THE Christian Church throughout its history has universally pictured Christ Jesus as "the man of sorrows." This subject has always been a favorite one with the theologians; many a discourse has had for its theme the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, with its wonderful word painting, where in prophetic vision the Messiah is depicted as "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." Each year the Lenten season is made a solemn anniversary of the sufferings of our Lord. Artists have presented the same subject,— the last supper, the agony in the garden, the cross-bearing, the crucifixion, have been painted again and again, and musicians have reiterated the same solemn theme.
So accustomed have we become to this view of the Master that we sometimes forget there is another side to the picture,—forget that although there were deep shadows of sorrow and woe, yet there were high lights of bliss and joy. Although Jesus did experience on the side of his humanity the depths of unutterable woe, yet there was in his earthly experience an underlying current of the truest, purest peace and joy, a peace so deep and abiding that he leaves it as his last precious legacy to his disciples, a joy so immeasurable that his last petition is that his joy might be fulfilled in them; so that while we may not question the appropriateness of the title, "a man of sorrows," yet we feel that Jesus may even more fittingly be called the man of joy.
He was the man of joy because he brought joy to all who would accept his ministrations. His mission was to open the blind eyes and the deaf ears, and to set the captive free from the bonds of materiality and suffering and sin. From his life has streamed a flood of joy which has irradiated the centuries and illumined the path he pointed out. His teachings were of life, of love, of joy. "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." "If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death." And though dimmed by misconception, this flood of joy has in some measure irradiated all the centuries of the Christian era.
