The life that He imparts is a crucified life.  It is a life centered upon God, fixed upon God, a life lived in the will of God.  This Christ-life, mark you, is the life of Him who, on the eve of His passion and death, spoke for the first time in His earthly career of "My peace," "My joy"; and in prayer for His own: "that my joy might be fulfilled in them." Christ's joy in life's darkest hour was in the will of His Father.  Someone has well said: "Joy is not gush: joy is simply perfect acquiescence in God's will, because the soul delights itself in God Himself.  Christ took God as His God and Father, and that brought Him at last to say, 'I delight to do Thy will,' though the cup was the Cross, in such agony as no man knew.  It cost Him blood.  It cost Him blood. O take the Fatherhood of God in the blessed Son the Saviour, and by the Holy Ghost rejoice, rejoice in the will of God, and in nothing else.  Bow down your heads and your hearts before God, and let the will, the blessed will of God, be done."

Great strength of will and complete submission to Christ were wonderfully exhibited by George Fox.  He was "stiff as a tree, and as pure as a bell, for we could never bow him." On the other hand, when falsely accused and thrown into a horrible dungeon among criminals and most loathsome conditions, he says, "A filthy, nasty place it was where men and women were put together in a very uncivil manner.  Yet, bad as the place was, the prisoners were all made very loving and subject to me, and some of them were convinced of the Truth," Later in life he said: "I was never in prison that it was not a means of bringing multitudes out of their prisons."

And how practical and contagious is this joy! Thrice happy are those who have it.  No man taketh it from them.  "Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator" (I Peter 4:19).  Paul says, "Unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake" (Phil. 1:29).  How sweet is such a word when it comes right from Christ to the one who suffers for His sake, for righteousness' sake, for the sake of others!  Madame Guyon knew this blessedness as she cried:

What sufferings have I not endured in labouring for the souls of others!--sufferings, however, which have never broken my courage, nor diminished my ardour.  When God was pleased to call me to Christ's mission, which is a mission of peace and love to the sinful and the wandering, He taught me that I must be willing to be in some sense a partaker of Christ's sufferings.  For this mission, God, who gives strength equal to the trials of the day, prepared me by the CRUCIFIXION OF SELF.