laughing, says of himself in his diary, "I am suffering under a constant
depression of spirits, which no one who sees me in society dreams of."
A wobegone stranger consulted a physician about his health. The
physician advised him to keep up his spirits by going to hear the great
comic actor of the day. "You should go and hear Matthews. He would make
you well." "Alas, sir," was the reply, "I am Matthews
himself!"--_Pictorial Pages._
To be truly happy _the highest wants of a man's nature must be met and
satisfied_. The requirements of his curiously wrought constitution must
all be filled up. There must be nothing about him that cries, "Give,
give," but cries in vain and gets no answer. The horse and the ox are
happy as long as they are warmed and filled. And why? It is because they
are satisfied. The little infant looks happy when it is clothed, and
fed, and well, and in its mother's arms. And why? Because it is
satisfied. And just so it is with man. His highest wants must be met and
satisfied before he can be truly happy. All must be filled up. There
must be no void, no empty places, no unsupplied cravings. Till then he
is never truly happy.
And what are _man's principal wants_? Has he a body only? No: he has
something more! He has a soul.--Has he sensual faculties only? Can he
do nothing but hear, and see, and smell, and taste, and feel? No: he has
a thinking mind and a conscience!--Has he no consciousness of any world
but that in which he lives and moves? He has. There is a still small
voice within him which often makes itself heard: "This life is not all!
There is a world unseen: there is a life beyond the grave." Yes! it is
true. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. All men know it: all men
feel it, if they would only speak the truth. It is utter nonsense to
pretend that food and raiment and earthly good things alone can make men
happy. There are soul-wants. There are conscience-wants. There can be no
true happiness until these wants are satisfied.
To be truly happy _a man must have sources of gladness which are not
dependent on anything in this world_. There is nothing upon earth which
is not stamped with the mark of instability and uncertainty. All the
good things that money can buy are but for a moment: they either leave
us or we are obliged to leave them. All the sweetest relationships in
life are liable to come to an end: death may come any day and cut them
off. The man whose happiness depends entirely on things here below is
like him who builds his house on sand, or leans his weight on a reed.
Tell me not of your happiness if it daily hangs on the uncertainties of
earth. Your home may be rich in comforts; your wife and children may be
all you could desire; your means may be amply sufficient to meet all
your wants. But oh, remember, if you have nothing more than this to look
to, that you stand on the brink of a precipice! Your rivers of pleasure
may any day be dried up. Your joy may be deep and earnest, but it is
fearfully short-lived. It has no root. It is not true happiness.
To be really happy _a man must be able to look on every side without
uncomfortable feelings_. He must be able to look back to the past
without guilty fears; he must be able to look around him without
discontent; he must be able to look forward without anxious dread.
He must be able to sit down and think calmly about things past,
present, and to come, and feel prepared. The man who has a weak side
in his condition,--a side that he does not like looking at or
considering,--that man is not really happy.
Talk not to me of your happiness, if you are unable to look steadily
either before or behind you. Your present position may be easy and
pleasant. You may find many sources of joy and gladness in your
profession, your dwelling-place, your family, and your friends. Your
health may be good, your spirits may be cheerful. But stop and think
quietly over your past life. Can you reflect calmly on all the omissions
and commissions of by-gone years? How will they bear God's inspection?
How will you answer for them at the last day?--And then look forward,
and think on the years yet to come. Think of the certain end towards
which you are hastening; think of death; think of judgment; think of the
hour when you will meet God face to face. Are you ready for it? Are you
prepared? Can you look forward to these things without alarm?--Oh, be
very sure if you cannot look comfortably at any season but the present,
your boasted happiness is a poor unreal thing! It is but a whitened
sepulchre,--fair and beautiful without, but bones and corruption within.
It is a mere thing of a day, like Jonah's gourd. It is not real
happiness.
I ask my readers to fix in their minds the account of things essential
to happiness, which I have attempted to give. Dismiss from your thoughts
the many mistaken notions which pass current on this subject, like
counterfeit coin. To be truly happy, the wants of your soul and
conscience must be satisfied; to be truly happy, your joy must be
founded on something more than this world can give you; to be truly
happy, you must be able to look on every side,--above, below, behind,
before,--and feel that all is right. This is real, sterling, genuine
happiness: this is the happiness I have in view when I urge on your
notice the subject of this paper.
II. In the next place, _let me expose some common mistakes about the way
to be happy_.
There are several roads which are thought by many to lead to happiness.
In each of these roads thousands and tens of thousands of men and women
are continually travelling. Each fancies that if he could only attain
all he wants he would be happy. Each fancies, if he does not succeed,
that the fault is not in his road, but in his own want of luck and good
fortune. And all alike seem ignorant that they are hunting shadows. They
have started in a wrong direction: they are seeking that which can never
be found in the place where they seek it.
I will mention by name some of the principal delusions about happiness.
I do it in love, and charity, and compassion to men's souls. I believe
it to be a public duty to warn people against cheats, quacks, and
impostors. Oh, how much trouble and sorrow it might save my readers, if
they would only believe what I am going to say!
It is an utter mistake to suppose that _rank and greatness alone_ can
give happiness. The kings and rulers of this world are not necessarily
happy men. They have troubles and crosses, which none know but
themselves; they see a thousand evils, which they are unable to remedy;
they are slaves working in golden chains, and have less real liberty
than any in the world; they have burdens and responsibilities laid upon
them, which are a daily weight on their hearts. The Roman Emperor
Antonine often said, that "the imperial power was an ocean of miseries."
Queen Elizabeth, when she heard a milk-maid singing, wished that she had
been born to a lot like her's. Never did our great Poet write a truer
word than when he said,
"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."
It is an utter mistake to suppose that _riches alone_ can give
happiness. They can enable a man to command and possess everything but
inward peace. They cannot buy a cheerful spirit and a light heart. There
is care in the getting of them, and care in the keeping of them, care in
the using of them, and care in the disposing of them, care in the
gathering, and care in the scattering of them. He was a wise man who
said that "money" was only another name for "trouble," and that the same
English letters which spelt "acres" would also spell "cares."
It is an utter mistake to suppose that _learning and science alone_ can
give happiness. They may occupy a man's time and attention, but they
cannot really make him happy. They that increase knowledge often
"increase sorrow:" the more they learn, the more they discover their own
ignorance. (Eccles. i. 18.) It is not in the power of things on earth or
under the earth to "minister to a mind diseased." The heart wants
something as well as the head: the conscience needs food as well as the
intellect. All the secular knowledge in the world will not give a man
joy and gladness, when he thinks on sickness, and death, and the grave.
They that have climbed the highest, have often found themselves
solitary, dissatisfied, and empty of peace. The learned Selden, at the
close of his life, confessed that all his learning did not give him such
comfort as four verses of St. Paul. (Titus ii. 11--14.)
It is an utter mistake to suppose that _idleness alone_ can give
happiness. The labourer who gets up at five in the morning, and goes out
to work all day in a cold clay ditch, often thinks, as he walks past the
rich man's door, "What a fine thing it must be to have no work to do."
Poor fellow! he little knows what he thinks. The most miserable
creature on earth is the man who has nothing to do. Work for the hands
or work for the head is absolutely essential to human happiness. Without
it the mind feeds upon itself, and the whole inward man becomes
diseased. The machinery within _will_ work, and without something to
work upon, will often wear itself to pieces. There was no idleness in
Eden. Adam and Eve had to "dress the garden and keep it." There will be
no idleness in heaven: God's "servants shall serve Him." Oh, be very
sure the idlest man is the man most truly unhappy! (Gen. ii. 15; Rev.
xxii. 3.)
It is an utter mistake to suppose that _pleasure-seeking and amusement
alone_ can give happiness. Of all roads that men can take in order to be
happy, this is the one that is most completely wrong. Of all weary,
flat, dull, and unprofitable ways of spending life, this exceeds all. To
think of a dying creature, with an immortal soul, expecting happiness in
feasting and revelling,--in dancing and singing,--in dressing and
visiting,--in ball-going and card-playing,--in races and fairs,--in
hunting and shooting,--in crowds, in laughter, in noise, in music, in
wine! Surely it is a sight that is enough to make the devil laugh and
the angels weep. Even a child will not play with its toys all day long.
It must have food. But when grown up men and women think to find
happiness in a constant round of amusement they sink far below a child.
I place before every reader of this paper these common mistakes about
the way to be happy. I ask you to mark them well. I warn you plainly
against these pretended short cuts to happiness, however crowded they
may be. I tell you that if you fancy any one of them can lead you to
true peace you are entirely deceived. Your conscience will never feel
satisfied; your immortal soul will never feel easy: your whole inward
man will feel uncomfortable and out of health. Take any one of these
roads, or take all of them, and if you have nothing besides to look to,
you will never find happiness. You may travel on and on and on, and the
wished for object will seem as far away at the end of each stage of life
as when you started. You are like one pouring water into a sieve, or
putting money into a bag with holes. You might as well try to make an
elephant happy by feeding him with a grain of sand a day, as try to
satisfy that heart of your's with rank, riches, learning, idleness, or
pleasure.
Do you doubt the truth of all I am saying? I dare say you do. Then let
us turn to the great Book of human experience, and read over a few lines
out of its solemn pages. You shall have the testimony of a few competent
witnesses on the great subject I am urging on your attention.
A King shall be our first witness: I mean Solomon, King of Israel. We
know that he had power, and wisdom, and wealth, far exceeding that of
any ruler of his time. We know from his own confession, that he tried
the great experiment how far the good things of this world can make man
happy. We know, from the record of his own hand, the result of this
curious experiment. He writes it by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost,
for the benefit of the whole world, in the book of Ecclesiastes. Never,
surely, was the experiment tried under such favourable circumstances:
never was any one so likely to succeed as the Jewish King. Yet what is
Solomon's testimony? You have it in his melancholy words: "All is vanity
and vexation of spirit." (Eccles. i. 14.)
A famous French lady shall be our next witness: I mean Madam De
Pompadour. She was the friend and favourite of Louis the Fifteenth. She
had unbounded influence at the Court of France. She wanted nothing that
money could procure. Yet what does she say herself? "What a situation is
that of the great! They only live in the future, and are only happy in
hope. There is no peace in ambition. I am always gloomy, and often so
unreasonably. The kindness of the King, the regard of courtiers, the
attachment of my domestics, and the fidelity of a large number of
friends,--motives like these, which ought to make me happy, affect me no
longer. I have no longer inclinations for all which once pleased me. I
have caused my house at Paris to be magnificently furnished: well; it
pleased for two days! My residence at Bellevue is charming; and I alone
cannot endure it. Benevolent people relate to me all the news and
adventures of Paris: they think I listen, but when they have done I ask
them what they said. In a word, I do not live: I am dead before my time.
I have no interest in the world. Everything conspires to embitter my
life. My life is a continual death." To such testimony I need not add a
single word. (_Sinclair's Anecdotes and Aphorisms_ p. 33)
A famous German writer shall be our next witness: I mean Goethe. It is
well known that he was almost idolized by many during his life. His
works were read and admired by thousands. His name was known and
honoured, wherever German was read, all over the world. And yet the
praise of man, of which he reaped such an abundant harvest, was utterly
unable to make Goethe happy. "He confessed, when about eighty years old,
that he could not remember being in a really happy state of mind even
for a few weeks together; and that when he wished to feel happy, he had
to veil his self-consciousness." (_See Sinclair's Anecdotes and
Aphorisms, p. 280._)
An English peer and poet shall be our next witness: I mean Lord Byron.
If ever there was one who ought to have been happy according to the
standard of the world, Lord Byron was the man. He began life with all
the advantages of English rank and position. He had splendid abilities
and powers of mind, which the world soon discovered and was ready to
honour. He had a sufficiency of means to gratify every lawful wish, and
never knew anything of real poverty. Humanly speaking, there seemed
nothing to prevent him enjoying life and being happy. Yet it is a
notorious fact that Byron was a miserable man. Misery stands out in his
poems: misery creeps out in his letters. Weariness, satiety, disgust,
and discontent appear in all his ways. He is an awful warning that rank,
and title, and literary fame, alone, are not sufficient to make a man
happy.
A man of science shall be our next witness: I mean Sir Humphrey Davy. He
was a man eminently successful in the line of life which he chose, and
deservedly so. A distinguished philosopher,--the inventor of the famous
safety-lamp which bears his name, and has preserved so many poor miners
from death by fire-damp,--a Baronet of the United Kingdom and President
of the Royal Society;--his whole life seemed a continual career of
prosperity. If learning alone were the road to happiness, this man at
least ought to have been happy. Yet what was the true record of Davy's
feelings? We have it in his own melancholy journal at the latter part of
his life. He describes himself in two painful words: "Very miserable!"
A man of wit and pleasure shall be our next witness: I mean Lord
Chesterfield. He shall speak for himself: his own words in a letter
shall be his testimony. "I have seen the silly round of business and
pleasure, and have done with it all. I have enjoyed all the pleasures of
the world, and consequently know their futility, and do not regret their
loss. I appraise them at their real value, which in truth is very low;
whereas those who have not experience always overrate them. They only
see their gay outside, and are dazzled with their glare; but I have been
behind the scenes. I have seen all the coarse pullies and dirty ropes
which exhibit and move the gaudy machine, and I have seen and smelt the
tallow candles which illuminate the whole decoration, to the
astonishment and admiration of the ignorant audience. When I reflect on
what I have seen, what I have heard, and what I have done, I cannot
persuade myself that all that frivolous hurry of bustle and pleasure of
the world had any reality. I look on all that is past as one of those
romantic dreams which opium occasions, and I do by no means wish to
repeat the nauseous dose for the sake of the fugitive dream." These
sentences speak for themselves. I need not add to them one single word.
The Statesmen and Politicians who have swayed the destinies of the
world, ought by good right to be our last witnesses. But I forbear, in
Christian charity, to bring them forward. It makes my heart ache when I
run my eye over the list of names famous in English history, and think
how many have worn out their lives in a breathless struggle after place
and distinction. How many of our greatest men have died of broken
hearts,--disappointed, disgusted, and tried with constant failure! How
many have left on record some humbling confession that in the plentitude
of their power they were pining for rest, as the caged eagle for
liberty! How many whom the world is applauding as "masters of the
situation," are in reality little better than galley-slaves, chained to
the oar and unable to get free! Alas, there are many sad proofs, both
among the living and the dead, that to be great and powerful is not
necessarily to be happy.
I think it very likely that men do not believe what I am saying. I know
something of the deceitfulness of the heart on the subject of happiness.
There are few things which man is so slow to believe as the truths I am
now putting forth about the way to be happy. Bear with me then while I
say something more.
Come and stand with me some afternoon in the heart of the city of
London. Let us watch the faces of most of the wealthy men whom we shall
see leaving their houses of business at the close of the day. Some of
them are worth hundreds of thousands: some of them are worth millions of
pounds. But what is written in the countenances of these grave men whom
we see swarming out from Lombard Street and Cornhill, from the Bank of
England and the Stock Exchange? What mean those deep lines which furrow
so many a cheek and so many a brow? What means that air of anxious
thoughtfulness which is worn by five out of every six we meet? Ah, these
things tell a serious tale. They tell us that it needs something more
than gold and bank notes to make men happy.
Come next and stand with me near the Houses of Parliament, in the middle
of a busy session. Let us scan the faces of Peers and Commoners, whose
names are familiar and well-known all over the civilized world. There
you may see on some fine May evening the mightiest Statesmen in England
hurrying to a debate, like eagles to the carcase. Each has a power of
good or evil in his tongue which it is fearful to contemplate. Each may
say things before to-morrow's sun dawns, which may affect the peace and
prosperity of nations, and convulse the world. There you may see the men
who hold the reins of power and government already; there you may see
the men who are daily watching for an opportunity of snatching those
reins out of their hands, and governing in their stead. But what do
their faces tell us as they hasten to their posts? What may be learned
from their care-worn countenances? What may be read in many of their
wrinkled foreheads,--so absent-looking and sunk in thought? They teach
us a solemn lesson. They teach us that it needs something more than
political greatness to make men happy.
Come next and stand with me in the most fashionable part of London, in
the height of the season. Let us visit Regent Street or Pall Mall, Hyde
Park or May Fair. How many fair faces and splendid equipages we shall
see! How many we shall count up in an hour's time who seem to possess
the choicest gifts of this world,--beauty, wealth, rank, fashion, and
troops of friends! But, alas, how few we shall see who appear happy! In
how many countenances we shall read weariness, dissatisfaction,
discontent, sorrow, or unhappiness, as clearly as if it was written with
a pen! Yes: it is a humbling lesson to learn, but a very wholesome one.
It needs something more than rank, and fashion, and beauty, to make
people happy.
Come next and walk with me through some quiet country parish in merry
England. Let us visit some secluded corner in our beautiful old
father-land, far away from great towns, and fashionable dissipation and
political strife. There are not a few such to be found in the land.
There are rural parishes where there is neither street, nor public
house, nor beershop,--where there is work for all the labourers, and a
church for all the population, and a school for all the children, and a
minister of the Gospel to look after the people. Surely, you will say,
we shall find happiness here! Surely such parishes must be the very
abodes of peace and joy!--Go into those quiet-looking cottages, one by
one, and you will soon be undeceived. Learn the inner history of each
family, and you will soon alter your mind. You will soon discover that
backbiting, and lying, and slandering, and envy, and jealousy, and
pride, and laziness, and drinking, and extravagance, and lust, and petty
quarrels, can murder happiness in the country quite as much as in the
town. No doubt a rural village sounds pretty in poetry, and looks
beautiful in pictures; but in sober reality human nature is the same
evil thing everywhere. Alas, it needs something more than a residence in
a quiet country parish to make any child of Adam a happy man!
I know these are ancient things. They have been said a thousand times
before without effect, and I suppose they will be said without effect
again. I want no greater proof of the corruption of human nature than
the pertinacity with which we seek happiness where happiness cannot be
found. Century after century wise men have left on record their
experience about the way to be happy. Century after century the children
of men will have it that they know the way perfectly well, and need no
teaching. They cast to the winds our warnings; they rush, every one, on
his own favourite path; they walk in a vain shadow, and disquiet
themselves in vain, and wake up when too late to find their whole life
has been a grand mistake. Their eyes are blinded: they will not see that
their visions are as baseless and disappointing as the mirage of the
African desert. Like the tired traveller in those deserts, they think
they are approaching a lake of cooling waters; like the same traveller,
they find to their dismay that this fancied lake was a splendid optical
delusion, and that they are still helpless in the midst of burning
sands.
Are you a young person? I entreat you to accept the affectionate warning
of a minister of the Gospel, and not to seek happiness where happiness
cannot be found. Seek it not in riches; seek it not in power and rank;
seek it not in pleasure; seek it not in learning. All these are bright
and splendid fountains: their waters taste sweet. A crowd is standing
round them, which will not leave them; but, oh, remember that God has
written over each of these fountains, "He that drinketh of this water
shall thirst again." (John iv. 13.) Remember this, and be wise.
Are you poor? Are you tempted to fancy that if you had the rich man's
place you would be quite happy? Resist the temptation, and cast it
behind you. Envy not your wealthy neighbours: be content with such
things as you have. Happiness does not depend on houses or land; silks
and satins cannot shut out sorrow from the heart; castles and halls
cannot prevent anxiety and care coming in at their doors. There is as
much misery riding and driving about in carriages as there is walking
about on foot: there is as much unhappiness in ceiled houses as in
humble cottages. Oh, remember the mistakes which are common about
happiness, and be wise!
III. Let me now, in the last place, _point out the way to be really
happy_.