Mirth a Medicine

“A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance: but by sorrow of the heart the spirit ia

broken.” — xv. 13.

“Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoop: but a good word maketh it glad.” — xii. Jfi. 11 A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the boucs.” —

xvii. 22.

HE emotions that thrill in the heart mark themselves in legible lines on the countenance. This is a feature in the constitution of man, and a useful feature it is. The wisdom of our Maker may be seen in the degree of its development. If there had been more of it or less, the processes of human life could not have gone on so well. If the hopes and fears that alternate in the soul were as completely hidden from the view of an observer as the action of the vital organs within the body, the intercourse between man and man would be far less kindly than it now is. How blank would the aspect of the world be if no image of a man’s thought could ever be seen glancing in his countenance! Our walk through life would be like a solitary march through a gallery of statues, — as cold as marble, and not nearly so beautiful. On the other hand, if all the meaning of the soul could be read in the countenance, the inconvenience would be so great as to bring the machinery of life almost to a stand still. Society could not go on if either all the mind’s thoughts or none were legible on the countenance. That medium which actually exists in the present constitution of humanity is obviously the best. You have some power of concealing your emotions, and your neighbour has some power of observing them. He who made us has done all things well.

Great purposes in providence are served by this arrangement. If the veil which hangs between the outer world and our hearts’ emotions were altogether opaque, we would be too much isolated from our neighbours: if it were perfectly translucent, we would be too much in their power. The soul within is a burning light, sometimes bright and sometimes lurid: the countenance is a semi-transparent shade, through which the cast and colouring of the inner thought can be seen, but not its articulate details. A happy heart beaming through a guileless countenance is the best style of beauty: it is pleasant to look upon in the spring-time, and does not wither in the winter of age.

But joy in the heart can do more than make the aspect winsome: besides enlivening a dull countenance, it heals a diseased nature. It “doeth good like a medicine;” whereas its opposite, “a broken spirit, drieth the bones.” Those who have watched the experience of themselves and their neighbours will acknowledge this in all its breadth as a practical truth. I know nothing equal to cheerful and even mirthful conversation for restoring the tone of mind and body when both have been overdone. Some great and good men, on whom very heavy cares and toils have been laid, manifest a constitutional tendency to relax into mirth when their work is over. Narrow minds denounce the incongruity: large hearts own God’s goodness in the fact, and rejoice in the wise provision made for prolonging useful lives. Mirth, after exhaustive toil, is one of nature’s instinctive efforts to heal the part which has been racked or bruised. You cannot too sternly reprobate a frivolous life; but if the life be earnest for God and man, with here and there a layer of mirthfulness protruding, a soft bedding to receive heavy cares which otherwise would crush the spirit, to snarl against spurts of mirth may be the easy and useless occupation of a small man, who cannot take in at one view the whole circumference of a larger one.

But it is as medicine, and not as food, that mirth is useful to man. As well might the wild ass live and fatten by snuffing up the north wind, as a man’s character become solid if merriment is its chief or only aliment. To live on it as daily bread, will produce a hollow heart and a useless history. But that which is worthless as food may be precious as medicine. Administered in proper quantities and at proper times, it will make the staple of solid seriousness more productive of actual good.

Even a dull observer may see wisdom and goodness in the habitual cheerfulness of the young. There is a time to laugh, and childhood is eminently that time. A sad, sombre spirit in a child, is both the effect and the cause of disease. Mirth in large quantities is needful as a medicine for the ailments of childhood, and our Maker has placed an abundant supply of it in their nature, with a tendency to draw it day by day for use.

But some persons and some classes are all too ready to acknowledge the virtue of mirth as a medicine. There are quacks who take it up and vaunt its universal efficacy. In ignorance or bad faith they apply it in cases where it may kill, but cannot cure. Recognising the law that a broken spirit drieth the bones, these practitioners, when conviction of sin burns like fire in the patient’s conscience, would deliberately pour in a stream of mirth to quench it. With equal zeal they prescribe the same medicine as a preventive, lest the wasting body should be still more enfeebled by an inroad of seriousness upon the soul They will quietly push a novel beneath the pillow on which the too beauteous cheek of consumption lies. They will search the sick-room round, and carry off bodily The Saints’ Rest, or A Call to the Unconverted, lest these books should arouse a slumbering soul, and so shake too roughly its frail tenement. In their own way they adapt and apply the maxim, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.”

It is true that to maintain the patient’s cheerfulness hastens the patient’s cure: a bright hope within will sometimes do more to restore the wasted strength than all the prescriptions of the physician. A light heart, we acknowledge, is itself a potent medicine, and lends effectual aid in co-operation with other cures. If the restoration of the body’s health were our only care, we would not examine scrupulously either the kind or the quantity of joyfulness that friends might infuse into a fainting heart. But while the healing of the body is a great thing, a greater lies beside it. For the chance of contributing to a corporeal cure, I would not cheat an immortal soul, as it fluttered on the verge of eternity. Is it true — yea or nay — that before death mercy is offered, and after it judgment is fixed 1 Is it true that Christ is the way to eternal life, and that there is no other? If it is, to divert a human soul from looking unto Jesus when the last sands of life are running, is the unkindest act which man can do to man. If you were Atheists and Materialists, — if you believed in no God and no hereafter, — there would be at least a melancholy consistency in occupying life’s last hours with trifles, that the spirit, burdened with a decaying body, should have no other weight to bear; but it is both cruel and stupid for those who bear Christ’s name to blindfold, at the very exodus of life, a brother’s soul, in order to catch a chance of temporary benefit to his body.

Nor is this all: this effort to banish care does not always succeed. Through all these coverings the terrors of the Lord may burst in, and agitate the soul all the more fiercely, that you have tried so long to keep them out. When bodily pains or convictions of conscience rise to the full, your frivolous pleasures are driven away like smoke before the wind. A merry heart is a medicine for his ailment! Granted; but who shall give him a merry heart 1 Who shall give the guilty a merry heart when God is drawing near to judgment, and sin is lying heavy on his soul? If you could introduce the peace of God which passeth all understanding, it would keep his heart and mind; but no inferior consolation can meet the case. Will any one dare to say that in nature’s extremity those who neglect Christ are happier at heart than those who trust in his love 1

When a human heart is stooping and breaking beneath the heavy load of suffering and sin, “a good word maketh it glad;” but if the man is dying, to assure him he will soon be better, is not a good word; if the man is in sin and under condemnation, to assure him his sins are trivial and his Judge indulgent, is not a good word. A good word will gladden the grieved heart, but where shall it be found ] Hark! the Man of Sorrows lets it drop like dew from his own lips — “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John xiv. 27). Happy are they who have such a comforter in the time of need. David, like Abraham, saw his Lord’s day afar off, and was glad. The presence of his Kedeemer kindled a gladness in his heart which took the torment out of even dying pains: “Yea. though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.” (Ps. xxiii.)

True Christians have two advantages over the men of the world: they are happier now, and safer at last. There is more gladness put by a gracious God in a believing heart, than all that the worldly know even when their corn and wine abound the most. It would be a great attainment for themselves, and a great means 21 of good to others, if the disciples of Christ in our day could let the hope which cheers their hearts also shine in their faces. If the joy of the Lord, which really is a Christian’s strength within, should sit habitually as a beauty on his countenance, his talent would be better occupied now, and his entrance more abundant at the last. When Stephen’s short but quick career was coming to a close, — when the seventy elders had taken their places on the judgment-seat, full of enmity against the name of Jesus, — when the baser sort of the persecutors, at the instigation of their leaders, had dragged him violently into the council-hall, — when perjured witnesses, taking their cue from the keen and cruel eye of Saul, declared in concert that he was a habitual blasphemer of holy things, — wrhen the meek martyr saw and felt from many signs that through a boisterous passage he must quickly go to another judgment, — his heart did not lose its hopefulness, and his countenance did not fall. At that moment, when the crisis of his fate had come, the joy that played about his heart shone through: “All that sat in the council, looking steadfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel.” Perhaps that heaven-like brightness held some of the spectators, and would not let them go until it led them into the arms of Stephen’s Saviour. We have known a case in which the gleam of joy on a departing disciple’s face feathered the arrow of divine truth, and sent it home with saving power to a heart that had hitherto kept its iron point at bay. If Christians could get living hope lighted within, and let it beam like sun-light all the day through an open countenance their lives would be more legible as epistles of Christ, and more effectual to win souls.