Article May 24, 1924 Issue

Happiness

JOHN ELLIS SEDMAN

God is Love. Consequently, God bestows eternal happiness upon all His creatures. God is omnipotent and omniscient good; and since all that He produces and beholds is perfect, like Himself, He must dwell in a state of complete and eternal satisfaction and bliss. Man, as God's image and likeness, reflects this divine bliss perfectly, uninterruptedly, permanently. Why, then, is not happiness more generally enjoyed by mankind to-day? Obviously, because people entertain so many misconceptions as to what happiness is, and how it can be gained.

In order to gain true and lasting happiness, a correct understanding of God and a right attitude towards Him are absolutely necessary. Indeed, to know God aright is happiness. John recognized the fact. He knew that the misconceptions of God commonly entertained by the Hebrew people prevented them from experiencing the joy that was full and complete. John knew that when Christ Jesus made God known as divine, infinite Love, he opened the way whereby all mankind might enter into the enjoyment of universal satisfaction and peace; hence his declaration concerning Jesus' message to humanity: "And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all."

No one can avail himself of the divine joy to which he is entitled, so long as he believes that God is the source or cause of any of the woes which beset mankind. Many people have spent years in sickness and misery, because they believed that God had afflicted them or those they loved with disease, hardships, and heart-rending sorrows. Christian Science has brought to a host of such people health and a sense of peace they had ceased to expect in this world. This beneficent result Christian Science has accomplished by making known the unalterable loving-kindness of God. From divine Love only blessings emanate. "The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it," says the Bible.

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Heaven and Earth
May 24, 1924
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