Character and Conduct – 12 May – Duty of Giving Happiness

IT is astonishing how large a part of Christ’s precepts is devoted solely to the inculcation of happiness.   How much of His life, too, was spent simply in making people happy!   There was no word more often on His lips than ‘blessed,’ and it is recognised by Him as a distinct end in life, the end for this life, to secure the happiness of others.   This simple grace, too, needs little equipment.   Christ had little.   One need scarcely even be happy one’s self.   Holiness, of course, is a greater word, but we cannot produce that in others.   That is reserved for God Himself, but what is put in our power is happiness, and for that each man is his brother’s keeper.   Now society is an arrangement for producing and sustaining human happiness, and temper is an agent for thwarting and destroying it.   Look at the parable of the Prodigal Son for a moment, and see how the elder brother’s wretched pettiness, explosion of temper, churlishness, spoiled the happiness of a whole circle.   First, it certainly spoiled his own.   How ashamed of himself he must have been when the fit was over, one can well guess.   Yet these things are never so quickly over as they seem.   Self-disgust and humiliation may come at once, but a good deal else within has to wait till the spirit is tuned again.   For instance, prayer must wait.   A man cannot pray till the sourness is out of his soul.   He must first forgive his brother who trespassed against him before he can go to God to have his own trespasses forgiven.

The Ideal Life, HENRY DRUMMOND

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These quotes are from ‘Character and Conduct’ A selection of helpful thoughts from various authors arranged for daily reading.

Collected by Constance M Whishaw and first published in 1905 as a follow up to her volume of Daily Readings for members of the Being and Doing Guild who asked for an additional volume

In her preface Whishaw writes:

‘This collection of noble thoughts expressed by men and women of past and present ages who have endeavoured to leave the world a little better than they found it.’

It is my hope in publishing the her readers may be inspired to imitate the example of the authors.