Practical Religion: Being Plain Papers on the Daily Duties, Experience, Dangers, and Privileges of Professing ChristiansRyle, J. C. (John Charles)
Religion
Practical Religion: Being Plain Papers on the Daily Duties, Experience, Dangers, and Privileges of Professing Christians
Ryle, J. C. (John Charles)
Christian life -- Anglican authors
I think it very likely that men do not believe what I am saying. I know
something of the deceitfulness of the heart on the subject of happiness.
There are few things which man is so slow to believe as the truths I am
now putting forth about the way to be happy. Bear with me then while I
say something more.
Come and stand with me some afternoon in the heart of the city of
London. Let us watch the faces of most of the wealthy men whom we shall
see leaving their houses of business at the close of the day. Some of
them are worth hundreds of thousands: some of them are worth millions of
pounds. But what is written in the countenances of these grave men whom
we see swarming out from Lombard Street and Cornhill, from the Bank of
England and the Stock Exchange? What mean those deep lines which furrow
so many a cheek and so many a brow? What means that air of anxious
thoughtfulness which is worn by five out of every six we meet? Ah, these
things tell a serious tale. They tell us that it needs something more
than gold and bank notes to make men happy.
Come next and stand with me near the Houses of Parliament, in the middle
of a busy session. Let us scan the faces of Peers and Commoners, whose
names are familiar and well-known all over the civilized world. There
you may see on some fine May evening the mightiest Statesmen in England
hurrying to a debate, like eagles to the carcase. Each has a power of
good or evil in his tongue which it is fearful to contemplate. Each may
say things before to-morrow's sun dawns, which may affect the peace and
prosperity of nations, and convulse the world. There you may see the men
who hold the reins of power and government already; there you may see
the men who are daily watching for an opportunity of snatching those
reins out of their hands, and governing in their stead. But what do
their faces tell us as they hasten to their posts? What may be learned
from their care-worn countenances? What may be read in many of their
wrinkled foreheads,--so absent-looking and sunk in thought? They teach
us a solemn lesson. They teach us that it needs something more than
political greatness to make men happy.
Come next and stand with me in the most fashionable part of London, in
the height of the season. Let us visit Regent Street or Pall Mall, Hyde
Park or May Fair. How many fair faces and splendid equipages we shall
see! How many we shall count up in an hour's time who seem to possess
the choicest gifts of this world,--beauty, wealth, rank, fashion, and
troops of friends! But, alas, how few we shall see who appear happy! In
how many countenances we shall read weariness, dissatisfaction,
discontent, sorrow, or unhappiness, as clearly as if it was written with
a pen! Yes: it is a humbling lesson to learn, but a very wholesome one.
It needs something more than rank, and fashion, and beauty, to make
people happy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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