--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Barker, Charles E. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 27 number: 7 published: 1924-05 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: "Charles E. Barker, “The Road to Happiness,” *Improvement Era 27, no. 7 (May 1924)*: 660–674." source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2707unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera2707unse start_page: 660 end_page: 674 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1924-05) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2707unse publication_year: 1924 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1924, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # The Road to Happiness THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS By Dr. Charles E. Barker [The editors of the Era are delighted to have the privilege of print- ing the address of Dr. Charles E. Barker, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, deliv- ered in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, Sunday evening, March 2, 1924, under the auspices of the Rotary Club of Salt Lake City. The stenographic report was taken by Joseph Anderson. District Governor A. C. Wherry, in in- troducing the noted speaker, explained that five years ago Dr. Barker ad- dressed the International Rotary convention in Salt Lake City, and that his inspiring speech at that time induced the Rotarians of the world to engage him permanently for constant work. Since then he has been engaged in traveling from east to west, north to south, rendering service for humanity and civilization. While in Salt Lake City, this time, Dr. Barker addressed high school students, women, men, and boys of the community. The text as herewith presented has been revised and approved by Dr. Barker, and is published at the soliciation of the editors of the Era, under his sanction. — Editors. ] District Governor A. C. Wherry, President Heber J. Grant, Ladies and Gentlemen: I suppose every public speaker has some particular ambition in his public work as a lecturer or speaker, some pet hobby, if you may so put it. Well, I have the distinct pleasure tonight of having an am- bition of four years and a half fulfilled at this particular moment. Four years and a half ago, as Governor Wherry has just told you, I stood right here on this platform and faced an audience that prac- tically filled the Tabernacle, and gave what has since come to be known as my Father's Address, which started all of this trouble ever since, so far as I" am concerned, over the country. And again and again, as I have gone over the country giving this particular address on Sunday nights that I am giving to you, I have wished and hoped and prayed that that Sunday night might come before I was called home, when I should speak to the people of Salt Lake City in this particular place. Of course, I did not know when I came here last Friday morning that this Tabernacle was in process of being renovated and scaffolding all put in, and they told me that I was to speak in the Assembly hall, and I took that very graciously, glad even of the chance to speak to the people. And then the officials of this Church, of their own accord, went to the trouble of tearing down the scaffold- ing and changing the place of meeting to this Tabernacle; and when I heard that, you can know how very happy it made me; and I only hope that as I go on to speak in this hour, those officials and you will not feel sorry that the change was made. My subject is The Road to Happiness. I do not want you to get the notion that I am going to bring to you a scheme, program or formula by which you can avoid trouble, difficulty or disappoint- THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 661 ments, as you go through life after tonight, because if God would give me the power to take from the people of this audience the troubles ahead of you and the difficulties and the disappointments that you are going to face, if I had the power to take those things from you, I would not exercise it, because I have lived long enough in this old world to find out that only as men and women face trouble, diffi- culty, disappointments courageously, in the fear of God, can a great, fine character be developed. I say it reverently: God himself never gave to any man a char- acter. That can only come to any man as he faces the circumstances which God brings into his life, and facing them courageously, passes through them, and is stronger because he passed through them and fought them, than before; but I want to show you, if I may, how that when the trouble comes, when your difficulties arise, when you face disappointments, as you will, that you can be happy during those experiences. Has it never struck you people that here is a very strange fact in human experience — that while everybody in the world is trying to be happy, wanting to be happy, trying to find joy every day, yet very few people in this world are genuinely happy all of the time. I venture that you can count on the fingers of both hands, possibly one, the men and the women about whom you can honestly say, after you have known them: that man or that woman is a genuinely happy man or woman all of the time. What is the trouble? What is the difficulty? Is it because God did not desire that men and women should be happy all of the time? No, certainly not. Our friend Oscar read here a moment ago in the 4th of Philippians that wonder- ful passage which began like this, "Be happy in the Lord always," so that it was not His intention that men and women should be un- happy. Then, what is the difficulty? What is the trouble? I think the trouble lies right here — that most men and women are living on the theory that happiness is dependent upon having certain things. That is, we say it is dependent upon how much money we have, how much and what kind of clothes we can wear, the kind of houses we are able to live in, and things like that. I deny that theory, because it is false and untrue. I do not believe that essentially happiness de- pends upon whether you have got one cent of money in the bank or a million dollars. Happiness does not depend essentially upon whether you live in a cottage or a palace, upon whether you wear homespun clothes or silks and linens and furs. Well, if happiness does not depend then upon the having certain things, what does it depend upon? Can we get somewhere tonight as to that? Well, the late President Wilson, in the city of Pittsburg, in 1914, made this very remarkable and striking statement about this very matter that we are discussing — how happiness comes — and I have quoted that man ever since on this one thing. He said: "Happiness is something that you can not find by seeking for it directly in things, houses, fine clothes. 662 IMPROVEMENT ERA automobiles, yachts, etc., but," he went on to say, "happiness is something that will always come into your life when you do certain things." In other words, happiness is dependent upon law. I do not care into what realm of life you go, you will find that laws always operate and in the same way. Take it in the physical world. I hold in my hand this book. In about four seconds I am going to remove my hand from under that book. [The speaker then dropped the Bible on the pulpit.] You knew before I did that what would happen. Why? Because that is a law. Given certain condi- tions you will always get the same results in the physical world. Just as true in the religious world. A man does not become good through chance or luck. If a man is a good man, it is only because that good man has followed the laws of God, which bring goodness to any man who follows them. That is a law of the uni- verse, handed down through the centuries. All right, take it in this matter of the soul or mind, where hap- piness resides to a certain extent. Here too, laws operate. If a man is a happy man it is not because he was born" under a lucky star, not because he has a beautiful home, not because he has this, that or the other thing; but if he is a happy man, genuinely, it is because he followed the laws of God, which bring happiness to any man who will follow those laws. Now, if that be true, I want to bring to you tonight five simple laws or rules for finding happiness as you go down through life; and I have a very practical suggestion to make to this audience. . If you are not already happy all of the time, and would like to be happy, why don't you take these five simple rules and put them into prac- tice every day, say for three months. That is a good time to find out whether a program will work or not. Suppose at the end of the three months you are no happier than you are tonight, what will you have lost by trying that experiment? Nothing, except your confi- dence in me. That is all you will lose. On the other hand, if you put these five rules into practice every day for three months, and at the end of that time you will have learned something of this finest of the fine arts, which is the art of always being happy, and sunny, and cheerful, and radiating that sunshine into the lives of the people that you touch from day to day. Wouldn't that be well worth your trial? All right, here they are: First: Cultivate the habit — that is, do the thing over and over and over again until you can not help but do it. That is a habit — cultivate the habit of always looking on the bright side of every expe- rience that comes to you. That is a very difficult habit for a lot of people to form, I will admit that. Why? Oh, because so many peo- ple say, and I suppose with a grain of truth: Well, I can not help worrying, I can not help being blue, I can not help being discouraged, because that is my temperament, my disposition. Haven't you heard THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 663 people say that all your lives? Robert Louis Stevenson answered that objection, and I want you to hear what he said: "I am not responsible," said he, "for the kind of a temperament or disposition that I had handed to me when I came into this world; but I am responsible for the kind of temperament or disposition that I carry out of this world with me when I go." Why was he right? Because disposition or temperament is a thing you can change, even after you have reached middle or adult life. How do I know? Well, because I have changed my own dis- position or temperament in the last twelve years. If you do not be- lieve me, hunt up Mrs. Barker and ask her. (Laughter.) I used to worry and fret and fuss about everything in the world I did not like — and things usually I did not like. If I have said this once I will venture I have said it a thousand times in years gone by, when things did not go to suit me: "Well, that is my luck. There you are, God has got it in for me. I never planned anything and it came out the way I planned it. I am born under an unlucky star." Well, then, what changed me, because I have been changed? Simply working this first rule — stopping just as something happened that I did not like, and asking the question: Can I help it? If I couldn't, then I smiled about it and went on to the next thing. That is all. Four years ago I gave this address in Kansas City to a very large audience, not as large as this, but a large one. At the close, the superintendent of schools of that city, Mr. Cummack, a Rotarian, came up to me, and said: "Say, all the time you were talking about happiness I was think- ing of one man of my acquaintance, Mr. Reynolds, the principal of the North High School. I have known him many years. He is by far the happiest man I have ever known in my life." He said, "He is in the room too." I said, "Go get him. I want to talk to him." So, he came up, and after we had been introduced, we rode down in a taxi to my hotel. It took us about a half hour, and on the way, I said to Mr. Reynolds: "Mr. Cummack tells me that you are a very happy man." "Well," he said, "I think I am." "Why," I said, "were you always that way?" "Oh my, no!" He said, "I was the biggest grouch you ever met in your life, up until I was twenty-four, and then the change came." "Well," I said, "tell me, what changed you?" "Oh," he said, "it was just working your first rule, although I had never heard it put just as you give it, but that is the thing that changed me." I said, "Tell me about it." "Well," he said, "when I was about twenty-four years of age, I was working, trying to get some money ahead, saved up, to go to 664 IMPROVEMENT ERA college. Well, just about that time Joe Jefferson came to the city of St. Louis, where I was working as a clerk in a store. He came there to give that wonderful play, Rip Van Winkle, for which he was noted more than anything else. And finally, I determined that I was going to buy a couple of tickets and take my best girl. It cost me $6.00, $3.00 apiece; and I went to the girl, and said, 'Dorothy, now these tickets have cost me $3.00 apiece. I want you to be ready for me when I come for you at five minutes of eight. You have got an unfortunate habit of keeping me waiting, and I do not want you to do it this time, because I want to see this play right from the begin- ning. I do not want to miss a thing of it; it cost too much.' And she told me that she would be ready. And so that night I went to the house, knocked on the door, and her mother came to the door; and she said: 'Come in; I am sorry to say Dorothy has been delayed, but she will be down after a bit.' "Well," he said, "I went in and I walked back and forth in the 'parlor. I remember, just as well, saying, 'There it goes, I have paid six dollars for a couple of tickets and I am not going to see the first of that show;' and I said, 'I. will give that girl a piece of my mind when she comes down. It will be the last time I will take her, too,' even though I thought the world of her — it just made me so mad," he said. "While I was walking back and forth, I saw a book on the parlor table and picked it up. It was a book of poems, short poems." And, he said, "I opened to this little poem — and that poem has changed my whole life from that night since. This is what I read: 'For every evil under the sun, There is a remedy, or none. If there is one, try to find it, If there isn't, never mind it.' "Well," he said, "I read that over three our four times, and I said, 'That reads like common sense. I wonder if I could do that just once. Let me see — 'For every evil under the sun, There is a remedy, or none. If there is one, try to find it. If there isn't, never mind it.' "Now, it is a cinch I can not go up and help that girl dress, (laughter) and so, according to this poem, the thing for me to do is to be pleasant about it. I wonder if I could do that just once. I will try it. I am going to get myself under control and when she comes down I am going to be sweet and pleasant to her. I will see how that will work just once." At twenty minutes after eight — the curtain went up at 8:15, you know — she came rushing into the room. "Oh," she said, "I am so sorry!" THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 665 I said, "That is all right. Now, I don't doubt but what you had a good reason. So don't worry about it. It is all right. Hurry up, though." "So we hurried around to the theater — rushed up to the man who was taking the ticket's at the door, and he said, 'Hold on, young man, you need not hurry; there has been an accident to the curtain and they can't get it up, so take your time!" (Laughter.) "We got into the theater; I took off my coat, put my hat under the seat; my girl- got her coat off and removed her hat, and just then the curtain went up." "Now," said Mr. Reynolds, "that is what sold me. From that day on I began to work this rule: whenever I met a disappointment, whenever I met a difficulty, I would stop and would say: 'Can you help this thing? If you can, go and help it; but if you can't, smile about it, and go on to the next thing.' " Now, that is how this first rule will work, and any man or woman in this audience can do that thing by will power and the help of God, and it may take both. Second Rule: Accept cheerfully the place in life you find your- self each day, believing that while you are in that place it is the best place on earth for you. That is a very difficult habit to form also. Why? Oh, because so many of us have fallen into the habit of comparing ourselves with other people, saying: "Oh, yes, if I had that man's chances, if I were in that woman's place, if I were only living in another city, if I had only married somebody else — then I could be happy." Don't you know that is the way we talk! Have you noticed that fat people always want to be thin? (Laughter.) And thin people always want to get fat? (Laughter.) And so it goes down through life — we are always wishing we had adopted another profession. We wish that we had lived in another state, at another time; we envy the people that go down to Palm Beach, Florida. Then, in the summer time, when it is hot, "Oh, I wish I were up in the mountains!" Always wishing we were somewhere else or in somebody else's place, whom we envy, because we think they are having a happier time than we are. Now, I wish, my friends, you would recall what this wonder- ful man Paul said, in the passage that Oscar read here a few moments ago. He told of his experience, and while he was writing this thing, just please remember that this great apostle, Paul, was chained in a prison, between two Roman soldiers. Now, get it, you discontented people! This is what he said: "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content." Now, that means the state of Utah! That means the state of matrimony, or any other old state that you happen to be in! I wonder if you can understand with what extreme hesitation I announced this second rule to eighteen hundred prisoners in the Ohio 666 IMPROVEMENT ERA state penitentiary. Just think of standing up before eighteen hun- dred prisoners, some of them in there for two years, some for ten, some for twenty, some for life; and saying to them: Men, if you want to be happy, accept cheerfully the place you are in today. That is the best place on earth for you. (Laughter.) I am going to tell you just exactly what I did. I sat on the platform; the chaplain of that penitentiary stood up, and then the men began to sing, before I was introduced. All at once I happened to think about this second rule. "Oh, my," I said, "I never can tell those fello.ws that! They will mob me! The idea of telling those men that the place they are in is the right place on earth for them." And I will tell you how I commenced to. reason. I had about ten minutes while they were singing. I said, "Now, I know what I will do — I will leave out the second rule. They will never know the difference. I will tell them I have got four rules to be happy." And then I said to myself — I have a way of talking to myself — I do not commend that to other people, but I did it and I do it a great deal — I said, "Now, listen Charley, if you refuse to give this second rule before these men you never honestly can give it again before another audience, because if this rule will not work with men inside of a penitentiary, it will not work out." And so I said: "Now, Lord, you will have to give me help," and he did; and when I came to this second rule, I said: "Now men, the second rule is even better than the first," and then I sprang it on them. Well, there was a gasp, at the very audacity of the thing, I guess; and finally, one man began to laugh and that caught that whole audience, and I got by all right. But, I want to tell you that the following Wednesday, while I was still in Columbus, Ohio, the warden of that penitentiary called me up on the phone, and said: "So many of my prisoners out here have said to me: 'Will you please go and get Dr. Barker and ask him to come out and see us again. We want to thank him.' I said, "Certainly, I will come." He said, "Will you come Wednesday, you and your wife?" be- cause Mrs. Barker was with me. I said, "We will." I never had such an experience as I had that day, talking to hun- dreds of those men — for I spent several hours going through that penitentiary. Not one, not ten, not a score, but literally several hun- dred of those men — and several of them lifers too — said to me, when they took me by the hand, as I walked through: "I have been hap- pier since last Sunday morning than I was outside before I got in here." And I was very glad then that I had the courage to give the rule, because it will work in a penitentiary; it will work out; it will work anywhere. THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 667 Now, I used to be just as silly as you people, in doing this thing — envying other people. (Laughter.) Well, I was cured, and I am going to tell you what cured me. Simple thing! There hangs on the wall of a former patient of mine in the city of Washington, a little painting, about two feet long and eighteen inches wide, just at the top of the first landing of the stairs. And I went past that every time I went in to see this man. That painting got into my soul and it stopped me from wishing that I was anybody else, or lived in some other place. I wonder if it will not stop you, if you will pay very close attention to the description of this painting! In the middle of this painting was a fence, and on each side of that fence were standing two donkeys. Each donkey had his head over on the other side of the fence eating grass. (Laughter.) You evidently see the point. On the bottom of that painting you will find etched these words, on a little brass plate: "How strange it is that the grass in the other fellow's pasture always seems to taste sweeter than the grass in your own. Those are a couple of silly asses, and you are one." (Laughter.) You are one if you are doing the same thing, and you are if you have got your eyes fixed on somebody else or some other place, say- ing: O, well, if I could only be there, or younger, or some other place, I could be happier than I am! So, if you live to be as old as Methuselah, and you keep your eyes open, you will come more and more to this conclusion that hap- piness for you is not over there, or yonder, or somewhere else, but that it is right around about you, if — if you look for it and then stoop down and pick it up, it is there every time. The third rule. I know what some of -you business men are now saying — possibly some of you women: Oh, well, if you are go- ing to sit down and be contented with your lot you will never get anywhere. What is going to become of your ambition? Well, this third rule will take care of you and all of the ambition that you could possibly have. Now this is a rule for obtaining happiness. Keep that in mind: Throw your whole soul and spirit into your work, whatever that work may be; and do it the best you know how. That works like the law of gravitation. I say it reverently, and I am going to say it right here in this presence: There is not power in this universe that will keep happiness from the door of a man who will take his work in the world and say about it: This is mine from God for me. I did not want this work; I wanted that; but I did not get that and I have this. While I have it I am going to do it clear up to the hilt, to my level best. You can not keep happiness from that man. Oh friends, when can you learn, when will you learn that the happiest men and women in this whole world are your working men 668 IMPROVEMENT ERA and women, cither with hands or with brains, for they are? Do you know that it was my very peculiar privilege, while I was attend- ing President Taft, to be called into the homes of a great many wealthy society people in Washington, purely by accident. Say! I had always supposed that wealthy, idle people were happy. Good night! I want to tell you people down here who are thinking that happiness would certainly come to you if you only belonged to the Four Hundred and had nothing to do but play Bridge in the after- noon, golf, or go to theaters and concerts at night, and to go on auto- mobile and yachting trips, and all that sort of thing — get that out of your heads. Why? Because the most unhappy, miserable people I have ever known in my life were wealthy, idle people. Think that over. What is the greatest truth in this Bible or out of it, next to the truth of salvation — we will put that first, of course — but next to that? It is the truth that Christ gave to the world in two par- ables. You will find one in the 19th chapter of Luke — the parable of the pounds; and the other in the 25th chapter of Matthew — the parable of the talents. Take those two parables and read them care- fully together. What do you find? That Jesus Christ taught this marvelous truth that ought to send every man and woman in this audience back to your homes and to your work tomorrow with a song on your lips, if you catch the truth. What did he teach by those two parables? That it doesn't make a particle of difference what your work in the world is, if it is your work; but it makes all the difference in the world how you do your work. You see! That puts us all on the same footing. It gives every man the same chance. A man may be digging coal in a mine, he may be a bank president, he may sweep the streets of your city for a living, he may be your lead- ing preacher — yet not one particle of difference among these four men, if each man is doing his work the best he knows how. That is the teaching of Jesus Christ to this old world. Every man of us can do his work the best he knows how, whether that is washing dishes, whether that is sweeping rooms, whether that is washing the faces of children when they go to school in the morning, whether that is standing behind a bank counter, whether that is preaching — all these things. Jesus Christ said: If that is your work, do it the best you know how, then the joy comes. Always comes. When my daughter was a sophomore in college — that is the time when people know more than they ever know again. Have you found that out? (Laughter.) — Well, my daughter was afflicted with the same trouble. She was up at Eaglesmere, Pennsylvania, on an outing in the summer time, with a lot of other girls. Went boating, bathing, played lawn tennis, did all the other things that girls do on an outing like that. Well, she wrote me several letters from there, and this was in the last one. She had heard this address that you are listening to, that I used to give at Chautauquas before I took up this THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 669 Rotary service. She had been with me on several trips, had heard it several times, and I suppose she thought she could add something to this happiness lecture. Well, she wrote this: "Last night I had the most wonderful experience of my life. I went out canoeing in the moonlight with a young gentleman. I have been looking back over that experience, Daddy, and I have come to the conclusion that my ideal form of happiness is just to get into a canoe with a nice companion on a beautiful lake, or river, and then just drift, and drift, and drift." How is that for Higher Education? (Laughter.) And I was paying for that thing, too. I thought it was about time that her father took her education in hand himself; so I wrote her this. I did not expect to ever use it in public, but after I read it, I said, I believe I can use that, and so I have put it in ever since. So, I give it to you I said: "I was very much interested and somewhat amused by reading in your letter which came this morning, of the conclusion which you have now formed, as to what constitutes an ideal condi- tion of happiness; because, if I am not mistaken, that is the identical notion of happiness which I also had when I, too, was passing through the assinine period of my life. But, your father has lived long enough in this old world to find out that the really happy men and women in it are not drifting around in canoes, but they are pulling away at the oars, sometimes with the current, sometimes against the current, sometimes pulling alone; but they are happy. Why? Because they have got a piece of God's work to do in the world, and they are doing it with courage in their hearts and with a song on their lips." And I said in conclusion in this letter: "The more you throw your soul and spirit into your work, whether that is studying," — as she was, then at school — "whether that is teaching afterwards," — as she did — "whether that is as a mother in a home," — as she may be sometime — "the more you find out that therein — your work and there from — your work, will come to you some of the richest joys, as you go down through life." Fourth rule: "Form the habit of always doing kind things to all those people whose lives you touch each day. The rules are get- ting better. My friends, I do not know of any preacher, statesman, phil- osopher, in the world's history, that is able to explain this very re- markable fact in human life, that the more of happiness you give away, the more you get back. Nobody can explain that but it is true. I will venture the opinion that the men who represent this great Church, on this platform tonight, will bear out this statement: The happiest people in your Church are the missionaries who are helping the most. [The speaker turned to President Grant who answered, "Correct."] Now, get this, will you! I repeat it, because I had my face turned in the other direction, and I want everybody in this audience to hear that — The happiest people in the "Mormon" 670 IMPROVEMENT ERA Church today are the missionaries out helping; helping; helping; wherever they can, and without any material reward for so doing. I say that — why? Because I have found by my contact in my life with those who are missionaries, not only in your Church, for I have known some of them, but missionaries in any church carrying help to those who sit in dark places, that they are the happiest people I have ever met in my life. I remember so well, when I was at college, the young man that had the most brilliant future ahead of him, the young man that stood higher than any other man in the university. People said about him — "There is a man of mark, watch him! The President of the United States will not be too big a job for that man some day when he goes out into the world." We all expected that he was to be a lawyer, because that was his announcement. All at once, one day, I remember, in the church prayer meeting, this young man stood up and very modestly and quietly made the statement: "Friends, I have decided that I shall be a missionary to China." Oh, how we pitied him! I said to myself, as I went out of that church that night and back up to the university where I was rooming, "Well! well! if it had been anybody else, I would not feel so bad! Here is the great- est brain in the university, and throwing his life away on a few Chinks!" (Laughter.) "Going away off there to China, leaving this wonderful, beautiful land that we call ours, leaving home, leav- ing friends, to go over there among people that do not care a rap for him — throwing his life away!" About eleven years after he went over there, he came back on his first visit, and I met him — he was one of the happiest men I have ever met in my life. I said to him, "John, when are you going back?" He said, "Well, they gave me one year, and I have been here four months and I am going back next month." I said, "What is the matter with you?" "Oh," he said, "Charlie, it is hard to explain, but I am happier there than I have ever been in my life." This does not mean that you have to be a missionary in China to be happy. The rest of you who are not called for that particular service, can be happy in Salt Lake City, if you are helping other people — if that is the tenor of your life — if you are getting your shoulder under the load of the people that you meet from day to day. Did you ever stop to ask this question? — You ought to: — Why was Jesus Christ the happiest person that ever lived in this world, so far as we know, for he was? Because he was the Son of God? Now, wait a minute. He was the Son of God, in my judgment, under- stand. I believe in his Divinity. But, I do not think that was the reason why he was the happiest man that ever lived. Why? Because he was the world's greatest helper! That is why. Because wherever he got a chance he helped somebody. Here was a man born blind, and THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 671 he opened his eyes. Here was a woman born deaf, and he opened her ears. Here was a woman at the well, living in sin, and Jesus broke down the barriers of custom and said: "Sister, come on; you can live a better life yet if you will;" and he put her back on to the trail. While he was doing that, don't you remember the disciples came to him and said: "Say, Master, you'd better come to dinner." They did not think it was just the proper thing for him to be talking to a woman of the street that way, so they wanted him to get away. But he said, "I have meat to eat that you know not of." What did he mean? Why, helping that woman back on to the trail and on her way. That was the thing that gave him joy, as it will to any one who will help the man or woman who is down and out in the work of life. You and I meet other people every day, walking the streets of Salt Lake City, everywhere we go, in business life, in our homes, in our neighborhoods, people who are thirsty — who are hungry — who are in prison to habits, and all that. What are you doing? If you are really helping those people, you are happy; and if you are not, you are missing joy. I just want to call your attention, before I go to the last rule, to that most remarkable scene in the life of Jesus Christ, in my judgment, next to the crucifixion; and that was the scene in the upper room, just before he went to his death the next day. Recall the circum- stances, will you now! At the close of that tiresome day, he said to those twelve friends of his that had stood by him so loyally during the three years of his ministry: Come my friends, I want to take you into an upper room, because this is my last night with you on earth, and I want to have a farewell visit. Now, how human that was. Oh, the humanity of Jesus Christ! How it touches us! And he would not touch us if he were not human; and this touches me every time I read it. He said: Friends, this is my last night; come up into this upper room. If God would come to me and say that a certain night would be my last night on earth, what would I do? I would get my wife and my child and my sister — the three people that are closest to me on earth; and I would want them around me that last night. And so he took his twelve friends up into an upper room. Their feet were covered with dirt and dust, because they wore sandals and not shoes, as we do. So that it became the custom in those days that the moment you went into a house, what happened? Why, the host always called a servant, the servant brought out a bowl of water and a towel, and then the sandals were unloosed and the feet were washed and wiped. All right, just imagine that this is the upper room. Here are couches around against the wall. They did not have chairs as we do. Here is the bowl of water and the towel that were just inside the door. Well, these twelve, tired-out Jews came trooping up into that upper room; and the moment they came in, they reclined. There was no servant there, so they should have done 672 IMPROVEMENT ERA this feet washing one to another. But they didn't — selfishly, they reclined. Christ came in. Did he hesitate? No. He girded him- self, picked up the bowl of water and the towel and then he knelt before those poor fishermen. That is the greatest scene in the history of the world, save the crucifixion — King of kings, Lord of lords, kneeling down there before those poor fisher-folk, unloosing their sandals, and washing and wip- ing their feet. And when he had finished, he straightened up, and this is what he said: "Do you men see what I have been doing to you here to- night! You call me your Lord and Master, and so I am. Well, if I, your Lord and Master, have done this thing to you, don't you think you ought to do it, one to another? And then he went right on, and here is his secret. It is out now, out for all time. If you want happiness, here it is. I will quote him exactly: "If ye know these things" — that is, if you catch the meaning of what I have been doing here tonight — "happy are ye, if ye do them." Do you see? If you go out and help the folks that are in the neighborhood, the people that are down and out, the crippled peo- ple, the people that want to go to college and have nobody to help them, the people that are naked, the people that are hungry, the peo- ple that are thirsty — if you will go out and help those people, happy will you be. And if you and I are going to have that same joy that he had, we will have to travel the same road he trod. Last rule. It is the best rule. Why do I say that? Because the adoption and the carrying out of this last rule has brought more of real, genuine happiness into my heart and life than anything else I have ever done. That is my testimony. You can take it for what you think it may be worth. What is that last rule? That you adopt, and then maintain — that is keep up from day to day — a simple, childlike attitude of confidence in God as your Father. I became a Christian when I was twelve years of age, I think — a member of the church. I know; but for the next twenty-eight years, until I was forty, I had no such relationship to God as I am talking about in this last rule, and I was not happy either. If I can show this great audience, in closing, what was the thing that prevented me from taking God as my Father, and then if I can show you what changed me, Oh, I can help you to be happy. Somebody, when I was a boy — I don't know who that some- body was — gave me this idea about God, and you know those childish ideas some times last clear down through adult life; and this lasted with me until I was forty years of age. This was the notion I always had of God, up until then: Whenever I thought of God, I always conceived him as a being sitting up there in the heavens somewhere, on a great white throne. I thought he had a long white beard, a piercing eye, and that he was always trying to catch me in doing something wrong; and then he made me feel miserable. THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS 673 Now, you can laugh at that, my friends, but hundreds of Christian men and women have come to me in the last ten years, since I have been giving this address, and have said to me at the close: "Well, that is the very idea of a God I have had, too." I remember that in Mississippi, a Mrs. Butterfield, one of the most charming women of the South, came up to me at the close of this address, and she said: "I have been a Christian myself for nearly twenty-five years; I have been teaching a class of college women for thirteen years in Sunday school. Do you know that I have always been afraid of God. I have been afraid," she said, "to let on when I was happy some times, for fear that God would come along and take that away from me." How many times have I known of a mother with a babe in her arms or on her lap telling everybody that came around her what a wonderful child she had; and then you know some old granny would come along, or somebody else, and say: "Now, look out sister, don't you become too fond of that child, or God will take it away from you." Haven't you heard that all down through your life? Nineteen centuries have come and gone since Jesus Christ came into this world. One of his purposes in coming was to show us folks down here that God is not like that. Yet I thought he was. How could I take him as my Father, with any such notion in my head. I couldn't, nor I didn't. How could I love him? I couldn't, nor I didn't, and neither can you. Then what changed me, for I was changed? Twelve years ago, alone one night, I was sitting in my home in Washington, reading a newspaper. It might have been a secular news- paper. I think now, as I look back, that it was a religious journal. But, no difference. I sat there and read the statement that has changed my life for joy ever since that night. The first time I read it it did not make such a very marked impression upon me — I will a&nh that. But I read it a second time, and a third — I read it a dozen times that night, going over it, poring over it. All at once the light broke into my soul, and it has never left me since that night. This is what I read. Did you ever see it? "One hundred and forty-eight times in the four Gospels, Jesus Christ, in talking to the people about God, always called him Father — our Father, your Father, my Father, the Father. It was his universal name for God." I read that a second time, a third, a fourth; and then I began to reason. I said: That is something I never thought of before. I am a father; I have a daughter. There is not a day since that child was born that I would not do anything under the sun I could do for her, to make her happy. Why? Because I am her father, and no other reason. All her life that daughter of mine has been coming to me, asking me for this and for that and for the other thing. What do I do? Well, if I have those things she asks for, and my judgment as 674 IMPROVEMENT ERA her father, with my years of wisdom, tells me that those are good things for her to have, she gets them every time. Why? Because I am her father. No other reason. And when I got that far in my reasoning the light broke. I sat there, my friends, in perfect amazement. I said, "Well, well, so you are my Father, and I have always been afraid of you. Here is my hand. From this day on, in so far as I know what you would like to have me do as your child, I am going to do that, and then it will surely be up to you to give me joy and happiness." He has kept his side of that contract all these twelve years. From every source, and in unexpected ways, all these years, have the joys been coming. I do not ask you folks to believe that, because I am a stranger to most of you. I ask you to do that same thing. Tell him that you will do what he wants you to do. If he is your Father he will never ask you to do anything that would not be for your good and for your joy in the long run. Never! Never! All right, take him at his word, just like a child. Now, you see, you cannot take any credit for this. Nobody can take any credit for this. Nobody can boast of this. ' Oh, no! no! no! But you can do that simple child-like way of putting your hand in his, and just going on — that is all. Just going on! You will find, if you will do those two things, first, that he is your Father, and then you will find that the joys are always coming. During the four years that it was my great privilege to be asso- ciated with President Taft, I had to go into the White House every morning at 7 o'clock. I never went in there yet that I did not pass by a little framed couple of verses written by Henry Van Dyke, of Princeton, called "Life." Some one had sent these verses framed to Mr. Taft, just after he was elected to the presidency in November, 1908. He said to me one day: "Do you know that these two verses contain such a wonderful inspiration for joy that I am going to hang them where I can see them every morning, and there they hung on the walls of his bedroom for four years, and they were the only thing that hung on that wall during that time. With this I close: Let me but live my life from year to year, With forward face and unreluctant soul; Not hurrying to, nor turning from, the goal; Not mourning for the things that disappear Into the dim past, nor holding back in fear, From what the future veils; but with a whole And happy heart, that pays its toll To Youth and Age, and travels on with cheer. So let the way wind up the hill or down, O'er rough or smooth, the journey will be joy: Still seeking what I sought when but a boy, New friendship, high adventure, and a crown, I shall grow old, but never lose life's zest. Because the road's last turn will be the best.