Chapter 3

But what is the secret of happiness? How can we learn to be happy when life has so much to make us sad? The praise of happiness does not take away the fact of sorrow or solve its dark problem. There remain the million aching hearts and all the griefs of a world. True. God forbid that we should lose our sorrows; that were to make this a sad world indeed. Our cares are but part of joy's curriculum. Learning their lesson, bearing their load is essential to deep, lasting happiness.

It is not the life of the butterfly experience that is firm, calm, serene in times of storm and stress. It is the life that by loads of care has been forced to strike its roots down to the rocks. There are some lives that seem to run over with a happiness that is full of refreshing to all who know them, and these have come out of great tribulation.

At first the multiplication table is a burden; later, when mastered, it becomes a wonderful bearer of burdens. To wear a careworn, fretful look, to go through life shedding misery, is to confess that we have not learned our lesson, that we are dunces in life's school.

The secret of happiness is in grasping the significance of living, to learn that we live for things other and higher than those mad follies and fading prizes for which men sell their bodies and souls and fret out their nerves and hearts. No man can be happy whose heart is set on the changing fashion of things or who looks for satisfaction in things.

The lover is happy because he has discovered his prize and is enthralled by a pursuit that makes all other things seem mean and paltry. Men are happy in proportion as they yield themselves to the best, as they tune their hearts to strike the highest key of their lives. Paul is happier in the dungeon, where he can be true to his ideal, than Nero on the throne without one.

There is feast in days of famine for those who have the inner eyes for the riches of life. You always can find in this world what your heart is looking for. But you cannot satisfy your heart on everything you may chance to find, and until the heart is satisfied and the deeper needs of the life are met there is no happiness.

The search for happiness is not altogether selfish. Few things can we do that will help others more than the cultivation of serene strength and cheer in ourselves. Not the soulless, set smile, but the strength and sympathy that flow from a life fixed in confidence in eternal right and good and unfailing love.

THE FOLLY OF ANXIETY

The great Teacher does not say that we are not to be thoughtful, or provident; but He insists that no event can be provided for by anxiety, by fretting over it before it comes. Half the people on our streets look as though life was a sorry business. It is hard to find a happy looking man or woman. Worry is the cause of their woebegone appearance. Worry makes the wrinkles; worry cuts the deep, down-glancing lines on the face; worry is the worst disease of our modern times.

Care is contagious; it is hard work being cheerful at a funeral, and it is a good deal harder to keep the frown from your face when you are in the throng of the worry worn ones. Yet, we have no right to be dispensers of gloom; no matter how heavy our loads may seem to be we have no right to throw their burden on others nor even to cast the shadow of them on other hearts.

Anxiety is instability. Fret steals away force. He who dreads to-morrow trembles to-day. Worry is weakness. The successful men may be always wide-awake, but they never worry. Fret and fear are like fine sand, thrown into life's delicate mechanism; they cause more than half the friction; they steal half the power.

Cheer is strength. Nothing is so well done as that which is done heartily, and nothing is so heartily done as that which is done happily. Be happy, is an injunction not impossible of fulfillment. Pleasure may be an accident; but happiness comes in definite ways. It is the casting out of our foolish fears that we may have room for a few of our common joys. It is the telling our worries to wait until we get through appreciating our blessings. Take a deep breath, raise your chest, lift your eyes from the ground, look up and think how many things you have for which to be grateful, and you will find a smile growing where one may long have been unknown.

Take the right kind of thought--for to take no thought would be sin--but take the calm, unanxious thought of your business, your duties, your difficulties, your disappointments and all the things that once have caused you fear, and you will find yourself laughing at most of them. In some you will see but friends in disguise, and in others puny foes decked out as giants. But begin to dread them, brood over them, look at them with eyes prejudiced with fear, and the least difficulties rise like mountains. In winter some people worry themselves into malaria over the mosquitoes they may meet next summer.

Mistaken ideas of religion are responsible for a great many of the unnecessary wrinkles on the human face. Too many have thought it would be impossible to be happy in two worlds, and so, having elected happiness in the one which they thought would last longest, they have no choice but to be unhappy in this one. In fact, some seem to suppose that the greater their misery here the more intense will their bliss be there. If heaven is to be bought that way certainly many are paying full price for it.

Burdens we all must bear; but they need not break us. Sorrows we all must share; but they need not unmake us. They will not if we have learned the Teacher's secret of living; He, the man of sorrows, was the man who could bequeath to His friends His joy. To Him life lost its anxiety, because the chief things of life were not food or raiment, or even social standing, but manhood and unselfishness to men, and the possibilities of these were as easily realized in need and adversity as in riches and prosperity.

V

The Curriculum of Character

_The Great School_ _The Purpose of the Course_ _The Price of Perfection_

_A good many resolutions die of heart failure._

_No man possesses more religion than he practices._

_When men say "our faults" they usually mean yours._

_There are no delights in the worship that dodges duty._

_When fear gets into the pulpit faith goes out of the pews._

_It's not the man with a putty backbone who is most truly resigned to the will of God._

_When a man buys a horse on its specifications he is likely to call his folly faith and its consequences the dispensation of Providence._

_It is folly to hope to have a clean heart when you pay no attention to what enters its doorways._

_Some folks think they have the house of character because they possess the plans of virtue._

_It is folly to talk of being guided by the light of your conscience when you take pains to keep it in the dark._

V

THE GREAT SCHOOL

With all our learning the greatest lesson before us is this one of living right, of finding our full heritage and filling our places as men and women in this world. If our systems of education fail to teach us how to live they fail altogether.

The great need of our day is that we shall train the conscience to right moral judgment, that we shall educate all for the business of living, and that we shall so educate all that we shall not only have a generation of bright, smart, money-making or fame-making machines, but that we may have clean, upright, truth-loving, self-reverencing, God-fearing men and women.

There is little likelihood that America will fail for lack of business ability. The danger is that we shall fail at the point of character; that we shall fail where failure is fatal to every other kind of success. This is the crucial point.

We do well to perfect the plans by which we teach men the encyclopedia of their bodies, their country, the world and its history. But we cannot forget, and recent events have reminded us with a terrible note of warning, that no amount of knowledge constitutes any sort, even the feeblest kind, of guarantee as to rectitude of life.

If you neglect the heart, the will, and conscience, if you neglect the knowledge of and training in right relations with men, reverence and right relations to the most high, your culture of the intellect is worse than waste; it is the perfecting of the poison of our social life; it is the whetting of the edge of a man's villainy and grossness.

Above all other things, the most desirable is that men shall love truth and hate a lie; that they shall love honour and truth so much more than fame, power, or possessions that never for an instant will these weigh in the scale against the former. But for long it has been thought that this choice flower of nobility grew by chance; the culture of the soul was so mysterious as never to be brought under scientific law.

If a man grew up to be good it was due either to accident or to miracle. The realm of character has been the last to come under the reign of law. Now we recognize that we must learn to live as truly as we must learn to read, and that the culture of the soul must profit by the wondrous strides that all educational science has made; that all our efforts to produce character must be so wisely directed that we shall secure the best and most enduring results.

One message comes from the lips of every seer, from every page of history. It is that the man or the nation alone is wise, alone finds enduring life, who sets before commercial supremacy or political power or fame in learning the glory of righteousness, the beauty of practical holiness. Their wealth lies beyond corruption and their days know no end who are wise and rich in the things within.

The greatest service we can render our day is by giving it the riches of worthy living, by setting before ourselves the production of high character through all life's processes of learning, and by bringing in every way we may to an age engrossed in selfishness and commercialism the significance of the call of character.

No wonder it sometimes seems to us that we have forgotten to smile; that our faces are so drawn with the tense struggle of life that we have lost sight of the meaning of happiness. How can we be happy unless we shall set our whole lives in harmony with the things that are fundamental and eternal?

We must learn to order our lives, not as machines to be driven at the top of their efficiency in the money mill, but as part of the great life of the spiritual world, as inheritors of things divine, sublime, and glorious, as possessors of the joy that made the morning stars sing together and the beauty that paints the evening red.

THE PURPOSE OF THE COURSE

The early question of the old creeds, "What is the chief end of man?" was conceived in a spirit more practical than academic. It was the voice of the constant inquiry as to the purpose of living. But the answer given by the creed lacks the assurance of a moral conviction; it fails to find any response in us. "To glorify God and to enjoy Him forever" may be the portion of angels, but honest men have to confess that they have no great desire to be angels, yet.

The emphasis of the creed with that as its basis practically was on dying rather than on living; it owed whatever grip it had on men to the promise it held, to those who were in the midst of the sordid round of tasks or the dull, heavy grind of poverty, of a felicitude that knew neither hunger, fear, nor pain; it offered a heaven forever to those who could endure a hell for a short time.

The logical consequence was to make dying the chief end of living. Who cannot remember being told to despise the present, to consider how brief it is, like a cloud before the dawn of the endless day? It was compared to the short waiting outside some door beyond which was warmth, cheer, and unending bliss. So that the pious soul thought of life only in terms of waiting, watching, enduring. Piety became positive only in prospect, negative in the present.

To say to a man, be patient with wrong and oppression to-day and you will be prospered tomorrow, is to teach him to compound a felony, to wink at the despoiling of the earth by the iniquitous for the consideration of a title to the riches of heaven. It is to lose sight of the fact that unless the life finds itself now it never will find itself, that to dwarf a soul to-day is to dwarf it forever.

"Then," says the practical man, "this means that we can ignore the future; we must make the most of the present; get all you can; keep all you get; the whole purpose of life is to make a good living, to enjoy yourself." This is only the swing of the pendulum away from the old thought. The ideal of the present day is material advantage. The chief end of man is to make money. If once he was the slave of an unjust order, he now is the slave of an unworthy appetite.

Living only for wealth or for wages is not living at all. Who knows less of life than the slave of modern commercialism, the man who lifts his eyes no higher than the pay roll, or the ticker tape? It is better to be the victim of a delusion that gives some happiness, that gives some fortitude, and to live the simple life of the poor than to be the slave bound to the wheel of modern social greed and money madness.

Life itself is the object of living; the chief end of man is to become glorious as his ideal of God is glorious, to realize the highest that comes to him in the song of poet, the vision of seer, the hope of his own heart. The money, the acres, the resources are the tools for the development of life. This world is a workshop; it has failed utterly if it produces nothing but an array of machines and a heap of shavings; it must turn out the finished product of men.

Are you living thus for life, or are you living to do no more than make a living? We need to educate our children to set honour, truth, justice, a high life, before all things, to prize noble attainments so that they shall not be content with the lesser prizes of prosperity in things, so that whether we win or lose in the markets of the world we shall stand rich and glorious in manhood, finding the ends of life in the achievement of high character and finding in commerce but the servant of character.

THE PRICE OF PERFECTION

Gold may depreciate, stocks rise or fall, and business values change so as to leave the market in panic, but every man on the street or in the store knows that one value forever remains permanent, unvarying, and that is character. Every other asset may be swept away and success still achieved if this remain; every other aid may be at its best and failure only await him who lacks the wealth of character.

Character is that of which reputation is but the echo, often mistaken and misleading. Character is the last, the ultimate, value of life. It is the trend of the whole being towards the best. It is the passion and power that holds one true despite all persuasion.

It is the one thing worth having, because upon it all other values depend. The wealth of the whole world still leaves poor him from whom the soul, the power to appreciate, the purity of heart which sees God and the good, the peace and quietness of a good conscience, have fled. When we turn away from our fighting for fame and our grinding for gold long enough to think, then we know that the things within determine wholly the value and reality of all things without.

The wise ever have set this treasure above all others. Happy the people that love righteousness more than revenue, the way of virtue, the clear eye, the upward look, and the approval of a good conscience above all other prosperity or advantage. The days of national greatness ever have been those when the things that make manhood bulked far above all other considerations. Alike to people and individuals, the imperishable value ever has been that of character.

This asset comes not to a man by accident. He who is rich in character, whose success in many ways is built upon his resources in this way, does not just simply happen to be good, true, and square. There is a price to character; it costs more than any other thing, for it is worth more than all other things. Essentially it never is inherited, but always acquired by processes often slow and toilsome and at great price.

If you would be perfect you must pay the price of perfection. Unless the passion of life is this perfection it never will be your possession. Dreams of ideal goodness only waste the hours in which it might have been achieved. No man ever finds character in his sleep. The education of the heart is a thing even more definite than the education of the head. The school of character has an infinite variety of courses and an unending curriculum.

Folks who are sighing for goodness usually go away sorrowful when they learn what it costs. But life ever is putting to us just such tests as the wise teacher put to the rich young man. You say you desire character, the perfection of manhood or womanhood above all other things; do you desire this enough to pay for it your ease, your coveted fame, your cherished gold, perhaps your present good name and peace of mind? Is the search for character a passion or only a pastime?

This does not mean that this prize of eternity falls only to those who devote themselves wholly to self-culture, to the salvation of their own souls. The best lives have thought little of themselves, but they have lived for the ends of the soul, to help men to better living, to save them from the things that blight and damn the soul. Like the Leader of men they have found the life unending by laying down their lives, paying the full price, selling all in order that right and truth and honour and purity, love and kindness and justice might remain to man.

The world's wealth depends not on what we have in our hands, nor even on what we can carry in our heads. It depends on the things that we have and the beings we are in our hearts. Fools we are who live only to make a living, houses, shelter, food, rags, and toys, who might live to make a life, and to mold lives, to earn the riches and honour enduring; who have not learned the gain of all loss that leads the heart to look up, the joy of all sorrow that sweetens the soul, and the profit from every sacrifice that is a paying of the price of perfection.

VI

The Age-Long Miracle

_The Sufficient Sign_ _Behold the Man_ _The Life that Lifts_

_Silent goodness speaks loudest._

_Our loads lift us up to strength._

_Life grows as love is given._

_From the grind of drudgery comes at last the glorious divine spark._

_The spirit of the father never works separation in the family._

_That day best fulfills its purpose which is a preparation for the next._

_The proof of a faith is not in its prestige, but in its present power._

_Things divine are not defended by dodging._

_It is the heart that gives ease to any work._

_The door of truth never opens to the key of prejudice._

_Love never knows how much it gives nor what it costs._

VI

THE SUFFICIENT SIGN

The scribe and the Pharisee are still with us. "Establish the credibility of the miracles of Jesus, or, better still, let Him work a miracle to-day, and we will believe," they say. This age is credulous; it hungers to believe the extraordinary. Yet, while it is running after folly, it is blind to the most extraordinary fact, the most stupendous miracle that ever took place, although it goes on right before its eyes and is open to every kind of proof. It cannot see the miracle of Jesus in the world to-day, the miracle beside which all the works He did in His lifetime sink into insignificance.

Here is the sign to-day offered to the skeptic: Once, nearly twenty centuries ago, a young preacher travelled and taught through the villages and by the wayside in an obscure oriental country. He addressed a subject race, insular in their prejudices, lacking in political genius and in artistic culture. He lived in days calculated to chill the most fervid religious enthusiasm. He was at first ignored and then hated by His own people; the religious leaders became His implacable foes. His work ended in apparent failure, in a death of shame.

But that was not the end. It is strange that the world remembers anything about that young preacher; but stranger still is the fact that to-day He influences more than half the population of the globe, surpassing all other teachers, more people are under His sway now than the whole world held when He lived. These millions make Him the object of their worship and devotion; in His name they gather regularly all over the world, without regard to language or race.

More than this, this one whom the wise men of His day ignored has been the inspiration of the works of genius and art, of the deeds of heroism, of the lofty endeavours of the world since He died. He has changed the mind. He has changed the appearance of the world; by Him nations have fallen and risen. The humble, the despised, the rejected has become the world's hero, the mightiest of all the sons of men, the saviour of His race.

Once He touched a few who were blind and lame and they were healed; to-day in His name, in every city, a thousand suffering ones are made whole. Science does the work; but the opportunity for its development and the inspiration for its application came from Him.

Nor is this all. He made the world to see; He touched the blind eyes of the people, as they groped in superstition, and has given them sight; He has made the ages, once limping and halting, to arise and march forward with magnificent tread; He found the world a babel of jarring voices and fretting purposes, and His touch gave peace and singleness of purpose until men could discern that "through the ages one unceasing purpose runs." He did for man and mind what was first done for matter, brought the cosmos out of chaos. This is the miracle indeed.

It goes right on before our eyes. They take His name to a dead people, and soon there is life there. Light, and love, and larger life spring up everywhere in His name. From this modern miracle of the power, the growing authority, the kingship of the once despised Jesus we cannot escape; we are perforce participants in its benefits; it conditions all our lives.

If all the gospel stories could be proved myths and the miracles but inventions, there would still remain the greater, the insuperable miracle of the world's picture of the perfect and all glorious personality of Jesus and the fact of His preëminent power in the world to-day. This is the sign He gives this age, and to this the open mind answers: "Thou art the Christ, the saviour of the world."

BEHOLD THE MAN

The two words, "Ecce homo," contemptuously spoken by the cynical Roman governor contained the highest tribute that had been given to Jesus. How empty appear all the high sounding titles, such as king and emperor, beside this significant one of Man. How sad and self-damning the bitter railing of His enemies in the light of that serene dignity. How puerile the bickering over words and ways of worship, and all the wrangling that blinded them to the heavenly radiance of that all glorious manhood. The wonder of Jesus is not in the deeds He did, but in the being He was. And the wonder of His being is not in that it offers elements for arguments as to a divine personality, but it is that of a simple, clear, sublimely perfect manhood. It is upon this perfection of personal character that His abiding claim to divinity must rest; it depends not on His birth but on His being.