Joy

“The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10).

The goodness of God in His providential dealings with us, and in the general economy of the world, is shown not so much by the supply of what is necessary as by the provision of what is in excess of the bare necessaries of life. To call creatures into existence, and then make no sort of provision for their existence, would argue not so much want of benevolence as despotic inconsistency and capricious ineptitude. On the other hand, to create beings and then surround them with, or to bring within their reach, just what is absolutely necessary to hold body and soul together, that and nothing more, might show the self-consistency and forethought of the Creator, but would not necessarily exhibit His goodness.

Go through our own Zoological Gardens, and reflect upon the condition of those more or less unfortunate animals that are confined there for our amusement, or for the instruction of the naturalist, and I will answer for it that the last thought that will suggest itself to your mind will be this—that the Governors of the Zoological Society, and the British public at large, show their goodness and benevolence towards these animals in furnishing them from day today with the necessaries of life. The little child that spends his slender pocket money in providing a few nuts for the monkeys, or buns for the elephant, shows much more of what we understand by the words goodness and benevolence, than do the Directors of the gardens in purveying all the vast provision that day by day is required to keep these animals alive.

And the reason is plain. What the child gives it gives spontaneously—moved, we will suppose (though we question whether it is always so), by a desire to increase the happiness and enjoyment of these creatures; whereas what the Society provides it provides as a matter of necessity: the beasts are there, and they must be fed. If they are not properly fed they must die, and that would mean that the Society would be ruined, and their management utterly discredited; but perhaps