True Happiness
Puritan: Thomas Brooks
Source: Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices
Originally Delivered: 1652, London, England
The Lord’s Day: August 23, 2026
“True happiness is too big and too glorious a thing to be found in anything below that God that is a Christian’s summum bonum, chiefest good.
Certainly, happiness lies not in those things that a man may enjoy and yet be miserable forever. Now a man may be great and graceless with Pharaoh, honorable and damnable with Saul, rich and miserable as the Rich man and Lazarus: therefore, happiness lies not in these things.
Certainly, happiness lies not in those things that cannot comfort a man upon a dying bed. Is it honors, riches or friends that can comfort you when you come to die? Or is it not rather faith in the blood of Christ, the witness of the Spirit of Christ, the sense and feeling of the love and favor of Christ, and the hopes of eternally reigning with Christ? Can happiness lie in those things that cannot give us health, or strength, or ease, or a good night’s rest, or an hour’s sleep, or a good stomach? Why, all the honors, riches and delights of this world cannot give these poor things to us, therefore certainly happiness lies not in the enjoyment of them.
And surely happiness is not to be found in those things that cannot satisfy the souls of men. Now none of these things can satisfy the soul of man. “He that loves silver shall not be satisfied with silver, nor he that loves abundance with increase; this is also vanity,” said the wise man (Eccl. 5:10). The barren womb, the grave and hell, will as soon be satisfied, as the soul of man will be the enjoyment of any worldly good. Some one thing or another will be forever lacking to that soul that has none but outward good to live upon. You may as soon fill a bag with wisdom, a chest with virtue, or a circle with a triangle, as the heart of man with anything here below.
A man may have enough of the world to sink him, but he can never have enough to satisfy him.
But a soul truly gracious can say; In having nothing I have all things, because I have Christ; having therefore all things in Him, I seek no other reward, for He is the universal reward. Such a soul can say: Nothing is sweet to me without the enjoyment of Christ in it; honors, nor riches, nor the smiles of creatures, are not sweet to me no farther than I see Christ, and taste Christ in them. The confluence of all outward good cannot make a heaven of glory in my soul, if Christ, who is the top of my glory, be absent. His absence will darken and embitter all my comforts; so that my comforts will neither taste like comforts, nor look like comforts, nor warm like comforts, when He that should comfort my soul stands afar off (Lam. 1:16).
We have all things in Christ, and Christ is all things to a Christian. If we be sick, He is a physician; if we thirst, He is a fountain; if our sin trouble us, He is righteousness; if we stand in need of help, He is mighty to save; if we fear death, He is life; if we be in darkness, He is light; if we be weak, He is strength; if we be in poverty, He is plenty; if we desire heaven, He is the way.
The soul cannot say, this I would have, and that I would have …
but Christ says, “It is in Me, it is in Me eminently, perfectly, eternally.”