Counting their gain, their loss;
And He, to whom they sang their song,
Was nailed upon the cross.”
Suffering, then, lies on the road to life, and one must expect to meet it if he would be happy. Many a person, when he sees this lion in his path, turns about and contents himself with something less than happiness. And yet it is also true, as experience teaches, that in our misfortunes, as in our enjoyments, imagination greatly outruns reality. Our pain is seldom as great as our imagination pictures it. Sorrow is often the gate which opens into great happiness. Thus the true life calls for a certain severity of dealing, as if one should say to himself: “You may like to do this thing, or you may not like to do it, but you must do it”; and true education rests on these two foundation stones,—love of truth and courage for the right. Without them, education is worthless. It is like the kingdom of God which is to be taken by violence, “And the violent take it with force.” And thus, of all the human qualities which lead to happiness, certainly the most essential is courage.
We look back, then, finally, over what has been said, and repeat what a gifted authoress of our time, Gisela Grimm, has said in her drama of Old Scotland: “Happiness is communion with God, and the central spiritual quality which attains this communion is courage.” Other happiness than this is not to be found on earth, and if there were happiness without these traits, it would not be the happiness we should desire. And this kind of happiness is real. It is not, like every other dream of happiness, an illusion from which sooner or later one must wake. It does not issue from our achievements or our compulsions. On the contrary, when we have once accepted and made our own the view of life which I have described, and have ceased to look about us for some other view, then happiness comes to us by the way. It is a stream of inward peace; broadening as we grow older, first enriching our own souls and then pouring itself forth to bless other lives.
This is the goal to which our life must attain, if it hope for happiness, and to this goal it can attain. Indeed, if once the first decision be made, and the first steps taken, then, as Dante says:
... “This mount is such, that ever
At the beginning down below ’tis tiresome,
And aye the more one climbs, the less it hurts.
Therefore, when it shall seem so pleasant to thee,