Discipline is the art or system of learning generally any little things. It is very much the same as instruction or education. But because teaching or education is often a very hard thing, and accompanied with severity, discipline has come to be taken in a severe sense, for we generally associate it with pain and hardship. This discipline or training is among the things which God promises to the righteous. Consider the discipline of joy.
I. The beauty of nature is one of the truest joys of life; and it will give a grandeur and a holy and happy solemnity to our delight in a lovely prospect and our enjoyment of a river, or a sea, or a mountain, or a garden, or a flower if we recognise that delight as preparatory to our possession of Paradise and our right habit and use of a fairer and lovelier world.
II. We may take the same view of society. Perhaps the greatest end for which society is given us is that by the social graces we may learn the social glories. Our social meetings are the rehearsals and the beginnings of the amenities and the comforts of the saints.
III. Look at the discipline of joy in your own experience. Have you never found that it was the affliction that hardened you, but that it was the joy that softened you? Did you never walk proudly through a trial to be humbled by a mercy? And is not that joy discipline? You will be a wiser and happier man when you have learnt to let your joys be your schoolmasters for Christ and heaven.
J. Vaughan, Sermons,14th series, p. 21.
References: Job 36:10. J. Vaughan, Sermons,14th series, p. 29. Job 36:26. Parker, Fountain,April 29th, 1880. Job 36-37 S. Cox, Expositor,1st series, vol. xi., p. 264; Ibid., Commentary on Job,p. 463.Job 37:6. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxvii., p. 6. Job 37:14. Homiletic Magazine,vol. xiv., p. 221.