While walking down a busy street one day, I saw a misleading sign hanging in the window of a business that serves alcoholic beverages. It advertised, "Happy Hours—3 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 8 p.m."

Considering this spurious assumption that happiness could be obtained in strong drink, I thought how similar was the deceptive lie of the serpent when it whispered into the ear of Eve the depraved notion that she could find happiness through indulgence in evil.

The allegory in Genesis reports the serpent as saying, "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." ^{Gen. 3:5;} Hypnotized by this false attraction, Eve agreed. "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat."

The modern attempt to find happiness in false attractions is certainly nothing new. But the continuing Scriptural records in both the Old and New Testaments, as well as lessons learned in present-day experience, reveal the inescapable folly of accepting this serpentine philosophy in the place of the real happiness that comes from obedience to God's command, "Thou shalt have no other gods [no other sources of good] before me." ^{Ex. 20:3;}

Too often individuals are hoodwinked by the belief that happiness and satisfaction can be bought in a bottle, a drug capsule, a tobacco can. But the disappointments that result show that happiness sought in this way is lost, not gained. Why? Because, like the symbolic apple of Eve's downfall, these false attractions are basically evil in nature. They include innate habit-forming properties that destroy rather than promote the individual's ability to control his mind and body and therefore his experience. They weaken his resistance to the lie of mortal mind that life, substance, and intelligence are resident in matter. And when mesmerized by these beliefs, the individual becomes vulnerable to the legion of errors asserting the power and reality of inharmony and unhappiness. The result is the inevitable loss of one's moral strength, freedom, and self-control. Mrs. Eddy writes: "Sensualism is not bliss, but bondage. For true happiness, man must harmonize with his Principle, divine Love; the Son must be in accord with the Father, in conformity with Christ." ^{Science and Health, p. 337;}

Christian Science teaches that happiness is not obtained in matter or in self-destructive, habit-forming experiences. Happiness results from obedience to the law of God. It is identified as a state of consciousness originating in God, Spirit. James declared, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." ^{James 1:17;} And Mrs. Eddy echoes that thought when she writes, "No wisdom is wise but His wisdom; no truth is true, no love is lovely, no life is Life but the divine; no good is, but the good God bestows." ^{Science and Health, p. 275;} God alone is the source of good. And since God is Spirit, only spiritual good is real and capable of providing us with satisfying experiences.

Since happiness is a quality of divine Love, it is naturally expressed in man, who is Love's spiritual effect. Immortal man does not have to look for satisfaction outside himself; he is already a complete, whole unit in Mind. Lacking nothing, he is the very manifestation of Him whose abundant nature includes permanent peace and fulfillment. Because of his forever unity with divine Principle, God, man's well-being is an ever-present divine reality.

Consequently man in Science is not attracted to evil; nor can he be deceived by the misleading claims of false attractions. There is nothing in his pure nature that responds to depravity. He is eternally the upright, perfect reflection of Life, Truth, and Love. A Christian Scientist recognizes his own true being as God's son. He hungers only for spiritual good, and he finds it in Soul, Spirit. In daily experience he really enjoys proving that these facts are true through cleansing his human consciousness of all mental debris that limits his realization of man's completeness in God. And this profitable mental activity not only brings happiness; it transforms his character and heals sickness, sin, disease, and all the abnormalities of the flesh.

The individual finds real pleasure in putting "off ... the old man" with its false concepts of happiness and in putting "on the new man" ^{Eph. 4:22-24;} through the Christlike thinking that identifies man as God's spiritual image, free of impurity and dependence on matter. Mrs. Eddy writes, "Happiness consists in being and in doing good; only what God gives, and what we give ourselves and others through His tenure, confers happiness: conscious worth satisfies the hungry heart, and nothing else can." ^{Message to The Mother Church for 1902, p. 17.}

The demonstration in human experience of these timeless verities brings to individual lives real "happy hours."