And so it is today.  There can be no joy in the Christian religion without faith.  When Paul and Silas were clamped in the stocks in the prison dungeon at Philippi, they sang praises to God.  They did not burst into song like that because they were comfortable in their cell – cold, wet, inky black and verminous.  Their joy issued from their unconquered and unconquerable faith in Jesus Christ and in his Presence with them.

It was exactly the same with the early Christian martyrs as they went to their death in the arena with hymns of praise and radiant faces.  Their predicament as such gave no cause for joy: that rose from their sublime faith in Christ and in that eternal life with him which awaited them.

For the Christian religion is a supernatural religion, something which has been given and revealed to us by God himself.  And the joy it affords issues from a convinced faith in that revelation.  Do not think that because something is made known to us, not from human reasoning but by a divine revelation, that it is therefore contrary to human reason: it is not, it completes human reason.