| The Ministry of Comfort |
Chapter 16 |
Page 6 |
There is no other unfailing secret of happiness. Too many people are dependent upon external conditions – the house they live in, the people they are with, their food, their companions, and the weather, their state of health, the comforts or discomforts of their circumstances. But if we carry with us such resources that things without us cannot make us unhappy, however uncongenial they may be, then we have learned St. Paul’s secret of contentment, which is the Christian’s true secret of a happy life. George Herbert puts this well in his “Happy Life:”
How happy is he born and taught
That serveth not another’s will;
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill!
Whose passions not his masters are,
Whose soul is still prepared for death,
Not tied unto the world with care
Or public fame or private breath;
Who envies none that chance doth raise,
Or vice; who never understood
How deepest wounds are given by praise,
Nor rules of state, but rules of good;
Who hath his life from romours freed;
Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
Whose state can neither flatterers feed
Nor ruin makes accusers great.
This man is freed from servile bands,
Or hope to rise, or fear to fall;
Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And having nothing yet hath all.
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