'Voices From The Past' Vol. 1 — April 18

The subject which I would like to discuss is the vanity of the world and all things here below, so we can cease our vain pursuit and set our affections on things above. These alone are valuable and the only permanent and stable good. Why is it that immortal and heaven-born souls can become so degenerate as to stake themselves down to perishing enjoyments? We should be soaring aloft with God on the wings of meditation and affection, and here we are grovelling in the clay and muck of this world. We are like the serpent licking the dust of the earth. Do we not degrade ourselves, when we stoop to admire what is so vastly below us, and barter away our precious souls? Our souls are worth more than ten thousand worlds and yet we seek to gain a small part of this one. The god of this world has blinded man's eyes and cast a strange mist before them so that they cannot discern what is very evident: namely the instability and vanity of all earthly enjoyments. Whatever God has made is good, but if it is considered the greatest good, it turns into vanity. It is vain to expect happiness and contentment from the world whose crosses are greater than its comforts. There are two seasons especially when the soul needs relief and comfort: when the conscience is troubled and in the hour of death. In each of these the world is vain and useless. Should the never-dying soul be neglected? Alas! Most busy themselves to heap up temporal riches. But this is giving the soul husks. Our Saviour brands the rich man a fool when he stuffed his barns with corn at the neglect of his soul. What folly it is to purchase a vain world at the loss of our precious souls! What great losers they are to gain the world, and then at last lose the world with their souls!

Devotional Readings taken from Puritan Devotional Readings 'Voices From The Past Vol.1.'
Ezekiel Hopkins, Works, I:16-46
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