97. HAPPINESS.

As [to what] was said in No. 96, that no being could be happy without the exercise of this inclination of communicating his happiness. Now the happiness of society consists in this, in the mutual communications of each other’s happiness; neither does it satisfy in society only to receive the other’s happiness without also communicating his own. Now it is necessary that to those whom we love most, we should have the strongest desire of communicating happiness—to any but one that has infinite, and cannot receive additions of happiness. And although God is the object of the creature’s love (of a creature not depraved), yet God being infinitely happy, he cannot desire to communicate his happiness to Him, which is nothing to the happiness God enjoys. But in the gospel God is come down to us, and the person of God may receive communications of happiness from us. The man Christ Jesus loves us so much, that he is really the happier for our delight and happiness in him.

Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 13, The “Miscellanies:” Entry Nos. a–z, aa–zz, 1–500, ed. Thomas A. Schafer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 264.

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miscellany mondays, the miscellanies