Every day I find happy Christian people.  I find some of them with no second coat, some of them in huts and tenement houses, not one earthly comfort afforded them; and yet they are as happy as happy can be.  They sing “Rock of Ages” as no other people in the world sing it.  They never wore any jewelry in their life but one gold ring, and that was the ring of God’s undying affection.  Oh, how happy religion makes us!  Did it make you gloomy and sad?  Did you go with your head cast down?  I do not think you got religion, my brother.  That is not the effect of religion.  True religion is a joy.  “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.”

Why, religion lightens all our burdens.  It smooths all our way.  It interprets all our sorrows.  It changes the jar of earthly discord for the peal of festal bells.  In front of the flaming furnace of trial it sets the forge on which scepters are hammered out.  Would you not like to-day to come up from the swine-feeding and try this religion?  All the joys of heaven would come out and meet you, and God would cry from the throne:  “Put a ring on his hand.”

You are not happy.  I see it.  There is no peace, and sometimes you laugh when you feel a great deal more like crying.  The world is a cheat.  It first wears you down with its follies, then it kicks you out into darkness.  It comes back from the massacre of a million souls to attempt the destruction of your soul to-day.  No peace out of God, but here is the fountain that can slake the thirst.  Here is the harbor where you can drop safe anchorage.

Would you not like, I ask you—­not perfunctorily, but as one brother might talk to another—­would you not like to have a pillow of rest to put your head on?  And would you not like, when you retire at night, to feel that all is well, whether you wake up to-morrow morning at six o’clock, or sleep the sleep that knows no waking?  Would you not like to exchange this awful uncertainty about the future for a glorious assurance of heaven?  Accept of the Lord Jesus to-day, and all is well.  If on your way home some peril should cross the street and dash your life out, it would not hurt you.  You would rise up immediately.  You would stand in the celestial streets.  You would be amid the great throng that forever worship and are forever happy.  If this day some sudden disease should come upon you, it would not frighten you.  If you knew you were going you could give a calm farewell to your beautiful home on earth, and know that you are going right into the companionship of those who have already got beyond the toiling and the weeping.

You feel on Saturday night different from the way you feel any other night of the week.  You come home from the bank, or the store, or the shop, and you say:  “Well, now my week’s work is done, and to-morrow is Sunday.”  It is a pleasant thought.  There is refreshment and reconstruction in the very idea.  Oh, how pleasant it will be, if, when we get through the day of our life, and we go and lie down in our bed of dust, we can realize:  “Well, now the work is all done, and to-morrow is Sunday—­an everlasting Sunday.”