Some one has said, "The whole world is on the wrong scent for happiness." Every one wants to be happy, but few want to take the trouble of going about it in the right way. Those who have advanced beyond the belief that happiness can be attained by injuring others, still hold the almost universal notion that it consists in lifting themselves above their neighbors, in so cultivating personality that it seems to tower above its surroundings. There is widespread effort to take the kingdom by violence— to force happiness by the exercise of human will, to make life yield us something. As well could we make a wheel run smoothly that is not round, or compel an instrument that is not in tune to discourse sweet music.
Happiness is the result of just one thing, and will never be the outcome of anything else, and that is, conformity to divine Principle. Make your wheel round and tune your instrument, and the result is harmony. Conform to Principle and you are happy. Will-power is about as useful in one case as in the other
Principle is immutable,— set in the law of universal good, hence happiness is goodness. This seems about the hardest lesson for us to learn, first and last, that harmony abides in Divine Principle, and that not one tone of it is ever found outside. As well expect to find a chord of music separated from its source, or a ray of light springing from darkness. Good is inexorable in its inclusiveness and its exclusiveness. Mortal sense thinks this hard and hopeless. Compromise has been so dear to us.
