Before we act, we must consider not only the misery produced, but the happiness precluded by our measures. Wherever we stay, we have kept correspondence. Mountains and rivers cannot keep us from sending our faith and prayers and compliments to you. God, I wish you happiness and success year after year.  God, I have collected everything beautiful in nature and put them in my prayers and delivered them to you, and the wonderful scene of our reunion seems to be just before our eyes. Our hearts are linked together.  Some people say that their school days were the happiest of their lives. They may be right, but I always look with suspicion upon those I hear saying this. It is hard enough to know whether one is happy or unhappy now, and still harder to compare the relative happiness or unhappiness of different times of one’s life; the utmost that can be said is that we are fairly happy so long as we are not distinctly aware of being miserable. Do you imagine that if mortals had power over events, or were in reality free and uncontrollable agents in the history of their own existence, that you would see so many unhappy beings? No certainly, for who would do that which would render one miserable, if one had the power of avoiding it? And if he had that power, yet chose nevertheless to be miserable, would you pity that individual? Happiness is the sole end of existence.

Their lives were rendered blissful by an unsought harmony with nature. It is essential that you give people the opportunity to act on the truth of God. The responsibility must be left with the individual, you cannot act for them. It must be one’s own deliberate act, but the evangelical message should always lead one to action. Refusing to act leaves a person stuck, and one is never the same. The moments I truly live are the moments when I act with my entire will. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. I must learn that the purpose of my life belongs to God, not me. God is using me from His great personal perspective, and all He asks of me is that I trust Him. When I stop telling God what I want, He can freely work His will in me without any hindrance. He can crush me, exalt me, or so anything else He chooses. He simply asks me to have absolute faith in Him and His goodness. God uses these words, on the basis of His redemption, to create something in those who listen, which otherwise could never have been created. I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ. Stop listening to the cruelty of your individual natural life and win freedom into the spiritual life. The Savior has set us free from sin, but this is freedom that comes from being set free from myself by the Son. We tend to rely on our own energy instead of being energized by the power that comes from identification with Christ. If man could make himself happy by imagining himself six feet tall, though he was but three, it certainly would be ill natured in anyone to take that happiness from him.