How To Be Miserable

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Nov 16, 1876

How To Be Miserable.

THINK about yourself; about what you want, what you like, what respect people ought to pay you, what people think of you, and then to you nothing will be pure. You will spoil every thing you touch; you will make sin and misery for yourself out of everything which God sends you; you will be as wretched as you choose on earth or in Heaven either.

In Heaven either, I say. For that proud, greedy, selfish, self-seeking spirit would turn Heaven into hell. It did turn Heaven into hell for the great devil himself. It was by pride, by seeking his own glory (so, at least, wise men say) that he fell from Heaven to hell. He was not content to give up his own will and do God's will, like the other angels. He was not content to serve God and rejoice in God's glory. He would be a master himself, and set up for himself, and rejoice in his own glory; and so, when he wanted to make a private heaven of his own, he found that he had made a hell. When he wanted a little god for himself, he lost the life of the true God, to lose which is eternal death. And why? Because his heart was not pure, clean, honest, simple, unselfish. Therefore he saw God no more, and learned to hate Him whose name is Love.—Kingsley's Sermons.