, and it can only pervade and suffuse what is right in itself.—Y.
John
John 13 - john-13 - worlddic.com