Article June 5, 1920 ISSUE

Right Results

LUCY H. MC DONALD

On page 57 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy says, "Happiness is spiritual, born of Truth and Love." This expression is the antipode of the well-known couplets from Burns comparing pleasures to the short life of a poppy or to the evanescent nature of the snowflake on the river. Happiness, unlike "pleasures," is not born of the belief in the reality of the senses or their kingdom; happiness is of the nature of its source, being spiritual, true, loving, pure. Happiness is an effect or result of knowing and loving Truth and Love; therefore one does not set out as on a journey to seek for happiness, nor does he outline the road by which it must come to him. No limited idea of one's rights or one's place or one's work will result in happiness.

Sometimes one desire, one condition, or one position seems to loom so large that it fills our whole horizon, skyward and earthward. "That is the only right thing," we see emblazoned on our limited space, and, "Everything and everybody must yield to that one idea," we argue; "they must see it so." And we try to arrest every thought that would see the matter in a different light. One has a farm to attend to; another has just married; another is bound by a sense of duty that looks straight enough, narrow as it is. Curious to say, oftentimes the one thing we are outlining is a good thing, a good way, perhaps the best,—for instance, building a church,—but we block the whole way if we offend in one thing or look to one thing—if we work in limited sense instead of through the limitless intelligence that comes with rightly knowing God, man, and the universe, and declaring positively the truth of a given situation from that boundless basis.

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