(Spurgeon, "The One Thing Needful" #1015)

Were you made only to be a machine for digging
holes, laying bricks, or cutting out pieces of wood?
Were you created only to stand at a counter and
measure or weigh out goods? Do you think your
God made you for that and that only?

Is this the chief end of man? to earn so many
dollars a week, and try to make ends meet?

Is that all immortal men were made for?

As a man with a soul, capable of thought and
judgment, and not a mere animal like a dog,
nor a machine like a steam engine; can you
stand up and look at yourself, and say, "I
believe I am perfectly fulfilling my destiny"?

God has made man that he may glorify him; and
whatever else man accomplishes, if he attains
not to this end, his life is a disastrous failure.

Others are lovers of pleasure. They are merry as
the birds, their life is as the flight of a butterfly,
which lightly floats from flower to flower, according
to its own sweet will.

It cannot be that an immortal spirit was
made for frivolities; spending all its time
on the playthings of the world.

So great a thing as an immortal soul could not
have been made by God, with no higher object
than to spend itself upon trifles as light as air.

Oh, pause a while, you careless, godless one!
There is something more than the fool's laugh.
All things are not a comedy. Death and heaven
and hell are serious; and should not life be?

The charms of music, the merriment of the gay
assembly, the beauties of art, and the delights
of banqueting; there must be something more
for you than these; and something more must
be required of you than that you should waste
your precious time from morn to night upon
nothing but to please yourself!