One thing should be clearly noted. The road to happiness
is not a direct road. If we would arrive at happiness we
must first go somewhere else. On the road thither we must
pass through the gate of duty, and walking on the way of
right, pass through the village of love, descend into the
vale of humility and go over the stony way of loyalty and
sincerity and ascend to the heights of innocence. Here,
without looking for it we shall find happiness.
It is a mistake to think that true happiness can come from
mere gratification of desire. Gratification has its part,
but often pursuit of a worthy motive is a greater factor.
Unworthy motives, selfish desires, and sensual
gratifications, instead of producing happiness disappoint
and disillusion. It is a law of our natures that the
higher the desire to be gratified or the higher the motive
that we have the higher and truer the happiness that
results. No truer thing was ever said than that they that
"sow to the flesh shall of the flesh reap
corruption." It is the inevitable consequence.
Gratification of the desires of the flesh may bring
physical joy. The drunkard and the libertine may join in
singing their drinking songs, their sensual love songs,
and the like, but these are not songs of true happiness. A
sensual joy poisons itself and dies in the midst of its
song. Pure song brings higher forms of joy and higher and
purer inspiration. It springs from pure and innocent love,
from the home where love reigns, from the heart that is
full of kindness, pity, consideration for others, and love
of goodness.
The highest happiness comes from the use of our highest
faculties. The exercise of these faculties blossoms forth
in the truest and purest joy. Joy of mind and of heart
rather than enjoyment of the flesh inspires the heart with
rejoicing. The song that has no minor strain is the song
of innocence, at peace with God and with its fellow-men.
Selfish desire and selfish living build an impassable
barrier between ourselves and true happiness. The poet
spoke truly when he said,
"Tell me not then of the pleasures that sting
Coiled under roses of pride;
None but the holy and innocent sing,
Out of a bosom where pleasures abide."
Innocence need not be a thing that we associate only with
childhood. It may be mature. It may be a characteristic of
middle age and of gray hair. Innocence is the result of
right relations with God and with man. Right relations can
exist only when a right attitude is maintained. A right
attitude may be maintained only when back of it lie right
desires and right purposes.
Happiness is the fruit of harmony. Harmony results from
conformity to the laws of our being. The law of God
revealed in the Bible is the law of harmony. The holy are
most truly happy because they are most truly harmonious.
Both their inner lives and their outer lives are
harmonious. Their relations with God and with man are
harmonious. The elements of strife and warfare are absent.
Happiness is not the result of where we live or of our
surroundings, or of what we possess. It is the result of
what we are. No matter how favorable our situation nor how
much nor how many things we possess that should make us
happy, if we do not have within our own breast the
elements that produce happiness we shall never be happy.
We have already noted that true happiness is associated
with innocence. There is nothing from which greater
happiness springs than an inner consciousness of being
innocent before God. It is a singular thing that a great
number of Christian teachers have taught that it is
impossible for a Christian to live in innocence before
God. The unhappy effects of this doctrine have been to rob
the Christian life of many of its joys and to make many
people look upon it as an unsatisfying life, a losing
battle.
It has been taught that Christians must sin continually
day by day. Believing this doctrine it is no wonder that
many Christians are unhappy and live far beneath their
privileges. Their outlook is one of defeat, of constant
shortcoming, of repeatedly enduring a sense of
condemnation. Now, such teaching is assuredly not in
harmony with the teachings of the Scriptures, particularly
of the New Testament. The Christian life there is pictured
to be a joyful life. The command is "Rejoice
evermore." How can one rejoice evermore when he is
conscious of being guilty before God? Jesus said,
"Blessed are the pure in heart." If there be no
such persons Christ's words are mockery.
What is the New Testament picture of a Christian? It is of
a man or woman forgiven of their iniquities, cleansed from
their guilt, walking in righteousness before God. Or, as
Paul puts it, "Therefore being justified by faith we
have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."
Jesus said, "Peace I leave with you. My peace I give
unto you." The joyful fellowship that Paul had with
Christ, manifested in all his epistles, is a thing
inconsistent in its entirety with the sort of life often
said to be the Christian life. "But," one may
say, "How about the seventh chapter of Romans?"
I do not think Paul was very happy when his life
corresponded to the seventh chapter of Romans. Paul passed
out of the seventh chapter into the eighth chapter that
day on the road to Damascus when Jesus appeared to him.
From that day there was a new song in Paul's heart and in
his mouth. He lived a new life, the life pictured in the
eighth chapter. The seventh chapter is not the picture of
a Christian life. It is the picture of a man without grace
trying to live up to the law of God and finding himself
continually failing. It is a continuation of his argument
extending from the third to the sixth chapters, of the
failure of works and of the efficacy of grace. Real
Christians do not live in the seventh chapter of Romans.
It is not the reflection of a Christian experience.
Christians live in fellowship with God. God is their
Father. They are not rebellious sons, but obedient sons.
Sin is a thing of the motive and of the will. Mistakes,
blunders, weaknesses, failures, and unintentional
shortcomings are not sins. To treat them as sins is to
make a vital error. The Bible does not treat them as sins.
Sin is wilful disobedience. It is rebellion against God,
and nothing save things of this character may properly be
called sins, or be treated as sins. These other things
often called "sins" do not produce the effects
of sin. The real Christian experience is a walk with God.
There is mutual understanding between the soul and God.
There is earnest desire to please God and an earnest
endeavor to do so.
Besides being in harmonious relations with God and our
fellow men, unselfish devotion to the highest things for
their own sake is the surest way to be happy. It is the
tree whose fruit is happiness. It bears "twelve
manner of fruits" and always has troth the fragrant
blossoms and the luscious fruits. The Scripture that says,
"The wages of sin is death," is not a threat. It
is a simple statement of an inescapable fact, now and here
as well as hereafter. Evil always has its own reward and
we begin to draw its dividends the moment we are guilty of
it. It never goes bankrupt. Its dividends continue to
increase as the years go by. On the other hand, the
dividends of righteousness are never passed. They are
always paid in golden coin.
Disobedience to our best and highest impulses,
aspirations, and desires must inevitably result in
blighted hopes, an accusing conscience, regret, and a
sense of failure. It is a poison injected into the cup of
happiness. If we would have the song of happiness in our
hearts we must learn that the secret of the singing heart
is to be innocent, to be true to the best there is in us,
to be living on a plain above the mire of sin, of
selfishness, and of sensual gratification.
