There are indeed strongly marked features of
penitence and need. We come before God in our worship as those who are
sinful and needy. We ever make approach through the sacrifice of the
Cross. But we come also as those who have confidence in divine love
and mercy. So praise, joyous praise, predominates. The _Te Deum_, the
_Benedicite_, the _Benedictus_, the _Jubilate_, all ring out this note
and give {29} joyousness to the service, while _Magnificat_ and _Nunc
Dimittis_ tell of rejoicing and hope in what Christ has brought us by
His Incarnation.

It is all a worship of preparation and joy. The choir may remind us,
then, by its suggestiveness as related to the other parts of the
church, and by the dominant note of joy which rings through its
services, how the faithful departed go at death into the "joy and
felicity" of Paradise, there to wait, as the "Church expectant," for
the Resurrection and their "perfect consummation and bliss", that the
"Church expectant" and the "Church militant" are not two Churches, but
the one Church of Christ in two places and in two states, on earth and
in Paradise, fighting and waiting; that they have still "mystic sweet
communion" in praise and worship and prayer--the Church in Paradise
leading our worship as the choir leads the worship of the congregation.

So, again, the choir may impress upon our minds how joy has place in
the Christian life: that Christianity is not a religion of gloom, but
of joy; that if Christ says, "Come, take up the cross, and follow Me,"
He says also, "My yoke is easy, and My burden is light," because the
way of the Cross is the way into true joy.

{30}

So we pass through the transepts, which speak to us of self-sacrifice,
into the choir, which speaks to us of joy. So long as self is first,
the best and truest joy is shut out of our lives; but when self has
been crucified, and love is first,--love that delights to serve, and
that believes still in the absolute and perfect goodness of God even
when the cross is laid upon its shoulders,--then joy comes in, the joy
which is a foretaste of that which those in Paradise know, even as that
is a foretaste of the perfect joy of heaven.

_The Sanctuary._--The chancel, as we have seen, represents in the
symbolism of God's house that part of the life of His Church which is
reached through death. The choir tells us of the worship and the "joy
and felicity" of the "Church expectant." The sanctuary tells us of
th