You have noticed that the sources of happiness which I have named differ in that while some can be taken away from us, others cannot. It is difficult to conceive of any place or time or circumstances under which we could be deprived of the privilege of loving and serving. Our feeling of obligation and responsibility for others is one that should deepen with years, and from this source we should learn to derive more and more of our happiness. This kind of happiness is very far removed from what we ordinarily think of as pleasure; indeed, it often involves suffering.

“We can only have the highest happiness—such as goes along with being a great man—by having wide thoughts and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good.”

This was the happiness of Lincoln, carrying the burdens of his unhappy country on his suffering heart; it was the happiness of the noble army of martyrs of every age; it was the happiness of Christ. He taught us to call it blessedness. As you carefully study His life and character, you will see that He was acquainted with all three kinds of happiness. He despised not pleasure. He was no ascetic, but came eating and drinking. Great must have been the enjoyment in nature of one who could speak as He spake of the lily of the field that outshone the splendor of Solomon, of the humble sparrow unloved of men, but cared for by the good All-Father, of the green blade bursting through the dark soil, of the fields yellowing for the harvest. He enjoyed mingling with His fellow men and knew the joys of friendship. The work which He had been given to do absorbed Him and filled Him with constant joy. If He had not been happy He could not have drawn others to Him as He did, and above all, little children would not have come unto Him. If we sometimes have a different idea of Him, it is because of the closing scenes of His life, after He became a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

Yet it was blessedness that Christ knew best of all. The deeper joys were His; the joy of self-forgetfulness and of self-sacrifice, and the joy of knowing that He was in perfect harmony with His Father’s will. Yet who shall say that He was not happy? Would He have exchanged His life of toil and hardship and suffering for any other lot? We know that He never sought another. His secret lies open to the world, for He spoke of it over and over again.

Life does not treat us all alike in the matter of pleasure, and if that were the end and aim of existence this would seem to be a very unjust world. Life does not treat us with entire impartiality even in the matter of happiness. Though most of us are given sufficient material to make life rich and full if we will, yet there are lives that seem to be an exception to this rule. But life treats us all alike in that if pleasure is denied us and we have scant material out of which to build happiness, we may at least attain to blessedness. We may have the joy of self-sacrifice, the privilege of living for others, the glad consciousness of duty nobly done, the power of spiritual growth, the blessedness of knowing that our will is in harmony with God’s will. These things the world does not give and it cannot take away.

XIV
AFTER GRADUATION

“There is a past which is gone forever, but there is a future which is still our own.” Never before or after is one likely to have such mingled feelings of regret for the vanished past and eagerness for the approaching future as at the close of the school life. Sometimes it is difficult to decide whether the note of sadness or of joy is the dominant one.

As the school days are seen to be rapidly slipping away, the student recognizes, perhaps for the first time, something of their real worth. They have not been wholly free from troubles and disappointments, though some time, by contrast, it will seem that they have been so. Even now, however, you know them to have been days of happy freedom, of glad fellowship, of joyous achievement. Your chief regret in the future will be that you did not quite understand how perfect they were. Now you begin to see what older people mean when they talk of “halcyon days.” Not that they were the best days your life will know,—let no one persuade you to that,—but they have a quality all their own that can belong to no other period of life. They will loom larger and larger as they recede into the past, for you will realize more and more fully how much was then begun in you which will go on as long as your soul shall endure.

There are few who can approach the end of school or college life without being made a little serious by the thought that they are moving on. “So our lives glide on,” says George Eliot; “the river ends, we don’t know where, the sea begins, and then there is no more jumping ashore.” Perhaps it has come to you with overwhelming suddenness that the days of preparation for life are over and that the life for which you have been preparing is at hand. You seem always to have been in a safe and sheltered harbor. Now you must push out into the great stream of life, must become your own pilot, must henceforth be responsible for the conduct of the voyage. Are you wise enough for such an undertaking? Who is? Yet an all-wise Creator has ordained that this way lies the only possibility of growth. Responsibility is thrust upon us and we grow able to carry responsibility.

“When Duty whispers, lo! thou must.