“IT’S my only happiness, and I’m going to have another quart.”
Such were the words addressed to me by a man in our city not long since.
He accosted me as I passed down the street, and said he had been to the open-air meetings a few times and he liked them, I spoke to him about his soul, but found he knew little, and cared less, about Christ, I said, “Don’t you think, my friend, you working men are fools to spend your time and money in the public house? how much better every way for you to go home and make your wife and children comfortable.”
He answered me with the remark at the top of this paper, “It’s my only happiness, and I’m going to have another quart.” I spoke to him about the man whose case was related in No. 3 of this magazine, who fell down dead in the bar of a public-house, and said, “Supposing you were to die directly, as you are drinking this quart, do you know where you would spend eternity? “No,” he said, slowly, looking at me, “where?” “In hell, “I answered solemnly,” no drunkard can inherit the Kingdom of God,” and I added,” you may die to-day.”
“Why,” he said, “do you know? my father fell down dead in the field as he was working, and my uncle hung himself the other day.”
“What!” I replied; “do you mean to tell me, that, with these solemn examples before you, you will go and deliberately add sin to sin in the public-house? I spoke a few more words to him, I told him of Christ and the love of God; but he went away to his only happiness. May God teach him better!
Oh, reader, what is your happiness? Have you rest and peace! The One at God’s right hand is my peace―He who has made peace by His cross. The One who took my place, and died for me, and bore my sins―the Son of God “who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
My happiness is to know my sins are blotted out and my name is written in heaven. What is yours? Do you try and find it in the public-house? In the theater, the ball-room, or the concert? Is it your happiness to heap up riches not knowing who shall gather them? Or are you seeking fame in politics, literature, science, or knowledge?
By the cross of Christ is the road to happiness. To know Him is to possess happiness and rest.
A dear old woman passed away the other day, eighty-eight years of age, (not a stone’s throw from the place where I spoke to this man) and as she was dying, she said, “Lift me up; lift me up higher; so that I may gaze upon His face, O! what glory, O! what glory! “She saw through the gates of death the face of Christ, and the glory of His home. He was her happiness; is He yours?
Oh, sinner, look to Jesus. You may be saved with this book in your hand, and with your eyes fixed on this page, if by faith you trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Think of it―your eternal happiness will be secured, if, this moment, you look in faith to Jesus, “Look unto me, and be ye saved.” These are His words, and “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”