LEVITY

Laughter and gaiety belong to a fallen world. They are too shallow to have a place among the holy; and to hollow to be known among the truly happy. With the peace of God in our hearts, we feel that we do not need them. They may do for childhood; they may do for the world; but not for us. They do not suit our feelings; they are not deep nor solid enough to be in harmony with our new nature. They are not the utterances of a truly happy soul.

Yet we live in a gay world that rings everywhere with hollow laughter. Oftimes the saints seem to catch the tone of levity, making mirth with the most mirthful, joking with the most foolish, singing, perhaps, the world’s songs of vanity, speaking its idle words, walking its vain paths as if its friendships and pleasures were not forbidden things.

Apart, however, from the contagion of the world’s influence our tone is apt to fall low and our deportment to lose that solidity and seriousness which become the saints. Almost unconsciously and without knowing how, we get light and airy; we give way to the current of vain thoughts; we forget to set a guard upon our lips; we indulge in foolish talking and jesting in our meetings with each other. Our words are not “with grace, seasoned with salt.” We forget the admonition, “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouths, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.”

This propensity grows upon us. Seriousness becomes a thing reserved entirely for the closet or the sanctuary …

Thus our spirituality decays. Heavenly-mindness is gone. We become of the earth, earthly. Our souls cleave to the dust, and we are content to grovel there. We become lean and barren, neither growing ourselves nor helping the growth of others. Our blossoms send forth no fragrance, our branches bear no fruit.

We grieve the Holy Spirit of God whereby we are sealed unto the day of redemption. He cannot dwell with levity and mirth any more than amid profanity and crime.

I do not mean that the saint is ever to be gloomy. No. gloom and melancholy are not our portion — “The lines have fallen unto us in pleasant places.” They are not the inmates of a soul that has tasted the joy of pardon and is walking in light, as a happy child with a loving father. But true joy is a serious thing. Its fountains are deep. It is the waking up of the heart’s deep springs. Mirth and levity are not joy. They are too shallow to deserve the name.

Levity is as much an enemy to real joy as it is to holiness and spirituality. Hence, it must be rooted up. God cannot suffer it in His children. His desire is that they should set their affections on things above. This element of earthliness must be purged out. They must be made solemn and thoughtful. To this end He visits them with chastisement. In a moment, perhaps, He smites them to the dust; or, by some slower, but withering, crushing calamity, He slaps and casts out that foolishness which had wrought itself into the very texture of their being.

The nearer we are brought to resemble Christ, the more will this calm, happy solemnity possess us. We shall live not only wakeful but solemn lives. Our whole deportment will speak the depth of the serenity that dwells within. Our looks and tones will all be solemn, and will of themselves testify for God and condemn the world. We shall be men awake and alive, men zealous and in earnest; men who have no relish for levity, because it is incompatible with the deep peace which is their better portion, and who feel that they have no time for it, because eternity is so near.

(The above extract is taken from Night of Weeping — an excellent little book on chastisement. It is all the more significant coming from the pen of Horatius Bonar. These are not the words of a melancholic. The Bonars were not disposed to gloom. What a friend wrote of Andrew could equally be applied to Horatius:

“He seemed to live in a perpetual sunshine, and to spread not gloom but brightness and good nature wherever he appeared.”)

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