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Joy & Power

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Joy & Power, by Henry van Dyke
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Title: Joy & Power
Author: Henry van Dyke
Release Date: December 7, 2003 [EBook #10395]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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JOY AND POWER
Three messages with One meaning

by
Henry van Dyke

1903

Dedicated to my friend John Huston Finley President of the College of
the City of New York

THE PREFACE
The three messages which are brought together in this book were given
not far apart in time, though at some distance from one another in space.
The one called Joy and Power was delivered in Los Angeles, California,
at the opening of the Presbyterian General Assembly, May 21, 1903.
The one called The Battle of Life was delivered on Baccalaureate
Sunday at Princeton University, June 7. The one called The Good Old
Way was delivered on Baccalaureate Sunday at Harvard University,
June 14. At the time, I was thinking chiefly of the different qualities
and needs of the people to whom I had to speak. This will account for
some things in the form of each message. But now that they are put
together I can see that all three of them say about the same thing. They
point in the same direction, urge the same course of action, and appeal
to the same motive. It is nothing new,--the meaning of this threefold
message,--but it is the best that I have learned in life. And I believe it is
true,--so true that we need often to have it brought to remembrance.
Henry van Dyke
Avalon, July 5, 1903

CONTENTS

i. Joy and Power
ii. The Battle of Life
iii. The Good Old Way

JOY AND POWER
St. John viii. 17: If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do
them.
I ask you to think for a little while about the religion of Christ in its
relation to happiness.
This is only one point in the circle of truth at the centre of which Jesus
stands. But it is an important point because it marks one of the lines of
power which radiate from Him. To look at it clearly and steadily is not
to disregard other truths. The mariner takes the whole heavens of
astronomy for granted while he shapes his course by a single star.
In the wish for happiness all men are strangely alike. In their
explanations of it and in their ways of seeking it they are singularly
different. Shall we think of this wish as right, or wrong; as a true star,
or a will-o'-the-wisp? If it is right to wish to be happy, what are the
conditions on which the fulfilment of this wish depends? These are the
two questions with which I would come to Christ, seeking instruction
and guidance.
I. The desire of happiness, beyond all doubt, is a natural desire. It is the
law of life itself that every being seeks and strives toward the
perfection of its kind, the realization of its own specific ideal in form
and function, and a true harmony with its environment. Every drop of
sap in the tree flows toward foliage and fruit. Every drop of blood in
the bird beats toward flight and song. In a conscious being this
movement toward perfection must take a conscious form. This
conscious form is happiness,--the satisfaction of the vital impulse,--the
rhythm of the inward life,--the melody of a heart that has found its

keynote. To say that all men long for this is simply to confess that all
men are human, and that their thoughts and feelings are an essential
part of their life. Virtue means a completed manhood. The joyful
welfare of the soul belongs to the fulness of that ideal. Holiness is
wholeness. In striving to realize the true aim of our being, we find the
wish for happiness implanted in the very heart of our effort.
Now what does Christ say in regard to this natural human wish? Does
He say that it is an illusion? Does He condemn and deny it? Would He
have accepted Goethe's definition: "religion is renunciation"?
Surely such a notion is far from the spirit of Jesus. There is nothing of
the hardness of Stoicism, the coldness of Buddhism, in Christ's gospel.
It is