Why Not Be Happy? by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · May 6, 1908

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 34, No. 19.

Why Not Be Happy?

By Editor

Just as we go to press, news comes of fearful storms and tornadoes which have swept portions of the states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Arkansas. Untold damage has been done. Whole towns were swept out of existence, and five hundred or more persons killed. So run the reports. We sincerely hope that later reports will reduce these awful tidings.

Too Much of It.—From an artistic view, one of the prettiest things which has been gotten out as a souvenir of the great armada's visit to this coast is a 7 x 10 card, near the top of which is a picture of Admiral Evans, encircled by a laurel wreath. Below is an outline map of North and South America, with a double red line extending from Hampton Roads around the Horn to the Pacific Coast ports. On the right is a hand holding aloft a glass of red wine, with the toast inscription, "Gentlemen, the Admiral." This is bright and hospitable for the world, but the admiral and his fellows have had altogether too much of it. Red wine, toasts, sumptuous fare, feasting, banqueting, smoking, and all the unhealthful, unwholesome accompaniments are worse than actual campaigning in aging men, writing wrinkles on faces, generating and fostering rheumatism and gout, and making men miserable all the latter years of their life. How weary they must get of it all! How unnatural is such a life!

Reader, you mean to serve God some day; why not to-day? You mean to make peace with God, whom you have sinned against many times. Why not now? Yield to Him before your heart hardens forever. His mercy will still endure, but your hard heart will have none of it. You have stilled the voice till you know it no more.

"We mean to do it, some day, some day We mean to slacken the fevered rush That is wearing our very souls away, And grant to our goaded hearts a hush That is holy enough to let them hear The footsteps of angels drawing near.

"But the day that we dreamed of comes at length, When, tired of every mocking quest, And broken in spirit and shorn of strength, We drop at last to our door of rest, And wait and watch while the day wanes on, But the angels we meant to call are gone."

Is your peace made with God? If not, seek Him to-day. Lay down your arms of rebellion, and receive the peace of Jesus Christ before it is too late.

Why Not Be Happy?

REV. D. S. PHELAN, editor of the St. Louis Western Watchman, thus preaches to his people in his paper of April 9, 1908, under the topical head, "Christianity Is a Religion of Joy:"

"Why are not Catholics all happy? No, you are not happy. You do what you do for God and your souls thru impulsion. You go to church on Sunday because you must. You go to confession because you must. You go down on your knees in the morning and again at night to say your prayers because you must. You abstain from meat on Friday because you must. But I don't see that you are very happy in all that. You come to the confessional with sour faces and you go away with faces sometimes a little sourer. And you come to the Holy Table sometimes as slaves driven thither. I don't see happiness depicted in your faces. You are very much like people going to pay their taxes. Go down to the collector's office on days when taxes are due; you see people pressing up to pay their taxes. There are no particularly happy people there. They come because they must. They are like people standing around in a dentist's office, who come to have teeth extracted. You come here on Sunday and look like people who are going to have their teeth pulled out. You don't find any particular happiness in your religion."

Now, reader, we did not say that. It was said by a Catholic of Catholics to Catholics. Yet Father Phelan's picture is true of every ritualistic, traditional religion. It has the form, and its ornate services impress many; its early teachings superstitiously hold many more, but it lacks in personal, joyful, life-union with Christ. No wonder that it looks to its festival days for happiness and joy; yet such joys are purely sensuous, not spiritual, and without the sense impressions they never hold the soul. We wish to say to them that there is a happier experience found in simple, personal relationship thru faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Surely if Christianity is "a religion of joy," and Catholics are not joyful, the religion of Catholics is not Christianity. Bible religion is.