There is such a place as heaven. No truth is more certain in the whole of Scripture than this – there remains a rest for the people of God.
This earth is not our rest – it cannot be – there breathes not a man or woman who ever found it so. Go, build your happiness on earth, if you are so disposed; choose everything you can imagine would make life enjoyable – take money, house, and lands; take learning, health, and beauty; take honor, rank, respect, and many friends; take everything your mind can picture or your eyes desire. Take it all, and yet I dare to tell you, that even then you would not find rest. I know well that in a few short years, your heart’s confession would be – “It is all hollow, empty, and unsatisfying! It is all weariness and disappointment! It is all vanity and frustration!” I well know that you would feel within a hungering and famine, a leanness and barrenness of soul; and ready indeed would you be to bear your testimony to the mighty truth, “This earth is not our rest!”
This earth is not our rest – it cannot be – there breathes not a man or woman who ever found it so. Go, build your happiness on earth, if you are so disposed; choose everything you can imagine would make life enjoyable – take money, house, and lands; take learning, health, and beauty; take honor, rank, respect, and many friends; take everything your mind can picture or your eyes desire. Take it all, and yet I dare to tell you, that even then you would not find rest. I know well that in a few short years, your heart’s confession would be – “It is all hollow, empty, and unsatisfying! It is all weariness and disappointment! It is all vanity and frustration!” I well know that you would feel within a hungering and famine, a leanness and barrenness of soul; and ready indeed would you be to bear your testimony to the mighty truth, “This earth is not our rest!”
~ J.C. Ryle
Tract: Heaven