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Show REV. Mil. BROWN I LB OF HAPPINESS Forceful Sermon Is Delivered by Pastor at Unity . ; Jf all. " - "The Law of Happiness'' was tho subject of a forceful sermon preached at Unitarian hall Suuday morning by the ITev. William Thurston "Brown, The speaker said, in part: Here Is a law of life than transcends all others. Here Is the law that determines deter-mines cveiy noblest fulfilment of life si law we can no more escape or repeal than we can escape or repeal the law of gravitation. To know this law is to know life, to fulfil this law is to be the master mas-ter of life. Xot to know and fulfil this law Is to be mere drift on the current of things. Think how the conventions and ties nnd customs and laws of human Ignorance shrivel and fade before the omnipotent om-nipotent might of this law of happiness, how It searches and Judges tho subterfuge subter-fuge and sham of things. The saddest tragedy of our world as we shall sometime know lies in the fact that millions on millions of young men and young women arc being taught bv nil they see and all they hear and nfl they do that happiness does Uo somehow In acquisition; that getting things--wealth, power, culture, fmo prestlge"-ls the secret of linppln8s of Joy. and other millions by the very misery of their lot, menaced by poverty, want, starvation, charity, liavo no altornatlvo but the utterly ut-terly false and soul-destroying belief that mere gaining of things means happiness In both cases Inoeulatlug tho masses nf men and women with tho virus of a deadening dead-ening materialism. And as a result you have before vnu today to-day In human society the almost universal substitution of plca.suro hi the placo of happiness as the fulfillment of life. A sadder tragedy could not be. Pleasuro hasn't ono note or chord of morality or spirituality In It. It doesn't belong to the same world as happiness. Pleasure Is the attribute of the mcro creature do wo not Instinctively cull those Joyless women of the under world whose whole existence is devoted to giving pleasure "creatures?" but happiness Is the consciousness con-sciousness of a creator. Plcaauro Is tho mere foam I hat flics from' tho erest of tho waves when tho surface of the sea is fretted by the wind. Happiness Is tho never-ceasing tide which neither storm nor culm can create or destroy. Pleasure Is a mcro phantom; happiness Is an otcr-nul otcr-nul reality. This secret of being something worlliv of love, worthy or friendship this moral magnetism, this mastery of the things which make for joy is no acelder.t of genius. Is no more inheritance. It Is supremely su-premely tho gift of gonulne religion. In no atmosphere that men and women can know will they find the things which endure, en-dure, that enrich life, as In the atmosphere atmos-phere of a great service a. great vision, a great and ennobling task. The friendships friend-ships nnd affections which root and bloom In that atmosphere are glimpses of Ciod and intimations of immortality such as are experienced nowhere else. |