(a) If a man loses his hold on God and has not Him to stay himself on,
he is driven to painful efforts to make up the loss. God is needed by
every soul. If the soul is not satisfied in Him, then there are hungry
desires. This is the explanation of the feverish activity of much of
our life.
(b) Such work is far harder than the work of serving God. It takes a
great deal of toil to make that garden grow. The world is a hard
taskmaster. God's service is easy. He sets us in Eden to till and dress
it, but when we forget Him, the ground is cursed, and bears thorns and
thistles, and sweat drips from our brows.
Men take more pains to damn themselves than to save themselves. There
is nothing more wearying than the pursuit of pleasure. 'Pleasant
plants'--that is a hopeless kind of gardening. There is nothing more
degrading.
'Ye lust and desire to have,'--what a contrast is in, Ask and have! We
might live even as the lilies or the ravens, or with only this
difference, that we laboured, but were as uncaring and as peaceful as
they.
God is _given_. The world has to be _bought_. Its terms are 'Nothing
for nothing.'
(c) Such work has sometimes quick, present success.
'In the day.' It is hard for men to labour towards far-off unseen good.
We like to have what will grow up in a night, like Jonah's gourd. So
these present satisfactions in a worldly life appeal to worldly,
sensuous natures. And it is hard to set over against these a plant
which grows slowly, and only bears fruit in the next world.