eyes and look at things as they are? Every one is
longing for something; each has his little plan for himself, of what
he would like to be, and like to do, and says to himself all day
long, 'If I could but get _that_ one thing, I should be happy: If I
could but get that, then I should want no more!' Foolish man, self-
deceived by his own lusts! Perhaps he cannot get what he wants, and
therefore he cannot enjoy what he has, and is moody, discontented,
peevish, a torment to himself, and perhaps a torment to his family.
Or perhaps he does get what he wants: and is he happy after all?
Not he. He is like the greedy Israelites of old, when they longed
for the quails; and God sent the quails: but while the meat was yet
in their mouths, they loathed it. So it is with a man's fancy. He
gets what he fancies; and he plays with it for a day, as a child
with a new toy, and most probably _spoils_ it, and next day throws
it away to run after some new pleasure, which will cheat him in just
the same way as the last did; and so happiness flits away ahead
before him; and he is like the simple boy in the parable, who was to
find a crock of gold where the rainbow touched the ground: but as
he moved on, the rainbow moved on too, and kept always a field off
from him. You may smile: but just as foolish is every soul of us,
who fancies that he will become happy by making himself great;
admired, rich, comfortable, in short, by making himself anything
whatsoever, or getting anything whatsoever for himself. Just as
foolish is every poor soul, and just as unhappy, as long as he will
go on thinking about himself, instead of copying the Lord Jesus
Christ, and thinking about others; as long as he will keep to the
pattern of the old selfish Adam, which is corrupt according to the
deceitful lusts, the longings and fancies which deceive a man into
expecting to be happy when he will not be happy; instead of putting
on the new man, which after God's likeness is created in
righteousness and true holiness: and what is true holiness but that
very charity of which St. Paul has been preaching to us, the spirit
of love, and mercy, and gentleness, and condescension, and patience,
and active benevolence?

Ah, my friends, do not forget what I said just now; that a man could
not become happy by making himself anything. No. Not by making
himself anything: but he may by letting God make him something. If
he will let God make him a new creature in Je