With the beginning of another year, wishes will be extended to friends and neighbors with a simple but sincere, "Happy New Year." Normally we all want to be happy and a healthy state of soul desires others to be happy as well.

Happiness is sought for in many ways. For a time we may be convinced we are completely happy when we have found someone or something which gives us a satisfaction of desire. Very often, however, the someone or something is suddenly snatched away and our source of happiness is gone. Perhaps very soon we pursue something else. But for one reason or another, happiness diminishes and the pursuit is repeated.

Being disillusioned to the point of despair we may ask, Is there no true and lasting happiness to be found? Yes, there is. And perhaps the answer that comes is one we are not quite ready to receive. True happiness and everlasting happiness can alone be found in the personal knowledge of Christ, and in the knowledge of Christ as a living Saviour.

True happiness is not found in the pleasures of this life which are only for a season at best. Man has an immortal spirit within him which can never be satisfied with pleasures which vanish and pass away.

Many imagine that religion can supply the needs of the heart, but this is not the case. Men and women may spend their lives in religious exercises and yet possess no peace, no joy, no rest. But true peace of conscience is the portion of all those who in simple faith rely on the finished work of the Lord Jesus on the Cross of Calvary. True joy fills the heart of the one who knows the blessed Saviour as the living Object of the soul in the glory of God.

Reader, have you found happiness? If not, turn at once to that blessed Saviour, now glorified in heaven. When here on earth He proclaimed, "If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink" (John 7:37). The world can never satisfy you. It may give you passing pleasures but they won't last. There were never truer words uttered than those by the Son of God to the woman at Sychar's well—"Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into eternal life" (John 4:13,14).

Won't you come and try this Water of Life? If so, you will know once and for all where true happiness is found and not only have a "Happy New Year," but a "Happy Eternity" as well.

"Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling…. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed [happy] are all they that put their trust in Him" (Psalm 2:11, 12).