In Him whose harmonies forever float
Through all the spheres of song, below, above,--
For God is music, even as God is love.

This is the divine doctrine of happiness as Christ taught it by His life
and with His lips. If we want to put it into a single phrase, I know not
where we shall find a more perfect utterance than in the words which
have been taught us in childhood,--words so strong, so noble, so
cheerful, that they summon the heart of manhood like marching-music:
"Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever."

Let us accept without reserve this teaching of our Divine Lord and
Master in regard to the possibility and the duty of happiness. It is an
essential element of His gospel. The atmosphere of the New Testament is
not gloom, but gladness; not despondency, but hope. The man who is not
glad to be a Christian is not the right kind of a Christian.

The first thing that commended the Church of Jesus to the weary and
disheartened world in the early years of her triumph, was her power to
make her children happy,--happy in the midst of afflictions, happy in
the release from the burden of guilt, happy in the sense of Divine
Fatherhood and human brotherhood, happy in Christ's victory over sin and
death, happy in the assurance of an endless life. At midnight in the
prison, Paul and Silas sang praises, and the prisoners heard them. The
lateral force of joy,--that was the power of the Church.

"'Poor world,' she cried, 'so deep accurst,
Thou runn'st from pole to pole
To seek a draught to slake thy thirst,--
Go seek it in thy soul.'