The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1863-05-12 00:00:00

"A GOOD AND HAPPY CHILD r

The fact suggested by this familiar phrase Is one of
the most signit in nature. We see in the happiness
of childhood something which seems to come imme-
diately from God. At we look wishfully upon it we re-
member that to us also vu the gift once entrusted,
anti how it wee dissipated, long lance, in the wear and
tear of life; or how, perhaps, it had wasted under our
keeping, even before the years of childhood were owe? I
Yet are we still able to sympathise in the earnest sim-
plicity of a child's enjoyment. We can admire the
Instinct by which he lives in the present and the out-
Inird ; snd we do not wonder that, being yet unim-
proposed in a eehse of personality, lie goes forth with
so much freedom and joy of heart to every object of
debght. We have learnt too, perhaps, to read in the
happiness thus providentially attached to the first stages
of our natural life the type and the pledge of a higher
happiness for which we are yet destined. We can there-
fore look with equanimity upon the loss of the inferior
blessing. Its mattered elements will be gathered up
for us spin oand wrought into • life supernatural and
renewed. We believe that we shall receive happiness
again—and receive it for ever.
In the meantime, however, we find ourselves, it may
be, almost stranger, to the feeling of happiness.

-
We hardly expect, indeed, its presence within us--
and if we are at any time visited with yearnings for
something which •hould at least resemble the happiness
of childhood, we are half ashamed to allow them.
"What is there," we ask ourselves at such • moment,
"noble or even jurtifiable in these desires for happi-
ness" "What ripi, have we to be happy r "What,
after all, does it matter, fairly considered, whether we
are happy.or not?" We must not allow such question-
ings to pass unanswered.
There is but one thing which can endow any created
being with • riwki to happiness, and that is • grant of
happiness from Him who made it. Such a grant was
mode to our first parent, with that of life itself, and on
the same conditions. They were forfeited afterwards, '
and can no longer be plaided by us as a title to either. '
But the grant was made out afresh, and settled for
them upon Him who became a new head of the race.
It is "in Him" we now passers " • right to be happy,"
which justifies and enables our aspirations for its
enjoyment. God has committed to each of us a
sacred charge over our own individual happiness,
and for this we are responsible in the first place, and in
• sense in which we cannot be responsible for the hap-
piness of any one else—it is this which is nearest to us.
To be happy lii properly the beginning of all schemes
for waking happy. In that rages feeling of unhappi-
ness which warns, like a bodily pain of something•mise,
we find an indication at once of the moral eienifisonce
of happiness, and of the feet that we are constituted the
guardians of our own, in a sense different from that in
which we can take upon us the charge of the happiness
of another.

There sre many things which tend to hide from 111
or to binder the sacred duty of being happy. To per-
form it aright requires, among other things. a certain
clearness and vigour of salad. "When you are aol
it ha. been said,.• be well "when you now not dis-
pleased, be pfeased ," "when you are not unhappy, be
happy" and we LH feel the force of the advice. Nor
most we hoagies that we are cordially falling in with
the design of God if, while enjoying • certain peace and
happiness in the inner depth' of our being, we in-
dolently sonnies's in • "'loaded state of that portion of
our inward life which comes in contact wills the world
&mood us. It is indeed • very different and much easier
thing to he happy in our hours of retirement, and in
the calm of seasons set apart for devotion aad to be
happy when we ara mixed up with the ways at others,
moss 4 to *rim words, nod to tbe friction of opposing
Amman= a PsAai.