ALL mankind desire happiness, and nearly all are seeking it in one way or another. As Pope has phrased it:
"O happiness, our being's end and aim!
Good, Pleasure, Ease, Content! whate'er thy name;
That something still which prompts the eternal sigh,
For which we bear to live, or dare to die."
And yet we never find happiness by seeking it. There is no particular, fixed spot in the universe where it is lodged. It is found nowhere, and yet almost everywhere. Lucifer did not find it in heaven.
Some men seek happiness in the low things of life. Cowper says of the French:
"The Frenchman, easy, debonair, and brisk,
Give him his lass, his fiddle, and his frisk,
Is always happy, reign whoever may,
And laughs the sense of mis'ry far away."
But there is scarcely a land of earth which has seen more misery than la belle France.
What a low view of life is this, that finds its chief happiness in tea:
"Tea! thou soft, sober, sage, and venerable liquid, . . . thou female tongue-running, smile-smoothing, heart-opening, wink-tippling cordial, to whose glorious insipidity I owe the happiest moment of my life, let me fall prostrate."
And Samuel Johnson expressed about the same thought:
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
"There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn."
This is the happiness of the sensuous man, the flesh-fed happiness of the beast. To those who have tasted of the higher good, this low, mere body-sense happiness is, in the words of George Eliot:
"The worst of misery . . .
When a nature framed for noblest things
Condemns itself in youth to petty joys,
And, sore athirst for air, breathes scanty life
Gasping from out the shallows."
The mere happiness of sense is, indeed, a "gasping from out the shallows," not knowing the joys of the great depths.
Nor can we single out great and good things, and say we will reach perfect happiness in one or more of them. Ben Jonson has well said:
"True happiness
Consists not in the multitude of friends."
It is not to be found in great wealth or power or fame. So Shelley has sung:
"Ye seek for happiness — alas, the day!
Ye find it not in luxury, nor in gold,
Nor in fame, nor in the envied sway
For which, O willing slaves to Custom old,
Severe taskmistress! ye your hearts have sold."
How all this is demonstrated in the gilded, luxurious, sumptuous misery of the rich at the present time!
"Can wealth give happiness? look round and see What gay distress! what splendid misery! Whatever fortunes lavishly can pour, The mind annihilates, and calls for more." — Young. Perpetual solitude does not give happiness, tho thousands have sought and are still seeking it in that way, but never finding. "Knowledge," says the great Byron, "is not happiness, and science but an exchange of ignorance for that which is another kind of ignorance." And he whose name and fame men have praised, thus sang the language of his own sad life: "There comes Forever something between us and what We deem our happiness." And so the great world goes on in its mad or wearisome pursuit of happiness — "Toiling on and on and on, With breaking heart, and tearful eyes, The secret longings that arise, Which this world never satisfies! Some more, some less, but of the whole Not one quite happy, no, not one!" And with the little happiness, there is always the great fear, expressed by a witty French writer: "We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all." "There comes forever something between us and what we deem our happiness."4We make that something other than it is. We promise ourselves that sometime — "that far distant sometime" — we shall secure happiness. Knowledge or wealth, or fame or pleasure; at times we get glimpses of it, but "the highest happiness, the purest joys of life [which the world knows], wear out at last."
Why the vain pursuit? Why the disappointment? The answer is summed up in one short word — SELF. Real happiness is not dear, but it never can be found by selfish seeking, never can be bought by selfish gold. It can never be found within ourselves, or for ourselves. O, "how dearly we pay for its counterfeit"! But God can not give happiness to him who selfishly seeks it; for selfishness is sin, and sin indulged or fostered is the murder of the better man; and "Heaven takes care that no man secures happiness by crime."
The beginning of the seeking of happiness, soul, roots in repentance toward God for selfish sins. If it be the sincere repentance of faith you will find that —
"The liquid drops of tears that you have shed
Shall come again, transformed to Orient pearl,
Advantaging their loan with interest
Of ten times double gain of happiness."
In true humility you will take God's way instead of your way. A view of our selfishness and God's goodness may tumble us into the dust, but in it you will find "the blessedness of being little."
In God's service we will find that the first things in the entrance of the way to happiness are the paths of Duty-doing and Cross-bearing. We must enter them forgetful of self, forgetful of consequences, forgetful of our desire even to be happy. Upon the road we shall find pilgrims with burdens; we must share our blessings, help lift their burdens.
"All who joy would win
Must share it. Happiness was born a twin."
"Happiness seems made to be shared." The doing of duty will bring joy to the true heart, and the happiness will ever be doubled by sharing it.
If we love God, if we choose His ways, if we count virtue and piety and righteousness first, we will find in the unselfish, self-forgetting doing the highest happiness. If an old heathen philosopher (Seneca) could write: "No man can live happily who regards himself alone, who turns everything to his own advantage. Thou must live for another if thou wishest to live for thyself," how much ought Christians to find joy in following Jesus Christ, without thought of self. In so doing, the most onerous, disagreeable service becomes a joy; the happiness of others our delight. Without seeking happiness, it comes into our heart, lights up all the dark corners, and irradiates the whole being.
If we wish it to abide, we must go on in the same way. Happiness will not abide with him who is satisfied. Active, unselfish living for God and humanity will bring abiding happiness here and hereafter. "There is no other way but God's way."
