SA 39:6,7{"Yes, this is all very well for some people, or for older people, but I am not ready for it; I can't say I see my way to this sort of thing." I am going to take the lowest ground for a minute, and appeal to your "past experience." Are you satisfied with your experience of the other "sort of thing"? Your pleasant pursuits, your harmless recreations, your nice occupations, even your improving ones, what fruit are you having from them? Your social intercourse, your daily talks and walks, your investments of all the time that remains to you over and above the absolute duties God may have given you, what fruit that shall remain have you from all this? Day after day passes on, and year after year, and what shall the harvest be? What is even the present return? Are you getting any real and lasting satisfaction out of it all? Are you not finding that things lose their flavor, and that you are spending your strength day after day for naught; that you are no more satisfied than you were a year—ago rather less so, if anything? Does not a sense of hollowness and weariness come over you as you go on in the same round, perpetually getting through things only to begin again? It cannot be otherwise. Over even the freshest and purest earthly fountains the Hand that never makes a mistake has written, "He that drinketh of this water shall thirst again." Look into your own heart and you will find a copy of that inscription already traced, "Shall thirst again." And the characters are being deepened with every attempt to quench the inevitable thirst and weariness in life, which can only be satisfied and rested in full consecration to God. For "Thou hast made us for Thyself, and the heart never resteth till it findeth rest in Thee." Today I tell you of a brighter and happier life, whose inscription is, "Shall never thirst," a life that is no dull round-and-round in a circle of unsatisfactorinesses, but a life that has found its true and entirely satisfactory center, and set itself towards a shining and entirely satisfactory goal, whose brightness is cast over every step of the way. Will you not seek it?
Springs of peace, when conflict heightens, thine uplifted eye shall see;
Peace that strengthens, calms, and brightens, peace, itself a victory.
Springs of comfort, strangely springing. thro' the bitter wells of woe;
Founts of hidden gladness, bringing Joy that earth can ne'er bestow.