UPDATE: A new J.C. Ryle 365 Day Devotional has been released from Reformation Heritage Books. This devotional was taken from hundreds of J.C. Ryle's sermons. You can order the devotional HERE.
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
