The Moral Architecture of Happiness
Many years ago, I picked up a dusty old book and beneath the subject of Justice, found a passage that stopped me in my tracks. It was written by the 18th-century English jurist William Blackstone, whose words still gleam like gold in the dust of forgotten shelves:
“[God] has so inseparably interwoven the laws of eternal justice with the happiness of each individual that the latter cannot be attained but by observing the former; and, if the former be punctually obeyed, it cannot but induce the latter.”
Blackstone is saying that divine justice and human happiness are not merely connected, they are woven together by the very hand of God, like warp and weft in the fabric of creation. Pull at one thread, and the whole garment trembles.
This reflects his conviction in what he called Natural Law — the belief that God’s moral laws are stitched into the structure of the universe and written on the human heart. The Apostle Paul said as much when he wrote, “The work of the law is written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness” (Romans 2:15). To live justly, then, is to live in tune with the music of the Maker and to move in rhythm with the moral gravity that holds all things together.
True happiness, Blackstone argues, cannot exist apart from righteousness. The psalmist knew this: “Blessed is the one who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked… but whose delight is in the law of the Lord” (Psalm 1:1–2). Happiness here is not a fleeting pleasure or a passing thrill. It is a deep stillness of the soul.
When one violates justice, through deceit, cruelty, or selfishness, one violates one’s own design. The conscience, like a compass knocked off its axis, spins without direction. We lose our bearings in the moral fog. But when one walks uprightly — with integrity, compassion, and justice — happiness follows not as a reward, but as a result, as naturally as morning follows night.
In that sense, God’s universe is morally self-regulating. Justice brings joy; injustice brings misery. The sinner’s misery is not arbitrary punishment; it is dissonance. The righteous man’s peace is not indulgence; it is harmony.
Blackstone’s insight could be paraphrased like this:
God has made the moral order and human happiness one and the same thing. You cannot break one without breaking the other.
This is a profoundly theological view of law. If civil justice loses its anchor in divine law, society begins to fray. C. S.. I truely believe Europe has experienced this loss. C.S. Lewis warned of this unravelling when he wrote in The Abolition of Man that modern society “has discarded in practice what he retains in theory.” In denying objective morality, we saw away the very branch upon which we sit.
Does it surprise us, then, that the key to happiness is bound to God’s law? Would you rather live in a community shaped by the Ten Commandments, or in a world where everyone “does what is right in his own eyes”? (Judges 21:25). To choose the former is to accept that we are bound, not by chains, but by chords of love. As Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15).
Many have chosen the latter and as a result, have stood back and watched society broken to the core and have sought refuge and happiness in the teachings of Christ and sparking a religious revival.
That is why Christians preach: to call home the wanderers, those who, like the prodigal, have squandered their inheritance of peace for the illusion of freedom. Repentance is the return to harmony, the realignment of one’s life with the moral order of God’s kingdom.
Happiness is not a by-product of obedience; it is interwoven with it. As Blackstone saw, and as Scripture affirms, “Great peace has those who love Your law, and nothing can make them stumble” (Psalm 119:165).
To obey God is not to bow under a burden, but to stand upright in joy. The law of eternal justice and the happiness of the soul — they are threads of the same divine tapestry, shimmering in the light of the One who wove them.
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