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: CHAPTER III. JOT UNSPEAKABLE AND FULL OF GLORY. Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.?i Peter i. 8. Kjoice in the Lord alway; and again I say, Rejoice.?Phil. iv. 4. TTElSrEY WARD BEECHER says, It is always infelicitous when men fall into the habit of speaking of religion as the mother of trials, and of their Christian experience from the side of its restrictions and limitations When people want to make things attractive in farming, they give exhibitions of their products. The women bring their very best butter, moulded into tempting golden lumps; and the men bring the noblest beets and vegetables of every kind; and from the orchards they bring the rarest fruits, and when you go into the room where all these things are displayed, they seem to you attractive and beautiful. It seems to me that this is the way a Christian church ought to represent the Christian life. You ought to pile up your apples and pears and peaches and flowers and vegetables, to show what is the positive fruit of religion. But many people in Christian life do asBRIGHT SIDE OF RELIGION. 33 farmers would do who should go to a show, and carry? one, pigweed; another, thistles; another, dock; and another, old hard lumps of clay; and should arrange these worthless things along the sides of the room, and mourn over them. What sort of husbandry would that be ? Christians are too apt to represent the dark side of religion in their conversation and meetings. It was Billy Bray's excellence and glory that he always represented the bright side of religion to his fellows; to him, indeed, it had no other. He had a nature that tended to produce joy; but whatever may be the temperament of persons, ...