Happiness

This is also from lecture eight, which I neglected to mention before is a chapter on love being the opposite of a selfish spirit.

"If you are selfish, and make yourself and your own private interests your idol, God will leave you to yourself, and let you promote your own interests as well as you can. But if you do not selfishly seek your own, but do seek the things that are Jesus Christ's, and the things of your fellow- beings, then God will make your interest and happiness his own charge, and he is infinitely more able to provide for and promote it than you are. The resources of the universe move at his Bidding, and he can easily command them all to sub-serve your welfare. So that, not to seek your own , in the selfish sense, is the best way of seeking your own in a better sense. It is the directest course you can take to secure your highest happiness. When you are required not to be selfish, you are not required...not to love and seek your own happiness, but only not to seek mainly your own private and confined interests. But if you place your happiness in God, in glorifying him, and in serving him by doing good, -- in this way above all others, will you promote your wealth, and honour, and pleasure here below, and obtain hereafter a crown of unfading glory, and pleasures for evermore at God's right hand."

~ Charity and Its Fruits
Jonathon Edwards