The Quest of Happiness
This is peace: To conquer love of self and lust of life; To tear deep-rooted passion fiom the breast; To still the inward strife;
To lay up lasting treasure Of perfect service rendered, duties done In charity, soft speech and stainless days: These riches shall not fade away in life, Nor any death dispraise.
—Sir Edwin Arnold.
Perish dark memories!
There’s light ahead;
This world’s for the living.
Not for the dead.
Down the great currents
Let the boat swing;
There was never winter
But brought the spring I
—Edward Rowland Sill.
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VERYBODY wants to be happy. Yet there is an almost infinite diversity of opinion concerning what happiness is, and also concerning the way in which happiness is to be found. What gives one person the most complete, heart-filling satisfaction has no attraction whatever for another. A good man was telling his friends that he had never been happier in his life than he was on a certain evening recently, and he then described a religious service at which a little company of devout Christians met together, spending an hour in prayer, Bible-reading, hymn-singing, and spiritual conversation. There are many others to whom also this service would have given great delight and very deep joy. But there are those who would find no pleasure at all in such a meeting.
Persons are often heard speaking rapturously of their enjoyment of a certain amusement. “I never was so happy in my life,” one says enthusiastically, referring to an hour of entertaining pleasure. Yet there are many excellent people who would not have found the smallest degree of enjoyment in the particular amusement which so thoroughly satisfied this person. One’s idea of happiness is entirely sensuous, while another finds pleasure only in intellectual enjoyment. A little girl is blissfully content with her doll, and a boy with his tin soldiers or his toy locomotive and train. Music has charms which captivate one person, while another, sitting alongside, experiences not one thrill of pleasure. Oliver Wendell Holmes said his conception of happiness was “four feet on the fender.“” So Cowper:
Domestic happiness, thou only bliss Of Paradise that has survived the fall.
Plato says,” Virtue is sufficient of herself for
happiness.” But there are those who think
virtue exceedingly dull and devoid of power
to give happiness. Some find pleasure in a simple life, while others demand continual excitement.
Thus while the quest of happiness is universal, it is sought along a thousand different paths. It is well that we have a true conception of the happiness we wish to find before we set out on our search. There are several things that may be set down as settled regarding any happiness that is true and enduring.
One is that its secret is in the life itself, and not in the outer circumstances. Its source is within, not without. It does not depend on what we have, but on what we are. We cannot attain it, therefore, by merely bettering our earthly conditions. A man may prosper in his affairs, and his humble dwelling may grow into a stately mansion, his plain living into sumptuous faring, and his wooden chairs and threadbare carpets into the finest and most luxurious household furnishing. But he may be no happier in all his splendor of wealth than he was when he was a poor man. [93]
We cannot attain happiness by merely improving our earthly condition. Building a new house for a discontented woman, filling it with all beautiful things, and supplying all that the woman craves, will not make her contented and happy. When a man is burning up with fever he asks to have the air of his room cooled. He wants the windows thrown open and begs to be fanned, thinking that thus he will find relief. He does not know that the fever is in himself and not in the temperature of his room. So it is that no changing of conditions will cure our trouble; it is in ourselves that the causes of happiness or unhappiness exist. If we are unhappy, we must look within for the secret. A busy woman went to her oculist, telling him that she must have her glasses changed. He made an examination and said to her that it was not new glasses her eyes needed, but rest. Many people think that if they only had a different set of circumstances their disquiet and unhappiness would vanish. But what they really need is rest, quiet within, the peace of God in their hearts. If the inner [94]
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fountains of our life flow full of joy, no matter what our external circumstances may be, nothing can disturb the gladness or hush the song. In seeking happiness, therefore, we must look to our own condition of heart and life and not to the new atmosphere in which we live.
Another thing about happiness is that we never can find it by seeking it directly, for itself. When you set out in the morning, saying that you are going to be happy that day, making that your first aim, you will miss what you seek. Such a quest is altogether selfish, and selfishness never yields anything beautiful or good. He who thinks of himself and lives for himself will never find happiness. It is only when in self-forgetfulness we strive to do good to others that our hearts find gladness. Happiness must be sought only as the fruit of a true and good life that produces it. It always eludes those who pursue it merely for its own sake, while it is found by those who walk in the paths of obedience and service.
Reward is promised to those who keep God’s commandments and live a good and useful life, but he who puts the reward first in his living, thinking not of pleasing God and helping his fellow-men, but of winning a crown, will miss what he seeks. If we would obtain the reward, we must not live to obtain it, but to do our duty. Then the reward will come as the outcome of our faithfulness. Another thing about happiness is that it is not found by him who thinks of receiving it only for himself. We must seek it for others as well as for ourselves. The man who prays only, “Lord, bless me,” his thought and desire not going out beyond the narrow circle of his own life and his own interests and wants, will receive no answer. His prayer is selfish, and selfishness never gets the ear of God. The Lord’s Prayer teaches us that in our petitions we are to include those about us, all our Father’s family. We are taught to ask for bread, not for ourself alone, but for others. The petition is not, “Give me this day my daily bread,” but,” Give us this day [96]
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our daily bread.” We cannot pray even for the forgiveness of our own sins only, but must ask for the forgiveness of the sins of others in the same pleading.
“Remain not folded in thy pleasant joys, Within the narrow circle of thy walls, Content, if thine are blessed. Cold is thy fire, If on thy hearthstone only; and thy bread Bitter, which feeds alone thy selfish brood; Thy house a prison, if it hold thy world. Thy heaven a fiction.”
The man who thinks only of his own happiness is violating the great law of love. We may not live as we please, regardless of the good or the comfort of others. We have no right to any personal enjoyment which would do harm or cause inconvenience or loss to another bound up with uc in life’s bundle. “Love worketh no ill to his neighbor.” If the pleasure we are enjoying is giving pain to others about us, it is not rightly ours. Love always thinks of its neighbors. It seeketh not its own. It is thoughtful and self -forgetful. We can find true happiness only when we [97] think of the good of others, even before our own. It is not what we have ourselves alone that gives us joy, but what we are sharing with others and giving to others.
“// thou art blest, Then let the sunshine of thy gladness rest On the dark edges of each cloud that lies Black in thy brother’s skies. If thou art sad Still be thou in thy brother’s gladness glad.”
Another thing about true happiness is that we never can find it if we seek for it only on this earth. There is a happiness of this world which has its springs here, and there are thousands who look no higher in their quest. But there is no cant in saying that the pleasure which is only of this world, which leaves out God, Jesus Christ, the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, the law of love, and heaven, is not the happiness which will finally satisfy any immortal soul. It does not reach high enough. It would not satisfy an angel. Then reason tells us that the happiness an immortal being should seek must itself be im- [98]
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mortal. Otherwise it will last only a little while along the way, while we stay in the present world. We cannot carry it with us into the other life. It is not enough to have an enjoyment which can make us glad only for such a little distance on the way, and will then fail us, leaving us to go all the other long, immortal miles without its light or cheer.
We can find abiding happiness only by letting God into our lives, by loving Him, trusting Him, and doing His will instead of our own, and by taking His way rather than our own way in life. We are made for God and can find true joy only in God and in His service. If we are Christ’s, our real home is in heaven, and we cannot find in this world that which will meet our immortal cravings. We must drink of the streams that have their sources in heaven if we would find full and enduring happiness.
God wants us to be happy. He has put us in
a world which is filled with beauty. He has
provided for us countless sources of gladness, 9y730A putting within our reach the joys of human friendship, the inspirations and comforts of home, and the blessings of divine grace. Even in the most painful circumstances He makes joy possible for us. If all earthly good should be taken from us, He brings us heaven’s peace. If we only learn to do God’s will day by day, without question, without reserve, cheerfully, we shall find the gladness we seek. Then our lives shall be songs and shall leave undying blessings in the world. It is worth while to be a singing bird in this world in which there are so many harsh and discordant sounds and so many cries of pain. It is yet more worth while to be a singing Christian, giving out notes of gladness amid earth’s sorrows. For many of us it is not easy to be always glad. But we should learn our lesson so well that whether amid circumstances of sorrow or of joy the song never shall be interrupted. Like the robin, we should train ourselves to sing even in the rain. We shall have our sorrows, and they may be very bitter. We shall have to endure pain, [100] again and again, and it may be very hard to endure. We shall have our griefs and our losses, and ofttimes our hearts may seem to break. But through all these experiences the light of joy shall continue to shine within us, and our peace shall not be broken. The happiness God gives is part of the life of heaven, and in that home the light goeth not out by day and there is no night there.
“My neighbor’s grief is dark to me.
I gaze and dread, without;
And marvel, how he lives to bear
The blackness, and the doubt.
“And yet, by all lost ways of grief
That I have had to plod,
I know how small a rift lets through
A little gleam of God.”