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.
Where persons love little, do little, and give little, we may shrewdly suspect that they have never had much affliction of heart for their sins and that they think they owe but very little to divine grace.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that those who do not love or give much may lack a deep sense of remorse for their sins and may undervalue divine grace.
Charles Spurgeon's quote reflects on the connection between an individual's ability to love and their sense of gratitude towards divine grace. It implies that those who exhibit little love, action, or generosity may not have experienced significant struggle or guilt in their lives, leading them to believe they owe little to a higher power. This highlights the relationship between personal suffering, moral reflection, and the capacity for compassion towards others.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a sermon to emphasize the importance of love and humility in one’s relationship with God.
More from Charles Spurgeon
All quotes →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.
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To accept civilization as it is practically means accepting decay.
Only old Benjamin professed to remember every detail of his long life and to know that things never had been, nor ever could be much better or much worse--hunger, hardship, and disappointment being, so he said, the unalterable law of life.
And thus we all are nighing The truth we fear to know: Death will end our crying For friends that come and go.
I assume that the proper study of interaction is not the individual and his psychology, but rather the syntactical relations among the acts of different persons mutually present to another.