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Painted pleasures?
From Spurgeon's sermon, "Heavenly Rest"
I reckon that the richest, highest, noblest condition of a
worldly man, is not worthy to be compared with the joy that is to
be revealed hereafter in the breasts of those who are sanctified.
O you spendthrift mortals, that for one merry dance
and a giddy life will lose a world of joys!
O fools that catch at bubbles and lose realities!
O ten thousand times mad men, that
grasp at shadows and lose the substance!
What! sirs do you think a little round of pleasure,
a few years of gaiety and merriment, just a little time
of tossing about, to and fro, of worldly business,
is a compensation for eternal ages of unfading bliss!
Oh! how foolish will you conceive yourselves to be,
when you are in the next state, when cast away from
heaven, you will see the saints blessed!
I think I hear your mournful soliloquy--
"Oh! how cheaply did I sell my soul!
What a poor price did I get for all I have now lost!
I have lost the palace and the crown, and the joy
and bliss forever, and am shut up in hell!
And for what did I lose it?
I lost it for the lascivious wanton kiss.
I lost it for the merry drunken song.
I lost it for just a few short years of pleasures,
which, after all, were only painted pleasures!"
Oh! I think I see you in your lost estates,
cursing yourselves, tearing out your hair,
that you should have sold heaven for counters
and have traded away eternal life for pitiful
farthings, which were spent quickly, and which
burned your hand in the spending of them!
Oh! that you were wise, that you would weigh those things,
and reckon that a life of the greatest happiness here on
earth, is nothing compared with the glorious hereafter.
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