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!