This sermon is not for those who seek pleasure in sin. Be sure, however, that sin will poison all the wells of life, and soon make the sweetest water as bitter as Marah. I do not mean that you are to be a mere joymonger, with whom the first question always is, "How can I make myself happy?" I want you to understand your strange heart, and to be at peace with God and yourself. Most pleasure-seekers are like sportsmen: the pleasure is in the chase, and at an end as soon as the game is bagged. You know well that when a boy's collection of shells, of butterflies, of postage stamps, or of anything is completed, the pleasure of the collection is at an end, and often his fine collection is like the waterbrooks that fail in summer. The strange thing is, that the rich are often the most unhappy, and that the poor are the most contented. "You might as well try to fill a chest with wisdom," one says, "as a soul with wealth." They are the darlings of nature and fortune who are now asking "Is life worth living?" and who give the horrid answer, No. One of the most successful men of his day said, "Success is full of promise till men get it, and then it is a last year's nest from which the bird has flown." The worst of all is that earth's pleasures, like the waterbrooks in summer, don't last. After the great earthquake the other year in the Riviera, a dead boy's hand was seen above the ruins, and upon it was perched the bird he used to feed. Every human heart some day becomes like that bird; for the human hand that befriended it, once living and bounteous, is found dead, and cold, and empty. If you believe this one truth, then there will not be stuff enough left in you for the making of a child of earth: you shall be spoiled for that for ever. I shall now give you two illustrations from biography. De Quincey writes the life of his friend, Lady Carbery. She was counted one of the most fortunate girls in Britain. A merchant's daughter, she became a Countess at the age of twenty-six. She seemed to have everything heart could wish. For instance, thirty-five horses stood at her service in her husband's stables. "In no 66 case," says her biographer, was it more literally realised, as daily almost I witnessed, that "All Paradise Could, by the simple opening of a door, Yet she fell early into a sort of disgust with her own advantages, because they had promised much and performed next to nothing in satisfying the yearnings of her heart. At the age of twenty-seven she had come to a most bitter sense of the hollowness and treachery of the portion earth was offering to her, and she sought refuge in an earnest Christian life. I was reading the story of the life of Jenny Lind, the greatest singer of this century. She gained a large fortune and worldwide fame. Yet even these two prized waterbrooks supplied not water to quench the thirst of her soul. Her favourite lines were "In vain I seek for rest It leaves me still unblest, And makes me sigh for God. Until my soul finds rest in Thee." The soul's unslaked thirst amid earth's best waterbrooks is, or will become, one of the biggest facts in your life, and you should try to find out exactly what it means. Be sure that that thirst is one of the noblest things in you. It reveals the excellency of your soul, and tells that you are not a low-born earthling, but that you are made for great things. Though fallen, you are not fallen so low as that you can find lasting satisfaction in earth's mean and perishing goods. Your soul is of heavenly origin, and so earth is not enough for its happiness. Your deepest yearnings bid you look not down but up. Your soul was made for God, and until it rests in Him it must be restless. Say to yourself "Shall this life of mine be wasted? Shall this vineyard lie untilled? Shall true joy pass by untasted? And this soul remain unfilled?" The soul of man has a great thirst. God can satisfy that thirst, and none else can. great truths in our theme. God satisfy the soul's thirst? These are the three You may ask, How does Let one case stand for |