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Mere toys and baubles
(Philpot, "Deliverance
from the Power of Darkness")
True religion must be everything or nothing with us.
In religion, indifference is ruin; neglect is destruction.
Of all losses, the loss of the soul is the only one that
is utterly irreparable and irremediable. You may lose
property, but you may recover the whole or a portion
of it; you may lose health, but you may be restored
to a larger measure of bodily strength than before
your illness; you may lose friends, but you may obtain
new ones, and those more sincere and valuable than
any whom you have lost. But if you lose your soul,
what is to make up for that loss?
Do you ever feel what a tremendous stake heaven
or hell is? Have you ever felt that to gain heaven is
to gain everything that can make the soul eternally
happy; and to lose heaven is not only to lose
eternal bliss, but to sink down into . . .
unfathomable,
everlasting,
unutterable woe?
It is this believing sight and pressing sense of eternal
things; it is this weighty, at times overpowering, feeling
that they carry in their bosom an immortal soul, which
often makes the children of God view the things of
time and sense as . . .
mere toys and baubles,
trifles lighter than vanity,
and pursuits empty as air,
and gives them to feel that the things of eternity
are the only solid, enduring realities.
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