True altruism finds right expression first in self-care. It is a man's business to be strong, healthy, sane, trained, developed; to be the best kind of a man, complete in all his faculties, that he may have the more to offer to the service of his fellows. There is no merit in offering the wrecked body and soured mind. If you are going to give your life to the world you must make it worth the giving. Heaven's work demands the finest tools. Nothing is too good for the service of humanity. There is a good deal more religion in the honest attempt to make the most of yourself, to keep health, to secure education and culture, in order that you may have the larger, better, wealthier self to use in service than in unending ascetic exercises, prayers, devotions, meditations, mumbling, or visions of things spiritual. The only way you can prove the genuineness of your religion is by your gifts to the children of God, your own brothers about you. There is no gift that begins to compare in value with a well-trained, well-equipped, strong and clean life. We cannot all give gold or lands, or even learning to men, but we can all give lives, and that which heaven and earth both have a right to expect is that we shall give the best lives we can. IV The Right to Happiness _The Power of Happiness_ _The Secret of Happiness_ _The Folly of Anxiety_ _Happy is that happy makes._ _Heaven leaves the heart when hatred enters._ _The man who is so wise that he never laughs is the greatest of fools._ _When your face spells failure it's no use talking of the glory of your faith._ _To set a child towards gladness is to incline him towards God._ _The graces do not grow in gloom._ _There's no argument equal to a happy smile._ _Stealing sorrow is as much a sin as acquiring stolen joys._ _Life's music is never perfect without the chord of pain._ _Happiness is never found by dodging my neighbour's sorrows._ IV THE POWER OF HAPPINESS Instead of the strength of your faith being marked by the length of your sighs, the genuineness of your religion is to be known by its joyfulness. The same God who gives the sunlight and the smiling fields, who makes the brooks to laugh through the meadows and the stars to sing at night, would rather see smiles than frowns on the faces of His children. His glory is not in gloom but in gladness. He designed this world for happiness, and religion is but the pursuing of His plans for the good of His children. That which is holy must be happy. Artificial sadness is always sinful. A church is not sacred because it looks like a sepulchre; music is not sacred because all the spring is taken out of it. You do not keep a day sacred to divine ends by making it dismal. It is a religious duty resting on all to cultivate happiness, to make this world less sad.