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
Are you a young person? I entreat you to accept the affectionate warning
of a minister of the Gospel, and not to seek happiness where happiness
cannot be found. Seek it not in riches; seek it not in power and rank;
seek it not in pleasure; seek it not in learning. All these are bright
and splendid fountains: their waters taste sweet. A crowd is standing
round them, which will not leave them; but, oh, remember that God has
written over each of these fountains, "He that drinketh of this water
shall thirst again." (John iv. 13.) Remember this, and be wise.
Are you poor? Are you tempted to fancy that if you had the rich man's
place you would be quite happy? Resist the temptation, and cast it
behind you. Envy not your wealthy neighbours: be content with such
things as you have. Happiness does not depend on houses or land; silks
and satins cannot shut out sorrow from the heart; castles and halls
cannot prevent anxiety and care coming in at their doors. There is as
much misery riding and driving about in carriages as there is walking
about on foot: there is as much unhappiness in ceiled houses as in
humble cottages. Oh, remember the mistakes which are common about
happiness, and be wise!
III. Let me now, in the last place, _point out the way to be really
happy_.
There is a sure path which leads to happiness, if men will only take it.
There never lived the person who travelled in that path, and missed the
object that he sought to attain.
It is a path open to all. It needs neither wealth, nor rank, nor
learning in order to walk in it. It is for the servant as well as for
the master: it is for the poor as well as for the rich. None are
excluded but those who exclude themselves.
It is the one only path. All that have ever been happy, since the days
of Adam, have journeyed on it. There is no royal road to happiness.
Kings must be content to go side by side with their humblest subjects,
if they would be happy.
Where is this path? Where is this road? Listen, and you shall hear.
The way to be happy is _to be a real, thorough-going, true-hearted
Christian_. Scripture declares it: experience proves it. The converted
man, the believer in Christ, the child of God,--he, and he alone, is the
happy man.
It sounds too simple to be true: it seems at first sight so plain a
receipt that it is not believed. But the greatest truths are often the
simplest. The secret which many of the wisest on earth have utterly
failed to discover, is revealed to the humblest believer in Christ. I
repeat it deliberately, and defy the world to disprove it: the true
Christian is the only happy man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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