True happiness!

(Octavius Winslow, "Evening Thoughts")

Happiness is the attainment that the world
is eagerly in search of. But the believer in
Christ is its only possessor. He has found it,
and found it in Jesus. He has found it in a
renunciation of self righteousness, and in a
humble reception of Christ.

There is no true happiness outside of Jesus!

What true happiness can the heart feel while . . .
  it is unrenewed,
  its sins unpardoned,
  the soul unjustified,
  and therefore under condemnation,
  and exposed to the wrath of a holy and just God?

Oh, dream not of happiness, reader, until you have
gone as a repenting sinner to the cross of Christ!

You may be a son or a daughter of affliction; in
this furnace you may be chosen, and through this
furnace it may be the Lord's holy will you should
pass all your days.

You may be a child of poverty, possessing but
little of this world's comforts; lonely, neglected,
despised.

Yet oh, look up! you are precious in God's sight!
You are as dear to Him as the apple of His eye.
His heart yearns over you with more than a mother's
exquisite fondness for her child, because He has
loved you with an everlasting love, and, to the
praise of the glory of His grace, has accepted
you in the Beloved.

Realize this, and though . . .
  rough and thorny may be your path,
  and fiery the furnace,
  and deep your poverty,
  and lonely your situation,
you shall experience a peace and a happiness to
which the world around you is an utter stranger.