Make life happier and you will make it holier. Make it full of pleasure--not that of a fool's paradise--but that of peace with heaven's plans, with the joy of knowing that over all is infinite love, the strength that comes from knowing right is invincible, the tender and sweet joys that spring up at the touch of human love. Go your ways to make them paths of gladness, to show love shining through sorrow, to give love in the name of the Lord of love and yours shall be religious service indeed. THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS How did your Puritan forefathers dispose of the text which in their day read, "A merry heart is a continual feast." Did they explain it away by saying that the man was made anyway for fasting and not for feasting? Perhaps underneath their austere exterior they, after all, knew something of deep joys and unfailing sources of refreshing happiness. In their teaching they made the mistake of insisting that it was necessary to seem sad in order to please the Most High. We make the mistake of being sad in order to please ourselves. Their misery at least had the grace of a high motive; ours is born of a short-sighted selfishness that grasps at the shadow of a fleeting satisfaction and loses the substance of lasting joy. Happiness is the highest aim of life, higher than holiness or usefulness, because it must include both. To us it is so unfamiliar that we do not know it from frivolity; we seek the excitement of some pleasing sensation, and, rising to its stimulus, we fall afterwards into the reaction of misery. Happiness is the poise, calm, strength, and spring of the life fully in harmony with all things good and true. Nothing praises God better than a happy disposition. Many have thought to give Him glory by learned treatises on His majesty and mystery. But a little child, so happy that he only can kick and crow, praises the Almighty more effectively and even devoutly than does the theologian who only can offer his bloodless speculations. The great Father gives His children a world brimming over with joy, with laughing meadows, with smiling morns, with rippling bird song, and to man He gives faculties of immeasurable happiness. Life is learning the law of happiness and practicing its use and service. But what is the secret of happiness? How can we learn to be happy when life has so much to make us sad? The praise of happiness does not take away the fact of sorrow or solve its dark problem. There remain the million aching hearts and all the griefs of a world. True. God forbid that we should lose our sorrows; that were to make this a sad world indeed. Our cares are but part of joy's curriculum. Learning their lesson, bearing their load is essential to deep, lasting happiness.