CAN WE BE HAPPY?

At the risk of offending many people, but with the hope of helping a few who are making the same mistake, I am venturing at the very end of the record to set down the only explanation that occurs to me: I believe I have totally misunderstood the Scriptures by which I was guided during the formative years of my life. I had in the beginning a natural gift for the simplest, most innocent happiness. I needed no more than a bright day and a long path winding across the hills and through the fields. I had a mind which retained the lacy shadows leaves made upon the ground. Now I seem to have lost the will to take these little idle paths to peace and happiness. I could weep sometimes when at this season of the year the wind blows a shower of yellow elm leaves twinkling like gold high in the sunlight because I can only see them. I do not feel the loveliness of the sight.

The reason is that I have spent my life and strength in service and sacrifice according to the way the Scriptures have been heaped upon me by preachers and my own dear saint who died a martyr’s death to such teachings. If I had had the courage to interpret them according to my own good senses, provided especially by the Lord for that purpose, I should have known the doctrines precisely as He promises.

How many sermons I have heard from this text, ‘Bear ye one another’s burdens,’ but not one preacher ever interpreted them to mean, ‘Do not bear the other fellow’s burden unless he will bear one of yours.’ Therefore this bearing of other people’s burdens has contributed more to damnable selfishness in this world than any other Christian virtue. Here is another one, ‘Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.’

I got the right cue on that one long ago. When Lundy was in mortal need of some earthly blessing, I used to go out and seek it with both hands and knock on every door until the right one opened to him. But I lacked the time and sense to practice the same wisdom for myself. I have earned more than I deserve, Heaven knows, but I have not sought sensibly the little things I needed for happiness. I have wasted too much of my time for others, without having the spiritual gumption to ask them to pay it back. There is no telling how much moral damage I have done in this world practicing the religion I have been taught, which I now know was a puerile and spiritually illiterate interpretation of the Scriptures. I have had my share of blame in making whimpering parasites of honest people in the name of the Lord. It was blasphemous, and my hope for forgiveness is repentance and a determination to reform.

I shall never be able to face what remains of the future properly without weaning myself of this inglorious and sentimentally spiritual past. Therefore I must change my scenes, as a bad man sometimes goes off to escape the temptation of evil companions. At the present moment I am in bondage to all manner of charitable habits and false obligations which would read like the calendar of a saint’s deeds if I should set them down here, but they are really the tax I pay upon a wrong interpretation of the Christian life.

This is what I have discovered--that there is no way to satisfy a sentimental conscience. It is the thief in your breast. The more you give, the more will it urge you to give; the more you sacrifice, the greater sacrifices will it demand of you. I am determined to stop gratifying my conscience. I am far more honorable and sensible than it is. I shall be guided by my sense. And that points directly to casting off every weight that besets me and looking about for the fair weather of happier days.

My idea is to prove the Scriptures by seeking and finding happiness. I am late starting off on this adventure, and I have no very definite idea about the direction in which happiness lies, but that very uncertainty has a sort of sparkle in it. My feeling now is that I shall need only to get away from my dreadful past to find it changing me to some easier goodness of mind, a place where I can sit down and not be responsible for anything or anybody, where I shall feel light on my feet and ready to travel a long way in bright silence to another country. Sometimes it seems to me that I may be thinking of the kingdom of Heaven.

We do grow up at last somewhere, but not in this present world. We invariably pass out of it trying to add another cubit to our stature, topping it off with a poor little deed of no importance to any one but ourselves. I doubt if any man or woman, however old, is really ready to give up his ghost. There is something he had not time to say or to finish before this chill came on and this shortening of the breath. Maybe it is a blessed illusion with which we instinctively finance our feeling of worth and importance when we are no longer of any worth or importance, but I do not think so. My idea is that it may be a sort of a dull intimation of immortality, a feeling of incompleteness, as if there must be much more life in which to finish up things; not the things we started here, but other cubits to be added later. I have always thought of saints as being exceedingly tall spirits, probably a trifle top-heavy as to their countenances.

As I have grown older I am more and more convinced that I have not grown up, that my powers have not come to me, not my real wisdom to do and achieve the right thoughts. I lack some dear grace. I cannot seem to steady down and get the single eye. There is a curriculum in living which I have not studied. This may be happiness. I want to know it; I should feel better prepared for immortality. I do not wish to arrive fagged at last and a bit slipshod in the spirit, as if I had a hard time all my mortal life. It is not complimentary to God. I wish to come up before His face in a high mood as if I had tasted all His benefits. I wish to be clothed in the bright garments of my human happiness, more colorful than the glistening white robes of the merely redeemed.

I have an intimate feeling of God that this is a bright idea, and that at least it is permitted one may seek happiness even if at last he must sink into the defeat of mere peace.

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes

Italics have been represented by _underlines_. Small caps have been represented by CAPITALS.

A few inconsistencies in hyphenation have been reconciled, and minor printing errors in punctuation have been silently corrected.