Speaker 1: Happy endings. Such is the law which moves to righteousness,
which none at last can turn aside or stay. The
heart of it is love, and the end of it
is peace and consummation. Sweet obey the light of Asia.
So haply, When thy task shall end, the wrong shall
lose itself and right, and all thy weak day sabbath
splend with the long sabbath of the light. Wittier life
has many happy endings because it has much that is
noble and pure and beautiful. Although there is much sin
and ignorance in the world, many tears, and much pain
and sorrow, there is also much purity and knowledge, many smiles,
and much healing and gladness. No pure thought, no unselfish deed,
can fall short of its felicitous result, And every such
result is a happy consummation. A pleasant home is a
happy ending. A successful life is a happy ending. A
task well and faithfully done is a happy ending. To
be surrounded by kind friends is a happy ending. A
quarrel put away, grudges wiped out, unkind words confessed and forgiven,
friend restored to friend. These are all happy endings. To
find that which one has long and tediously sought to
be restored from tears to gladness, to awaken in the
bright sunlight, out of the painful nightmare of sin, to
strike after much searching, the heavenly way in life. These
are indeed blessed consummations. He who looks for finds and
enters the byways which I have indicated, will come to
this one without seeking it, for his whole life will
be filled with happy endings. He who begins right and
continues does not need to desire and search for felicitous results.
They are already at hand. They follow as a consequence.
They are the certainties, the realities of life. There are
happy endings which belong solely to the material world. These
are transient, and they pass away. There are happy endings
which belong to the spiritual world. These are eternal, and
they do not pass away. Sweet are companionships, pleasures, and
material comforts, but they change and fade away. Sweeter still
are purity, wisdom, and the knowledge of truth, and these
never change nor fade away. Wherever a man in this
world can take his worldly possessions with him, but he
soon must part company with them. And if he stands
upon these alone, deriving all his happiness, from them, he
will come to a spiritual ending of great emptiness and want.
But he who has attained to the possession of spirit
can never be deprived of his source of happiness. He
will never have to part company with it. And wherever
he goes in the whole universe, he will carry his
possessions with him. His spiritual end will be the fullness
of joy, happy in the eternal happiness. Is he who
has come to that life form which the thought of
self is abolished already even now, and in this life,
has entered into the kingdom of Heaven, Nirvana Paradise, the
New Jerusalem, the Olympus of Jupiter, the Valhalla of the Gods.
He knows the final unity of life, the great reality
of which these fleeting and changing names are but feeble utterances.
He is at rest on the bosom of the infinite.
Sweet is the rest and deep the bliss of him
who has freed his heart from its loss and hatreds
and dark desires. And he who, without any shadow of
bitterness or selfishness, resting upon him and looking out upon
the world with boundless compassion and love, can breathe in
his inmost heart the blessing peace unto all living things,
making no exceptions or distinctions. Such a man has reached
that happy ending which can never be taken away. For
this is the perfection of life, the fullness of peace,
and the consummation of perfect blessedness.