Mirth

“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.”

In reading our admirable version of the Holy Scriptures, a little sdiolarship and a little knowledge of antiquity are useful, in order that we may not put modern and degraded meanings on terms which are grave and venerable. If we consult the Anglo-Saxon roots, or even the father of Enghsh poetry, we shall see at once how this appHes to the words mirth and merry, K in modern parlance we distinguish between cheerfulness and mirth, ascribing to the latter a more giddy, unseasonable and vociferous effusion of hilarity, we shall lose the entire force of our text and other passages. Mirth, in good old English, included even the graver kinds of cheerfulness. The old Psalter praises God

* Kew York, February 28, 1858.

with “awful mirth;” both words being such as have suffered deflection. And the adage of Solomon is cleared by the exhortation of the Apostle James: “Is any merry, let him sing psalms.” A merry heart is therefore precisely a cheerful heart; and that it “doeth good like a medicine,” is one of those truths which every one of us, my brethren, has found true, blessed be God, in his own experience. In the course of remark on a somewhat unusual topic, which however is given me by inspiration itself, I shall endeavour to bring forward some truths respecting the nature and results of true cheerfulness, and the best way of seeking this heahng influence. If the termination of the discourse should be unlike its beginning, let us pray that it may not leave any the less of salutary impression on the heart. Cheerfulness is a symptom of inward health, as truly as bodily alertness is of outward health. In regard, however, to mind as well as body, the symptom may itself become a remedial agent; the effect may in its turn act the part of a cause. ‘For example, a sound appetite, which is a sign of vigour, may itself tend to the production of further vigour. And so, true cheerfulness, springing from mental health, may fall into a chain of causes, promoting yet greater health. You are therefore invited to consider the means of promoting that genuine Cheerfulness, or Mirth in old English, which doeth good like a medicine.

I. The primary truth in this part of the philosophy of life, is that true Cheerfulness is a concern both of body and mind. The junction of the immaterial with the material part in our nature is not like the annexation of two alien substances by a tie. Unhke as are body and soul, they were made for one another, and never in their normal condition to exist apart. If sundered for a little, it is that they may be rejoined. They are united in every part. Body acts on soul, and soul acts on body. This indeed was denied by one of the most ingenious philosophers that ever lived, the great Leibnitz, who taught that mind cannot influence matter nor matter mind; but that the Creator had made the two, like instruments tuned together from eternity, always parallel in action, each responding to the other, yet with no mutual agency. No one now beheves in a hypothesis so ingeniously perverse. Sense and consciousness testify to us every moment that body acts on mind and mind on body; and in nothing is this reciprocal agency more undeniable than in health and disease. A sickly body sours, or saddens, or inflames the mind: a mind on the rack attenuates, wrinkles and enfeebles the body. The old theory of animal spirits still colours the language of common life, even when physiology rejects the iotion of these subtile substances running up and down the system. But all hypotheses apart, who knows not that what we call good spirits quicken the pulses and clothe the frame with flesh, while fasting, loss of functional power, or injury to the organs, engender melancholy? In the large and proper acceptation of the term, we include the well-being of body

MIRTH.

and soul together, when we use the word health. He is not healthy, though with a frame of iron, who has moody flights and delirious fancies. How delicate was the adjustment, how perfect the temperament of the parts, when the father of our race was created and placed in Eden! Body and soul were twin portions of a wonderful corftexture which worked sweetly and without a jar. Marvellous will be the change in the coming state, when these vile bodies shall be fashioned like “imto Christ’s glorious body;” from the resurrection to go on without hinderance, in union with corresponding souls, to a glory never known in Paradise. The nearest approach we can ever have to this state, in the present life, is where the 7nens sana in corjpore sano possesses health and strength. Of such a condition true Cheerfulness is the accompaniment and indication. This we may maintain without running into absurdities like. those who talk about disease being a crime, and who would send all mental and moral ailments to the shop of the materialist for rehef. The attempt to serve God and our neighbour with a broken constitution or a drooping mind, as many here have learnt by experience, is hable to great disappointment. As we would not undertake a friend’s business with a beast of burden which was lame, so we should be loath to bring to the work of the Lord a body which drags heavily at every step. Yet sometimes God himself so plainly lays the trial upon us, weakening our strength by the way, as in the case of Hezekiah or Trophimus, that our lesson becomes that of resignation, patience, and quiet hope. Even then, it is our duty to use means for recovery. Even then, one of these means is that cheerfuhiess of heart which doeth good like a medicine, and without which all the materia medica might be exhibited in vain. Let those who enjoy health and hilarity, acknowledge dependance, and consider from whom the blessing comes. As there is a pride of family, of beauty, of riches, so there is a pride of health; and some of the most signal and admonitory reverses we have ev known, have befallen families and individuals whose habit it was to vaunt that they owed nothing to the physician. Every day, if possible, every hour, let us give thanks that our health has had no interruption; or, that it has continued long; or, after illness and decay, that it has been restored.* “It is of the Lord’s mercy that we are not consumed, and because his compassions fail not.” That balance of the faculties, mental and bodily, which causes each and all together to work to the greatest advantage, manifests itself by a natural lightness of temper and clear animation of spirits, which is most remarkable in youth, but which we sometimes observe even in the autumnal days of a beautiful old age. It is the greatest of all blessings to the body; but at the same time it is a blessing which nothing bodily has power to confer. And, therefore, we must look higher.

II. Inasmuch as the soul has the prerogative of governing the body, there are numerous happy cases, in

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which there is a cheerful heart in a suffering and sickly frame. In every such instance the inward principle doeth good like a medicine. Many a patient had perished years ago, but for the fortifying, sustaining, and even curative power of a happy heart. Conflict there may be — there must be — because the effect of most bodily maladies, pains, and injuries is to subdue the mind; but where the intellectual and moral strength is paramount, we have beheld even tortures made tolerable, and feebleness of lungs or limbs set aside by the internal power. No matter how exceptional such instances are, they are sufficient to prove, how really independent of external circumstances an immortal soul may become; to refute the fallacy, that because the soul acts through organized matter, there is no longer any soul after dissolution; and to induce us all, in times of health and strength, to acquire those habits of mind and heart that may stand us in stead, when we come to the enfeebling trials of age or illness. Where cheerfulness survives, after the departure of health or bodily ease, we shall usually observe one or more of the following causes to be present.

First. Something in the nature of the malady or distress which does not spend its power on the mental part. “The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, but a wounded spirit, who can bear?” Some diseases make a speedy and direct assault upon the nervous system, including its great origin, the brain. Some, especially in acute cases, so fill the frame with vexation, annoy-MIRTH. ggyance, or even anguish, as to leave no freedom for thought or possibility of peace. But others, and these the most numerous, though often severe and sometimes fatal, make no advance to the mind’s citadel, and so leave reason in its supremacy. But this is not enough. Hence,

Secondly. Cheerfulness in suffering may be due to natural elevation of spirits. Constitution, education, companionship, employment, opinions, customs of living, these are mighty confluent streams which go to form a river of habit, good or evil, in respect of cheerfulness; which habit is too powerful to be turned aside by any ordinary contingencies of disappointment, pain, or weakness. Those whose profession leads them to be much in sick rooms are familiar with instances of this, which, to the inexperienced, would seem fabulous.

Thirdly. The only source of genuine cheerfulness on the bed of sickness and death is the grace of God in the soul. But we have tarried long enough beside the chair of the invalid. May God grant to all such the cordial of inward heavenly joy! A third consideration, appUcable to every individual in this assembly, and founded on laws of nature, awaits our notice.

III. Since both soul and body are made for exertion, there is nothing more conducive to cheerfulness, the result of their joint health, than fit employment. A house bereft of tenants goes to decay. A vehicle laid up without use rusts and moulders. A fine piece of machinery is never so safe, as when lubricated and

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moving. Body and soul, made for perpetual activity, must work, and work together, in order to be in good condition. Of all engines, the human body is the most amazing. From the days of Socrates, as reported by Xenophon, philosophy has been studying the mechanics, the chemistry, the vital forces, the adaptations, the final causes of this structure, so fearfully, so wonderfully made. There is no step forward, to new principles in physics, in optics, in the growth of structures, which does not find itself anticipated by some marvellous realization of its idea in the human body. Considered as a working engine, there is none which works so cheaply, with so little waste, and so long, or which contains such provision for its own repair. How every survey of the skilful mechanism shows that it was made to move. Its central, propelling engine never stops, except in cases which cause instant dread of death. Heart, lungs, and brain, play on through all the thousand nights of sleep. An instinct of nature prompts the young to be in almost perpetual motion. Absolute rest there is none. And if, from necessity or choice, any approach to immobihty becomes the habitude of body, as is the case in some sluggish and morbid natures, the result is lethargy and endless disturbance of the vital functions. This frame was made for labour.

Equally true is this of the yet more subtle, because spiritual part. The soul is essentially active. Of a mind that does not think, no man can frame a notion. The human mind is made to be active. It is inquiring, and athirst for knowledge. Its active powers irresistibly seek for some object on which to exert themselves. Healthful, moderate repose, chiefly by change of employment, is good; but entire, continual, unbroken quiescence is misery. Never was there a more dire mistake than that of men who abandon the honest and useful business of life, under the pretext of rest. Unless they have singular resources, in science, literatm-e, or philanthropy, they sink into hebetude, weary of the everlasting hoHday, let their heart corrode with sullen thoughts, and sometimes fall a prey to evil babits oi premature dotage. Philosophy, no less than Religion, enjoins — unless where invincible necessities from infirmity or age clearly speak another language — that we should live working, and die in the harness. Hence the value of a trade or calling, and of working at it. I believe it lengthens life. I beHeve it staves off tribes of maladies and conceits. I am sure it promotes that spring and elation of soul, without which life is a long disease. If you would find the most wretched man or woman in your neighbourhood, look for the one who has nothing to do. Unless allowed to prescribe employment, even the best physician cannot cure the valetudinary complainer. Tor after all has been said, employment begets cheerfulness; and “a merry heart doeth good Uke a medicine.”

IV. But man is not merely an intellectual, he is a moral being, and hence healthful cheerfulness requires as its indispensable condition a good conscience. To be truly happy in mind, the soul must be at harmony with itself. I know the objection that you are framing in your thoughts, and I will dispose of it at the outset. You are thinking of numerous persons known to you, who are immoral, and yet intensely and extravagantly mirthful; you have even known flagitious sinners, who were proverbial for laughter and good cheer. You recall to mind the thousands who haunt every place of amusement, and whose habits go to sustain the dens of boisterous wassail. Now, on a calm and serious view of the case, leaving religion out of the question, you will scarcely choose this species of hilarity as that which you would wish for a beloved son. It is scarcely such as will endure for a hfetime, or gild the decHning hours. You have probably seen enough of society to know that much of this ostentatious mirth is purely factitious, made up of the sympathies and contagion of good-fellowship and wine. Nay, you must be young as an observer, if you have not found that your merry friend indulges in a certain feigning. He is not so merry as he would have you believe. The wreathed smiles of his artificial visage partake of grimace. He is more smiling when met than when overtaken; more full of jest with strangers than at home; loud in company, stupid by himself; in a word, bidding fair for an old age of stupor, gluttony, or drink. You know perfectly well, that if youth be left out of the account, the people who run after public amusements are precisely those who cannot enjoy sohtude, and who have never learned to endure themselves. O, that some of those, who recognise their own face in this likeness, would lay to heart the truth that their conscience is diseased!

1. Conscience of crime is a tormentor. There is scarcely a Gentile sage or poet who has not said so, in description and example, for it needs no inspiration to reveal how this scorpion of the bosom can sting. The cases are so horrible, where habitual and repeated sin has reached the point of silencing and palsying conscience, that it is hard to say what may be the temper of a soul which has passed under this cautery; but who among us would seek such a callous heart as the abode of cheerfulness? Of all passions none breathes more of the atmosphere of heU, than remorse. This ought to gain the attention even of those who have as yet been kept back from presumptuous sins; because no one ever became suddenly vile, and they know not what may be the end of the way upon which they have entered, or whether their closing scene may not be maddened by despair.

2. Far, veiy far on this side of atrocious crimes, there may be such contiQuance in transgression, as may embitter the conscience, and make quiet joy impossible. This case may be well studied by the young man or young woman, who, after a religious education, has restrained prayer, neglected the Scriptures, stifled convictions, and gone into the world for happiness. There is a conscious dissatisfaction under all the gayety. The day of pleasure is often followed by a night of disquietude. The intervals between one and another of those nocturnal assemblies which quench forever the religious emotions of many, are dull and pensive. The very face of the maiden, who ought to be rosy, jocund, and alert, is “sickhed o’er with a pale cast of thought.” Something is wrong. The pride of the house is wretched. Summer tours and winter dissipations, such as modern piety may approve, fail to restore the elasticity of a once healthful creature. The unwelcome truth is, the immortal spirit will not brook the treatment of such charlatanry. The soul craves its pecuHar and appropriate food and refreshment. The immaterial and aspiring nature sighs for God. And how can it be cheerful?

More of the world’s sadness and gloom than the world chooses to reveal, is caused by hearts ill at ease, and consciences disquieted with sin. There are persons who for years drag about a body wasted by the restless, consuming mind. While worldlings charge religious people with gloom, they are themselves often kept in misery by their want of Christian peace. It requires no godliness to make one suffer from conscience. Natural principles, among all nations, suffice for this. Conscience utters the voice of law, or expostulation, of remonstrance, sometimes of menace, of retribution, of vengeance. It is for relief from such pangs that the troubled, aching soul goes to the Gospel. But thither the deluded follower of pleasure or gain cannot bring himself to go. And till he goes, all his mirth and gayety are illegitimate and irrational, even if they are not simulated and hollow. Thousands walk our streets and flaunt in our assembhes, wearing the garb and the smirk of an assumed and conventional hilarity, who would sink to the earth, like the child’s top, the instant they should cease to whirl. If they durst sit still long enough to feel the pulses, they would know that they are sick at heart. They have forsaken the fountain of living water, and have hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, which can hold no water. Amidst much forced merriment, they are utterly void of all that vernal cheerfulness which is as characteristic of a well-regulated sound religion, as sweet flowers are of Spring. And the tendency is from bad to worse.

3. Even in the ordinary narrow acceptation of the term in the world’s idiom, a good conscience promotes ease of mind. It smooths the pillow. It removes acerbity from the tone, in hours of business. It reconciles the father to his family group, and the son and daughter to their home. But, in order to clear away clouds, calm the sullen swell of the mysterious ocean within, and throw sunshine over the late darkened countenance, there is need of something more determinately gracious. Simple social moraHty, honour in trade, truth, candour, hospitahty, neighbourly kindness, domestic affection — all beautiful, all good, on a lower scale of value — have no adequacy as answering a holy spiritual law, and therefore no power to pacify an enhghtened conscience. Though a sinner may be either exorbitantly gay or deeply stupid in his sins, he cannot feel these sins and be cheerful. Here I touch the sensitive spot that denotes the disease. No transgressor against an infinitely holy God can have healthful mental enjoyment, such as does good to soul and body, while he is vexed with the conviction of his heinous guilt. And the point to be observed is, that no sinner can infaOibly prevent such conviction and such distress. In this respect, as in others, the soul that forsakes God remains still in the hands of God. It is not for him to say when he shall be disquieted for his sins, how long this disquietude shall last, or to what extreme of torment it may rise.

In a Christian land like ours, many a heart, wrung with agonizing reflections, never reveals itself to the ear and heart of human friendship; and ah 1 cannot, will not, reveal itself to the ear and heart of a compassionate God, in the outpourings of confidential prayer. Nothing is more wide-spread than uncomfortable feelings with regard to religious deficiency, which are strong enough to HU cheerfulness, but not so expHcit and developed as to lead to decision. Yet such vague trouble of mind is often the precursor of salvation. False peace, it is true, sometimes comes in; introduced by erroneous doctrine, self-righteous satisfaction, or spurious exercises accepted as graces of the Spirit. But even this fails, either by want of permanency, or by leaving the heart still unblest with the radiance of a serene joy. To walk on earth with the erect countenance of Christian cheerfulness, there must be peace with conscience and peace with God.

4. There is no such thing as a good conscience, except where there is a persuasion of acceptance with God, through the mediation of the Lord Jesus Christ. This persuasion causes the face to shine as did the face of Moses when he came down from converse with God upon the Mount. Here is an irradiation which makes the soul lift itself in holy cheerfulness, just as the sun in May makes the violet and the rose unfold their leaves with freshness of beauty. “Wisdom maketh a man’s face to shine.” And of this heavenly wisdom or spiritual knowledge and service of God, the wise man says: “So shall they be life unto thy soul, and grace to thy neck; when thou liest down, thou shalt not be afraid, yea, thou shalt lie down and thy sleep shall be sweet.” Prov. iii. 22, 24.

It is proper just here to observe, in order to meet a difficulty of candidly inquiring minds, that the earhest exercises of penitent, returning minds are not always joyful. There may be bitterness beneath the soil and in the knotty trunk, when the clusters and fruitage above are dropping with sweetness; or, as convalescence from sore disease is sometimes preceded by a fearful crisis, so the first transition from worldliness to serious thoughts of God and heavenly things is commonly marked by alarm, humiliation, and grief. The anxious seeker’s path circles the Old Testament Sinai, often many times, before it strikes off thitherward toward Mount Zion, and opens yonder at the Cross. But when it leads the wayfaring soul to “Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel,” it presents to him a region of springtide joyfulness. There may be weeping clouds, there may be alternations like returning winter, but still the Sun of Righteousness is there. It is d Beulah, a land of cheerfulness; such cheerfulness as even does the body good, and drives the crimson tides with new impulses of life to members lately collapsed and chill. Are any notes of gladness more ravishing than those which the convert hears, amidst these green pastures beside these stiQ waters? Listen to what issues from the mouth of a glorious and beloved Priend, till now unknown; hearken! “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For lo, the winter is past, the rain is oVer and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” Song, ii. 10-13. When Jesus speaks pardon and love to the soul, he gives cheerfulness and joy. At no epoch is this so strikingly felt, by reason of contrast, in passing fi:om an anxious into a rejoicing state, as at first believing, the love of espousals. But I am so far from thinking these to be the highest raptures of religion, that my persuasion is firm and daily increasing, of “the marvellous loving-kindness” of God, to his unworthy but redeemed people, in the latter stages of their journey, even to the very last. To every true convert Jesus seems to say “Behevest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these!” When, therefore, we invite such as are the prey of unhealthy anxieties to try the effects of the grand restorative, we invite them, not to sighs and tears, not to manifold austerities of service, not to a forsaking of all their present solace without hope of indemnity, but to a peace of God which passeth all understanding, and a reasonable groimd of habitual cheerfulness, on which, as on a tried foundation, they may (to say the very least) rest more securely than on any support sought or conceived of by the soul of man. Directly or indirectly, you are constantly seeking some tranquillity of soul, some rest for the immortal spirit, some slaking of the insatiable thirst. You struggle for it, as the tendrils of the vine wring their way in tentative movement towards the light; you turn towards it as the crushed worm under your feet writhes in search of ease. Out of religion, out of propitiation, out of the Lord Jesus Christ, you will never find it. You will, like those fifty fabled daughters of Danaus in the classic story, spend life, pouring water into vessels pierced like sieves; or, more heavily rolling the mighty stone up the arduous mountain, that at each remove it may again turn upon you with thundering bound. And when you have tried all that worldly mirth can do, you will say with the repentant king, “I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure; and behold this also is vanity. I said of laughter, it is mad, and of mirth, what doeth it?” Ecc. ii. 1, 2.