We have lived long enough to experience the hollowness of earth and the rottenness of all carnal promises.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the emptiness of earthly desires and the futility of worldly promises.
Charles Spurgeon's quote highlights a profound realization often encountered in life: the transient nature of material pursuits and promises tied to the physical world. Through experience, one comes to understand that these earthly ambitions often lead to a sense of hollowness, urging a reassessment of what truly holds value in life beyond the superficial allure of carnal desires.
In practice
In a discussion about the materialism of modern society, you might share this quote to emphasize a deeper perspective.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason.
Materialism is in fact no protection. Those who seek it in that hope (they are not a negligible class) will be disappointed. The thing you fear is impossible. Well and good. Can you therefore cease to fear it? Not here and now. And what then? If you must see ghosts, it is better not to disbelieve in them.
Great abundance of riches cannot be gathered and kept by any man without sin.
You know, what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own.
I could introduce myself properly, but it's not really necessary. You will know me well enough and soon enough, depending on a diverse range of variables. It suffices to say that at some point in time, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible. Your soul will be in my arms. A color will be perched on my shoulder. I will carry you gently away.
Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives not by truth but by make-believe.
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