A worldly life develops and fosters all that is sensual and selfish in man. It continually rouses the organs and faculties of the system into abnormal activity and excitement. It perverts the delicate and sensitive functions of the organism from their legitimate uses to the gratification of transient impulse, passion, and caprice. It plays with the thousand living nerves and fibres as upon the inanimate strings of an instrument, heedless whether the overstrained and palpitating chords of life snap asunder under the exciting ordeal. Its fruits, consequently, are demoralizing, and in the highest degree detrimental to health, usefulness, and happiness.
In a religious life how great a contrast is presented! Such a life develops and fosters the highest and purest attributes of the soul. It rouses into ever-living activity the divine sentiments of love and charity, and puts far away sensuality, selfishness, and inordinate and unlawful self-indulgence. { 122} It inculcates temperance, moderation, disinterested benevolence, chastity, and the cultivation of those virtues and graces which secure health, contentment, and tranquil happiness.
From a strictly material point of view, then, we may rest assured that a truly religious life is far more conducive to genuine pleasure and to longevity than a mere worldly one. A simple contemplation of the complicated and sensitive human organism, of its physiology and its subjection to certain natural laws and requirements, renders the justness of our position manifest. Health can only be maintained by a just equilibrium in the action of all the organs, functions, and faculties. Every overaction, every undue excitement, is followed by a corresponding reaction which is depressing, debilitating, and productive of more or less disorder and suffering.
The thoughts, energies, and hopes of men of business are too generally absorbed in the eager pursuit of wealth. Their ideas, aspirations, and daily and hourly actions pertain solely to this world. From childhood to old age the idea of eternity is almost entirely put from them. Practically, these men are infidels, because every act of their lives, from waking to sleeping, has sole reference to the present life. They live and think and act as if they were to remain for ever on this earth. They put far from them the momentous realities of the near future, and cling to the riches, the pomps, the vanities, and the frivolities of this world like monomaniacs. Follow them to their counting-rooms, to their clubs, to their places of recreation, to their homes, and see how much of care, anxiety, and suffering, and how small an amount of tranquil happiness, attend them. Contrast the lives and the deaths of these devotees of business and riches with those of the humble and exemplary Christian. Is there a doubt on which side health, contentment, and true enjoyment of life will be found? "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. ... Ye cannot serve God and mammon." (Matt. vi. 19, 20, 21, 24.)