loud, and
making joy round about: and therefore, since it is so innocent, and may
be so pious and full of holy advantage, whatsoever can innocently
minister to this holy joy sets forward the work of religion and charity.
And, indeed, charity itself, which is the vertical top of all religion,
is nothing else but a union of joys, concentred in the heart, and
reflected from all the angles of our life and intercourse. It is a
rejoicing in God, a gladness in our neighbour's good, a rejoicing with
him; and without love we cannot have any joy at all. It is this that
makes children to be a pleasure, and friendship to be so noble and
divine a thing; and upon this account it is certain, that all that which
can innocently make a man cheerful, does also make him charitable; for
grief, and age, and sickness, and weariness, these are peevish and
troublesome; but mirth and cheerfulness are content, and civil, and
compliant, and communicative, and love to do good, and swell up to
felicity only upon the wings of charity. Upon this account, here is
pleasure enough for a Christian at present; and if a facete discourse,
and an amicable friendly mirth can refresh the spirit, and take it off
from the vile temptation of peevish, despairing, uncomplying
melancholy, it must needs be innocent and commendable. And we may as
well be refreshed by a clean and brisk discourse as by the air of
Campanian wines; and our faces and our heads may as well be anointed and
look pleasant with wit and friendly intercourse as with the fat of the
balsam tree; and such a conversation no wise man ever did or ought to
reprove. But when the jest hath teeth and nails, biting or scratching
our brother,--when it is loose and wanton,--when it is unseasonable, and
much, or many,--when it serves ill-purposes, or spends better
time,--then it is the drunkenness of the soul, and makes the spirit fly
away, seeking for a temple where the mirth and the music are solemn and
religious."

In a world of this kind, where reign life and death, goodness and evil,
joy and sorrow, we need a wise conjunction of seriousness and
cheerfulness. While, on the one hand, our harps must not always be on
the willows; neither must they always be high-strung and gaily played.
Smiles and tears in their season harmonise better than all of one or the
other out of season. With clouded sky for weeks we sigh for sunshine; as
in Italy, under its long bright sky, they sigh for clouds. The time of
the "sing