3. It is only when our hearts are on the chief thing that secondary things yield pleasure. It is possible to have a thing, and yet not to have the good of it. There it is in our hands, the very thing we wanted apparently, and yet it does not seem to be the thing we wanted. It is not the thing, but the aroma of pleasure that is in the thing that we really wish ; just as we wish a rose for its smell. Now, pleasure is a very delicate article. Men miss pleasure by the ways they take to get it. If they snatch impatiently at it, it escapes them. Except those in actual destitu- tion, professional pleasure-seekers are the most miserable of men. People who spend their life in pursuit of pleasure never get it. One who knew about these things very well said, " Pleasures are
1 J. C. Jones. 2 G. Nicksou.
174 THE FIRST THINGS FIRST
like poppies spread; you seize the flower; its bloom is shed." We go to some of the most beautiful objects in nature. If we happen to take them in a wrong light, on a bad day, at a false angle, they lose alHGheir beauty. Or if we are trying to experi- ence some pleasant sensation, the least thing wrong with our health, the least thing amiss with the experiment we make, spoils all. The poise of our mind is everything. Pleasure comes when we are seeking something else, when we are rejoicing in hard work, when we are resting after long exertion, when we have won some worthy object of ambition. The true flower of satisfaction is thrown into our lap by an invisible hand when we are thinking little or nothing of it.
TI One of the first and most clearly recognized rules to be observed is that happiness is most likely to be attained when it is not the direct object of pursuit. Both the greatest pleasures and the keenest pains of life lie much more in those humbler spheres which are accessible to all than on the rare pinnacles to which only the most gifted or the most fortunate can attain. It would probably be found upon examination that most men who have devoted their lives successfully to great labours and ambitions, and who have received the most splendid gifts from Fortune, have nevertheless found their chief pleasure in things unconnected with their main pursuits and generally within the reach of common men. Domestic pleasures, pleasures of scenery, pleasures of reading, pleasures of travel or of sport, have been the highest enjoyment of men of great ambition, intellect, wealth, and position.1
Oh righteous doom, that they who make
Pleasure their only end, Ordering the whole life for its sake,
Miss that whereto they tend.2
4. The things we wish to have are not really in our hands at all. Suppose that when we grasped the thing we could make certain that the pleasure for the sake of which we grasped it would not evaporate in the process, how could we make sure of grasping it ? It might be taken from us when we were within a few inches of it. The things for which men toil and suffer are often taken from them in this way. The things the Gentiles
1 W. E. H. Leckie, The Map of Life, 19. * B. C. Trench.
ST. MATTHEW vi. 33 175
seek can never be in our hands. They remain in God's hands. They are always His, and not ours at all. They are like old illuminated manuscripts or curiosities which you see on the table of a museum or library. We may exarrmie them, and read them, but we cannot take them away. We cannot acquire free- hold rights on God's great estate. We are only tenants at will, and therefore what we should first do is to gain the goodwill of the Pro- prietor, especially as it is a great deal more than His goodwill which He offers us. He offers us His love and Himself, and it stands to reason that " all these things " will be thrown into the bargain.
T| It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness by having wide thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves ; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it, that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good. There are so many things wrong and difficult in the world, that no man can be great — he can hardly keep himself from wickedness — unless he gives up thinking much about pleasure or rewards, and gets strength to endure what is hard and painful. And so, if you mean to act nobly and seek to know the best things God has put within reach of men, you must learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what will happen to you because of it. And re- member, if you were to choose something lower, and make it the rule of your life to seek your own pleasure and escape from what is disagreeable, calamity might come just the same ; and it would be calamity falling on a base mind, which is the one form of sorrow that has no balm in it, and that may well make a man say, — " It would have been better for me if I had never been born." l