Happiness is the the practice of the virtues.

A fairly accurate description of the human race might be furnished one unaquainted with it by taking the Beattitudes, turning them wrong side out and saying, "Here is your human race." For the exact opposite of the virtues in the Beattitudes are the very qualities which distinguish human life and conduct.

Nothing makes a man so virtuous as belief of the truth. A lying doctrine will soon beget a lying practice. A man cannot have an erroneous belief without by-and-by having an erroneous life. I believe the one thing naturally begets the other.

Tolerance is, no doubt, a virtue without which none of us can live; but we must, nevertheless, at least understand that it is, strictly speaking, destructive of fellowship, for it is a gesture by which the divine disturbance is rejected. The ONE in whom we are veritably united is Himself the great intolerance. He willeth to rule, to be victorious, to be - everything. He it is who disturbs every family gathering, every scheme for the reunion of Christendom, every human co-peration. And He disturbs, because He is the Peace that is above every estrangement and cleavage and faction.

God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is the highest virtue and the most loving act.