a chain, a golden chain--if I might
say so--a chain with one link, and that one link the golden ring of
God's everlasting love.

I go a step further, and tell you that when Christ receives a soul
into His love He puts on him the ring of festivity. You know that it
has been the custom in all ages to bestow rings on very happy
occasions. There is nothing more appropriate for a birthday gift than
a ring. You delight to bestow such a gift upon your children at such
a time. It means joy, hilarity, festivity. Well, when this old man of
the text wanted to tell how glad he was that his boy had got back, he
expressed it in this way. Actually, before he ordered sandals to be
put on his bare feet; before he ordered the fatted calf to be killed
to appease the boy's hunger, he commanded: "Put a ring on his hand."

Oh, it is a merry time when Christ and the soul are united! Joy of
forgiveness! What a splendid thing it is to feel that all is right
between me and God. What a glorious thing it is to have God just take
up all the sins of my life and put them in one bundle, and then fling
them into the depths of the sea, never to rise again, never to be
talked of again. Pollution all gone. Darkness all illumined. God
reconciled. The prodigal home. "Put a ring on his hand."

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
lau