Article October 29, 1921 Issue

Where to Seek for Happiness

MABEL BLANCH

When David wrote in the Psalms, "Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God," he was surely only telling us in another way that true happiness comes only from God. When Mrs. Eddy gave to a waiting world her wonderful textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," she gave its inhabitants the opportunity of learning for themselves how and where to find this happiness, for she writes on page 57 of that book, "Happiness is spiritual, born of Truth and Love." Just in proportion, therefore, that we grow in the knowledge of Truth and Love shall we gain the realization of what true happiness is and learn that as the kingdom of God is within man, so the happiness of God belongs to man as his heritage as a child of God.

We may, in our ignorance, seek for this possession in wealth, position, or a host of friends, but sooner or later we have to learn that only through absolute reliance on Principle can we gain that happiness about which the psalmist wrote. Mortals base theirs on fleeting, unstable joys, for it is possible for a man to lose wealth, position, and friends in a day, so that the state of that man will be the reverse of happy. But to the one who is learning each hour to place his trust only in God comes the constant realization that everything connected with Principle is unvarying, and that one is untouched by the material discordant conditions he sees around him.

When Bernard Shaw places in the mouth of one of his characters the words, "I say that if you have happiness within yourself you don't need to seek for it outside," he is voicing a great truth. It is not necessary for any one of us to seek to be happy through the many fleeting channels the world provides. What we have to do, and can do since Mrs. Eddy unlocked for us the pages of the Bible, is to be so conscious of the omnipresence of Truth and Love that this understanding will vanquish everything unlike God and bring, in its place, that wonderful peace and harmony known only to those who love Principle. Can any one do this for us? Have we not all to strive for and make this understanding our own to such a degree that we shall lose all desire to seek outside?

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