The Happiness of Religion

Neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the Lord is your strength. NEHEMIAH 8:10

People who know Spurgeon only from his controversies, or from the darkness described in the next chapter, are sometimes surprised to learn how much he laughed. He was a man of quick wit and hearty humour, and he saw no reason to leave either at the vestry door. In Talks to the Farmer he describes a harvest-home supper at which, when the cheerful meal was ended, he turned one of the tables into a pulpit and preached the gospel in the barn. “My heart was merry in harmony with the occasion,” he says. That merriment was not a lapse from his religion. He believed it was part of it.

A happy Creator, a happy Redeemer

In the passages gathered in Gleanings Among the Sheaves under the heading The Joy of the Christian Life, he states the principle bluntly. “That religion which teaches misery to be a duty is false upon the very face of it.” His argument is from creation. God did not give us only what we need to survive. He gave us flowers in the hedgerow and stars in the sky, beauty that is not strictly useful, because He wished His creatures to be glad.

From this he draws a conclusion that is both simple and profound: “it is not likely that the God who made a happy world would send a miserable salvation.” He who is a happy Creator, he says, will be a happy Redeemer. The gospel is not a grim remedy to be swallowed for the good of our souls. It is good news, and it was meant to make people glad.

Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. PROVERBS 3:17

It is worth noticing how often Scripture commands joy. Paul does not merely permit the Philippians to rejoice; he tells them to do it, and then tells them again. Spurgeon took such words as seriously as any other command.

Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice. PHILIPPIANS 4:4

Seek Christ first

Yet Spurgeon was no preacher of a cheerful religion for its own sake. He knew that happiness sought directly has a way of slipping through the fingers. His counsel, in the same collection, is precise: “Seek not happiness first; seek Christ first; and happiness shall come after.”

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. MATTHEW 6:33

That order matters. A great deal of modern religion promises happiness as its product, and people come to Christ for the sake of the feelings He gives. When the feelings fade, so does their faith. Spurgeon’s joy was of a different kind. It was the by-product of looking at Christ, and so it could survive the loss of almost everything else. In a moving passage he appeals to the poor, the sick, the hard-pressed man of business and the rich, and asks whether their religion had not been a candle in their darkness and a rest in their toil. And he makes a bold claim from long pastoral experience: “Never, never did we know a Christian who repented of his Christianity.” He had seen believers poor, suffering and full of doubts; he had never heard one of them say that he regretted giving himself to Christ.

Where the joy comes from

Spurgeon’s joy was not temperament dressed up as doctrine. He was, as we have seen, a man of deep glooms as well as high spirits. What he rejoiced in were things that did not depend on his mood.

He rejoiced first in pardon. To hear God say, as it were, Son, thy sins are forgiven thee — to wear the best robe and the ring and to hear the music with which the prodigal is welcomed home — was to him a joy that all the pleasures of the world could not match.

Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. PSALM 32:1

He rejoiced next in the settled purposes of God. Commenting on Peter’s words to believers who were in heaviness through manifold temptations, he uses a picture taken from the sea. Mariners, he says, speak of places where a current runs one way on the surface while another runs the opposite way in the depths. “On the surface there is a stream of heaviness rolling in dark waves, but down in the depths there is a strong under-current of great rejoicing.” The Christian can be sad and glad at once, because the deepest things in him — that he is chosen, redeemed and kept for an inheritance that fades not away — are not touched by the weather on the surface.

Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations. 1 PETER 1:6

And he rejoiced in praise itself. In a passage on the opening of Psalm 103 he calls on his memory, his judgement and his understanding each to find matter for the song, to go back to cradle-mercies and to the hour when he first knew the Lord. All creation praises God, he says. “If I were silent I should be an exception to the universe.”

Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. PSALM 103:1

Joy that works

Spurgeon was not interested in a joy that simply sat and enjoyed itself. He noticed that gladness is the best fuel for labour. “It is when the mind is happy that it can be laborious.” A man who serves God grudgingly will soon tire; a man who serves Him gladly will be surprised at how much he can do. The vast web of work that grew around the Tabernacle — the college, the orphanage, the almshouses — was not, in his own understanding, driven by duty alone. It was the overflow of a glad heart.

He had a word, too, for believers who live below their privileges. “Many a believer lives in the cottage of doubt when he might live in the mansion of faith.” The joy is available. It is written in the promises and purchased by the blood. Many Christians simply never move in.

A word of care

There is one sentence in this part of Spurgeon’s teaching that needs handling gently. He writes that a Christian who yields to a mournful, desponding spirit under his trials does dishonour to the noble principles of Christianity. As an encouragement to the fretful, that may be bracing. As a verdict on the clinically depressed, it would be cruel, and Spurgeon, who knew depression from the inside, would not have meant it so. His own life shows that heaviness on the surface is no proof that the undercurrent has stopped. The command to rejoice is not a command to feel cheerful on demand. It is a command to rejoice in the Lord, whose goodness does not rise and fall with our spirits.

Held that way, his teaching is a great gift. The Christian life is not a long face worn for God’s sake. It is the happiest life there is, and the happiness is Christ.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask honestly whether your faith looks, to those who live with you, like good news. What would make it look more so?

2. Take Spurgeon’s counsel literally this week: stop seeking happiness, and seek Christ first in one concrete way each day.

3. Read Psalm 103:1–5 and make your own list of benefits under each heading — forgiveness, healing, redemption, mercy, provision.

4. If you are in heaviness now, name one thing beneath the surface that has not changed: that you are pardoned, chosen, kept. Rejoice in that.

5. Notice where you serve God grudgingly. Ask Him for gladness in that work rather than simply more effort.

A PRAYER

Happy Creator and happy Redeemer, You made a world full of gladness and sent a Saviour to make me glad.

Forgive me for wearing a long face and calling it godliness, and for seeking happiness instead of seeking You.

When the surface of my life is heavy, let the deep current of Your love run on beneath it, strong and unbroken.

Make me glad in Your pardon, glad in Your purposes, glad in Your praise, and let the joy of the Lord be my strength. Amen.