C. D. Larson, from whose book I have already quoted, says, in another book:—
“Make it a point to be happy, just as you make it a point to be clean, to be presentable, to be properly dressed, to work well, to be efficient. Make the attainment of continuous happiness and greater happiness a permanent part of your strongest ambition.”
Real Happiness is a power within oneself, not dependent on circumstances; at least not dependent when it has become a habit. He who has Happiness is like a magic plant that bears beautiful and shade-giving and health-giving leaves, beautiful and sweet-smelling flowers, beautiful and refreshing and cleansing fruit, wherever it is, and without the aid of special soil, air, light, warmth, and rain. For it has, as it were, its own subtle, ethereal, and eternal soil and air and light and warmth and rain within itself.
Therefore, keep happy.
The Gospel of Happiness—the word “Gospel” once meant “good news,” but now has lost much of its gladdening vitality—is, when we examine deeply and widely, “perspectively” and prospectively, sound Philosophy and sound Religion. To the devout Hindu, God is not only “Wisdom, Love, Might,” but also Bliss. Sat Chit Ananda meant Lasting Reality, True Knowledge, and Blissful Happiness. A Perfect God—and this applies whether we believe in a Personal Being or not, for an Impersonal Being cannot easily be imagined as sad!—cannot surely be sad; and we are told to become perfect as God is Perfect.
We are often recommended to fill the mind with healthy, invigorating, purifying thoughts. This, again, is a New Testament Commandment. The words in the ordinary rendering of Philippians, iv. 8, do not bring out the vitality and force and verve of the Greek words, but they give the general idea:—
“Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think of these things.”
It is a Commandment to attend to—to fill the mind by repetition with—eternally true ideas, ideas that command respect, ideas that are right, ideas that are clean and pure, ideas that are welcome and sweet; ideas that have words of good omen, ideas of manliness and womanliness, ideas of praise and appreciation.
Therefore, think of Happiness: keep happy.
In keeping happy, we obey the frequently reiterated Commandment to “Rejoice,” and, without any special attention to the negative and prohibitive Commandments not to worry, and not to be angry, and not to be unkind, and not to criticise unkindly, and so forth, we, ipso facto, obey these Commandments as well, just as the person who is encouraged and inspired does not need to be comforted in so-called “misfortune.”