SOURCES OF PURE HAPPINESS.

Even the simplest of them—­to do good to other people—­is an instant and infallible specific.  There is no mystery about Happiness whatever.  Put in the right ingredients and it must come out.  He that abideth in Him will bring forth much fruit; and bringing forth much fruit is Happiness.  The infallible receipt for Happiness, then, is to do good; and the infallible receipt for doing good is to abide in Christ.  The surest proof that all this is a plain matter of Cause and Effect is that men may try every other conceivable way of finding happiness, and they will fail.  Only the right cause in each case can produce the right effect.

Then the Christian experiences are our own making?  In the same sense in which grapes are our own making and no more.  All fruits grow—­whether they grow in the soil or in the soul; whether they are the fruits of the wild grape or of the True Vine.  No man can make things grow.  He can get them to grow by arranging all the circumstances and fulfilling all the conditions.  But the growing is done by God.  Causes and effects are eternal arrangements, set in the constitution of the world; fixed beyond man’s ordering.  What man can do is to place himself in the midst of a chain of sequences.  Thus he can get things to grow:  thus he himself can grow.  But the power is the Spirit of God.

What more need I add but this—­test the method by experiment.  Do not imagine that you have got these things because you know how to get them.  As well try to feed upon a cookery book.  But I think I can promise that if you try in this simple and natural way, you will not fail.  Spend the time you have spent in sighing for fruits in fulfilling the conditions of their growth.  The fruits will come, must come.  We have hitherto paid immense attention to effects, to the mere experiences themselves; we have described them, extolled them, advised them, prayed for them—­done everything but find out what caused them.  Henceforth

          LET US DEAL WITH CAUSES.

“To be,” says Lotze, “is to be in relations.”  About every other method of living the Christian life there is an uncertainty.  About every other method of acquiring the Christian experiences there is a “perhaps.”  But in so far as this method is the way of nature, it cannot fail.  Its guarantee is the laws of the universe—­and these are “the Hands of the Living God.”

          THE TRUE VINE.

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.  Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away; and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.  Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.  Abide in me, and I in you.  As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.  I am the vine, ye are the branches:  He that abideth