Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: V THE SONG OF THE LORD BEGAN A BOUNDING joy is the prime characteristic of Ax our holy religion?joy unspeakable and full of glory. This is as natural to true religion as the bloom on a maiden's face is to perfect health. You can't create joy, but you can make the conditions from which it springs. If your life is joyless, it must be because of some sin. Find out, then, the reason why your harp hangs on the willow, and joy has died out of your life. Our Lord said: These things have I spoken unto you that My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full (John xv. 11). If your joy is not full you have not entered into the heart of our Lord's sermon about the vine and the branches. Paul said: The fruit of the Spirit is joy (Gal. v. 22). Now, fruit is natural. There is no effort about fruit. Indeed the effort of the bough is to repress the fruit which presses forward into expression, so that gardeners have to prune away exes cessive production. If the bough is properly connected to the trunk, it bears fruit; and if you are properly related to our Lord, joy will be as natural to you as singing to a bird. Is your religion sombre and dour? Is there no spring and elasticity about it? Do children find you out or shun you ? When you enter society, do the laughter and merriment die? Are you an element of perfect gladness at a party ? If not, there is something wrong in your inner life, which is choking the spring of joy. Some years ago my friend Dr Handley Moule visited the excavations in the Forum at Rome. While there, as the rubbish was being cleared away, suddenly there gushed forth the waters of a spring that had been choked for centuries. Poor little spring Longing to express itself and flash in the sunlight, but choked by the accumulations of the y...