This pleasure-loving, pleasure-seeking,
and pleasure-inventing age
(J.A. James, "HINDRANCES to Christian Progress")
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A taste for worldly amusements will
inevitably prove, wherever it is indulged--
a powerful obstacle to growth in grace.
Man is unquestionably made for enjoyment.
He has a capacity for bliss--
an instinctive appetite for gratification;
and for this, GOD has made ample
provision of a healthful and lawful kind.
But "a taste for worldly pleasure" means
that this GOD-given capacity is directed
to wrong sources, or carried to an excess.
Now there are some amusements
which in their very nature are so utterly
incompatible with true godliness, that
a liking for them, and a hankering after
them, and especially an indulgence in them--
cannot exist with real, earnest,
and serious piety.
The dissolute parties of the glutton
and the drunkard;
the fervency for the gambling-table;
the pleasures of the race-course;
the performances of the theater--
are all of this kind.
A taste for them is utterly uncongenial
with a spirit of godliness!
So is a love for the gay and fashionable
entertainments of the ball-room, and
the wanton parties of the upper classes.
These are all unfriendly to true religion,
and are usually renounced by people
intent upon the momentous concerns
of eternity.
We would not doom to perdition,
all who are at any time found in
this round of worldly pleasure--
but we unhesitatingly say, that
a taste for them is entirely opposed
to the whole spirit of Christianity!
They are all included in that "world" which
is overcome by faith and the new birth.
True religion is, though a happy,
a very serious thing--
and can no more live and flourish
in the uncongenial atmosphere of those
parties, than could a young tender plant
survive if brought into a frigid zone.
But in this pleasure-loving, pleasure-
seeking, and pleasure-inventing age,
there is a great variety of amusements
perpetually rising up, which it would be
impossible to say are sinful, and therefore
unlawful. Yet the 'supposition of their
lawfulness' viewed in connection with
their abundance, variety, and constant
repetition, is the very thing that makes
them dangerous to the spirit of true religion.
A taste for even lawful worldly amusements,
which leads its possessor to be fond of them,
seeking them, and longing for them--
shows a mind that is in a very poor
state as to vital piety.
A Christian is not to partake of
the pleasures of the world, merely
to prove that his religion does not
debar him from enjoyment.
But he is to let it be seen by his
"peace which passes understanding," and
his "joy unspeakable and full of glory,"
that his godliness gives far more
enjoyment than it takes away--
that, in fact, it gives him
the truest happiness!
The way to win a worldly person to true
religion is not to go and partake of his
amusements; but to prove to him that
we are happier with our pleasures, than
he is with his; that we bask in full sunshine--
while he has only a smoking candle;
that we have found the "river of water of life,
clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne
of GOD and the LAMB"--
while he is drinking of the muddy
streams which issue from the earth!
"Many are asking, 'Who can show us
any good?' Let the light of YOUR face
shine upon us, O LORD. YOU have filled
my heart with greater joy than when their
grain and new wine abound!" Psalm 4:6-7
After all, it is freely admitted--
1. That true religion is not hostile
to anything which is not hostile to it.
2. That many things which are not strictly
pious, though not opposed to piety--
may be lawfully enjoyed by the Christian.
3. That what he has to do in this matter is not
to practice total abstinence--but "moderation".
4. Yet the Christian should remember how elastic
a term "moderation" is, and to be vigilant lest his
moderation should continually increase its latitude,
until it has swelled into the imperial tyranny of an
appetite which acknowledges no authority--
and submits to no restraint!
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