CHAPTER THREE
THE LAW OF LIFE

       The one ineradicable desire of men, placed there by God, is the desire to be happy. Happiness is the final good, the one justification for the Creation. It is then of vital importance to understand how it can be obtained and retained. The answer is that it is the result of loving and being loved by God, and loving and being loved by one's neighbour. In other words, there is a Law of Life, just as there are laws of mathematics, or agriculture, or cookery; and the only way to produce the desired result is to use the proper means. Happiness does not come accidentally, nor by a lucky combination of circumstances, nor by a change of location, nor even by a determination to achieve it in the wrong way. It is just as much a scientific product as is a machine or a good pudding: there is one way to achieve it, and a thousand ways to spoil it!

       Everyone desires to be happy, and God desires everybody to be happy. Why then do the Ages of History tell an unrelieved story of unhappiness? The answer is simple: it is because, while everyone desires to be happy, we have all followed each other like a flock of sheep in using the wrong means to achieve this end. Happiness never comes as the result of seeking one's own pleasure, but only as a result of seeking the happiness of others. God has so arranged society that each individual ought to seek the happiness of others in the knowledge that they are all seeking his happiness. His security lies, not in his own unaided efforts, as at present,

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but in the desire of all around to see that he is happy. The only cement of society is mutual love. Without this it rapidly dissolves into a number of antagonistic fragments, each striving for its own satisfaction at the expense of its neighbours (cf Isaiah 32:17, 18).

       The final ground of all real happiness, however, does not rest simply on the love of others for oneself; but in the settled conviction that God is love. As an historical fact it has been very difficult for man to believe this. One has only to look at the images of gods in heathen temples, e.g. in India or China, or read the stories of the gods in heathen books; nay, one need not go as far away as that, one has only to study the beliefs about God held in the various Christian sects to realise that in actual fact men have found it impossible to believe that God is even just, let alone loving, but have readily accepted the Satanic suggestion that He is cruel and not to be trusted! Christians have been able to believe that God will send an unbaptised baby, whose only misfortune has been to be born, to everlasting punishment; that God has elected men to eternal life or eternal damnation without any reference to the condition of their souls; that God is perfectly content to let men suffer from the most fearful diseases without any desire to deliver them, in spite of the words and acts of His Son and His Apostles; or that God has condemned the whole human race for what one man, of whom the vast majority has never even heard, did! Many, many Christians would feel that it was right to say that God created the world for His own glory and pleasure! But to believe that God is love, and thus absolutely unselfish, that He has never done anything to please Himself, is fond of us personally, and longs to make us full of joy and happiness and peace, if we will only hand our lives over to Him—no, that we cannot believe. Yet this warm-hearted unselfishness,

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which Christ displayed upon earth, is the 'Glory of God' of which we have all come short (Romans 3:23). Men feel sure that to become a Christian means spoiling one's life, cutting oneself off from everything worth having, and playing the fool. It is this willingness to doubt God and to dread Him which has clouded the minds of men, and set them looking for life in places where it cannot be found. Out of this fatal misconception of the nature of God has sprung most of the dreadful misery which has dogged the steps of the human family.

       We come then finally to the two basic principles of the happy life. We are to love The Lord our God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind, and our neighbour as ourself. Here is the simple and only recipe for cosmic success. Do this and live: disregard it and die. History from Eden to today is one long outstanding commentary upon the impossibility of finding happiness in any other way. As it was in the days of Noah so it is today, the earth is filled with violence, and happiness is a dream which mocks the endeavours of men to realise it. Today, more than ever, the whole world is full of fear and anxiety and hatred. We are indeed face to face with that destruction of the earth by its own inhabitants which God has foretold (Revelation 11:18). In the pregnant words of a great statesman—"We must either learn to live together or we must die together".

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