The feelings of a worshipper will always be reflections from what he thinks he perceives its in the countenance of his God. They will be gloomy if the god is a sombre personage, and cheerful if he is a glad being. Now the revelation of God in the Bible is the unveiling with growing clearness of a countenance of unspeakable love and beauty and gladness. He is made known to us as ‘the blessed God’ — the happy God…. This same communication of gladness is seen in the life of our Lord, not only during those early sunny days in Galilee when His ministry opened under a cloudless sky, but even amid the darkness of the last hours at Jerusalem, for in His final discourse Jesus prayed that His joy might be in his disciples in order that their joy might be full.

W. F. Adeney in Peloubets Select Notes on the International Bible Lessons for Christian Teaching: 1948 (Boston: W. A. Wilde Co., 1947), 145.