BYWAYS OF BLESSEDNESS/PART 14
14.
Happy Endings
“Such
is the Law which moves to righteousness,
Which
none at last can turn aside or stay;
The
heart of it is Love, the end of it
Is
peace and consummation sweet. Obey.”
The
Light of Asia.
“So,
haply, when thy task shall end,
The
wrong shall lose itself in right,
And
all thy week-day Sabbaths blend
With
the long Sabbath of the Light!”
Whittier.
Life
has many happy endings, because it has much that is noble and pure and
beautiful. Although there is much sin and ignorance in the world, many tears,
and much pain and sorrow, there is also much purity and knowledge, many smiles,
and much healing and gladness. No pure thought, no unselfish deed can fall
short of its felicitous result, and every such result is a happy consummation.
A
pleasant home is a happy ending; a successful life is a happy ending; a task
well and faithfully done is a happy ending; to be surrounded by kind friends is
a happy ending. A quarrel put away, grudges wiped out, unkind words confessed
and forgiven, friend restored to friend - all these are happy endings. To find
that which one has long and tediously sought; to be restored from tears to
gladness; to awaken in the bright sunlight out of the painful nightmare of sin,
to strike, after much searching, the Heavenly Way in life - these are, indeed,
blessed consummations.
He
who looks for, finds, and enters the byways which I have indicated will come to
this one without seeking it, for his whole life will be filled with happy
endings. He who begins right and continues right does not need to desire and
search for felicitous results; they are already at hand; they follow as
consequences; they are the certainties, the realities of life.
There
are happy endings which belong solely to the material world; these are
transient, and they pass away. These are happy endings which belong to the
spiritual world; these are eternal, and they do not pass away. Sweet are
companionships, pleasures, and material comforts, but they change and fade
away. Sweeter still are Purity, Wisdom, and the knowledge of Truth, and these
never change nor fade away. Wherever a man goes in this world he can take his
worldly possessions with him; but soon he must part company with them, and if
he stands upon these alone, deriving all his happiness from them, he will come
to a spiritual ending of great emptiness and want. But he has attained to the
possession of spiritual things can never be deprived of his source of
happiness: he will never have to part company with it, and wherever he goes in
the whole universe he will carry his possession with him. His spiritual end
will be the fulness of joy.
Happy
in the Eternal Happiness is he who has come to that Life from which the thought
of self is abolished. Already, even now and in this life, he has entered the
Kingdom of Heaven, Nirvana, Paradise, the New Jerusalem, the Olympus of
Jupiter, the Valhalla of the Gods. He knows the Final Unity of Life, the Great
Reality of which these fleeting and changing names are but feeble utterances.
He is at rest on the bosom of the Infinite.
Sweet
is the rest and deep the bliss of him who has freed his heart from its lusts
and hatreds and dark desires; and he who, without any shadow of bitterness or
selfishness resting upon him, and looking out upon the world with boundless
compassion and love, can breathe, in his inmost heart, the blessing:
Peace
unto all living things,
making
no exceptions or distinctions - such a man has reached that happy ending which
can never be taken away, for this is the perfection of life, the fulness of
peace, the consummation of perfect blessedness.
END
OF THIS BOOK.
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