Concluding Remarks

 •  13 min. read  •  grade level: 10
 
In the preceding pages have been given the outlines of the careers of various individuals, who, drinking deeply of the world's enjoyments, found in the end that all which they had followed was but vanity and vexation of spirit. It is a common characteristic of all these personalities that they pursued their selfish interests and sought gratification with their eyes blinded by Satan as to the terrible culmination to their evil pursuits.
To further explicate to the reader of the twentieth century that this thirsting for position, power, and eminence is as driving and compelling as it was in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we may point to two recent rulers who spent all their energies for many years in promoting selfish desires without fear of God before their eyes. We may take the cases of the dictators of Germany and Italy—Hitler and Mussolini.
Facts of their early lives are not of great importance to our understanding these two individuals for they came into prominence only when they took over the complete rule of their countries and began their series of conquests. It is important to observe in how few years their rise and downfall occurred and how completely their whole time was occupied by their unjust proceedings.
Their covetousness and love of aggrandizement were forcefully brought out in the early part of the great war which has so recently ended. When it was announced to the world that they were meeting in Brenner Pass, people of every country knew that a new campaign was being planned and the thought made them shudder. As Mussolini spoke from the balcony or Hitler spoke from the platform, wild cheers approved their deluding propaganda.
Their boastfulness, pride, and egotism were evident in every speech they made. Through the power of his oratory on the printed page, Hitler succeeded in convincing many that their devotion to him and to the state were of importance only. He thus gave no place to his Creator.
While their armies were victorious and they seemed to be able to be of assistance to each other, they gloated in victory. Defeat and disagreement blotted out this superficial friendship, and again the heart of man was seen in its devices of trickery and deceit. As defeat continued and as the war lengthened, we find those boastful mouths stopped and once again we see the end of the pursuance of a mirage. Mussolini was wrested from those who held him in custody and he was killed by a mob which even to revenge themselves kicked his lifeless body. Reliable sources give the information that Hitler took his own life. How different the pattern of these lives would have been had they owned the responsibility of their positions before God.
Turning to the pages of Scripture, we find SOLOMON surpassing in wisdom and glory all the princes of the earth, and yet confessing in the end that, with the exception of the fear of God and keeping His commandments, all else was vanity and vexation of spirit.1 "I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and behold, this also is vanity. I said of laughter, It is mad: and of mirth, What doeth it?...I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards: I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kind of fruits: I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees; I got me servants and maidens, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me; I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces: I gat me men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts. So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me. And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy; for my heart rejoiced in all my labor: and this was my portion of all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun” (Eccl. 2:1-111I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also is vanity. 2I said of laughter, It is mad: and of mirth, What doeth it? 3I sought in mine heart to give myself unto wine, yet acquainting mine heart with wisdom; and to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was that good for the sons of men, which they should do under the heaven all the days of their life. 4I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards: 5I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kind of fruits: 6I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees: 7I got me servants and maidens, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me: 8I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces: I gat me men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts. 9So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me. 10And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy; for my heart rejoiced in all my labor: and this was my portion of all my labor. 11Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 2:1‑11)).
What lesson, then, are we to draw from these solemn attestations of the vanity of human pursuits, and the Mirage of Life? That happiness is nowhere to be found? No! Such a conclusion would be at variance with experience, and a libel on the bounty of the living God, who has given us all things richly to enjoy, and who has multiplied with a lavish hand the materials of pleasure for the gratification of His creatures. Is this then the lesson taught—that wealth, art, fame, eloquence, power, were in themselves sinful? No, it is possible to be man of wealth and yet a John Thornton; a hero, and yet a Gardiner or a Havelock; an orator, and yet a Jeremy Taylor or a Robert Hall; a man of wit, and yet a Wilberforce; an artist, and yet a Bacon, the sculptor; a beauty, and yet to have personal charms eclipsed by the beauty of holiness. The truth to be drawn from the examples cited is, not that there is no happiness in life, but that in a life which does not have Christ as its object, no real, or at least no permanent bliss is to be found. It is no want of charity to assert that the individuals whose characters we have drawn sought their chief enjoyment in the world. In the end, it proved to them a broken cistern which could hold no water.
Such always has been, and always must be, the result of all attempts to find pleasure in the creature apart from the Creator. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind," was the great law originally given by the Lord God to the hearts of his people; and when it is neglected, all expectations of solid or abiding enjoyment are a chimera and a delusion. The faculties of the soul, in their fallen condition, have lost their original center and are restless and dissatisfied, each seeking its own selfish gratification. It is only when the heart, under the drawing of the Holy Spirit, returns to God in the way He has pointed out, through the Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ, by a true faith and cordial acceptance of Him as the Savior of sinners that it finds its rest. All the powers of the soul become then obedient to their lawful Head, and peace and harmony enter where before were confusion and disorder.
Nor let it be supposed that the reverses and disappointments, which we have described as incidental to human life, are peculiar to men of elevated station or distinguished genius. By fixing the glass at a lower range we should doubtless have been enabled to present numerous instances of the Mirage of Life in humbler classes of society, though not possessing interest enough to form the subject of detailed sketches. In almost every grade of society how different are the closing from the opening scenes of life! The youth who has started in the race for wealth finds himself too often a disappointed old man, struggling with embarrassment and misfortune. He who had looked forward to length of days, pines perhaps in sickness, or is cut off in his prime. Another, who had pictured an ideal paradise of domestic enjoyment, sees the object of his affections laid in the grave, and the children of early promise cut off by disease or blasting by misconduct the fond hopes which parental love had entertained. Multitudes will join, from painful experience, in the following sad retrospect of life:
“The shade of youthful hope was there
That lingered long and latest died;
Ambition all dissolved in air
With phantom honors by its side.
What empty shadows glimmer nigh?
They once were friendship, truth and love;
Ah, die to thought! to memory die!
Since to my heart ye lifeless prove.”
When we turn, however, to the pages of Christian biography, do we find any instances of individuals who had truly devoted themselves to the service of God, complaining that they had found that the mirage? No. God is the Fountain of living water, at which man may supply all his wants while still the supply is unexhausted, because inexhaustible, His Gospel meets the cravings of man's heart for happiness. Faith in the great atoning sacrifice of Christ gives peace to the troubled conscience; the renewing and sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit restore health and happiness to the soul which they enter; the service of Christ calls into vigorous and harmonious action all the mental powers, while trust in God's providence, if it does not give exemption from the vicissitudes to which life is subject, sanctifies them, and turns them into a source of blessing. Let the honored lives of Wilberforce, Simeon, and many other pious men of later times, be appealed to. See them drawing nigh to their latter end full of years and of honor and with a hope bright with immortality. See Payson on his deathbed acknowledging, after a life devoted to the service of God, that he swam in a sea of glory and was filled, in the prospect of eternity, with a joy beyond the power of utterance.
By these bright examples on the one hand, and by the instances of worldly failure already adduced on the other, we would affectionately entreat our reader solemnly to ask himself what is his great object in life and to take heed that he is not chasing the Mirage. The objects which he is following may be of a less dignified nature than those pursued by the characters we have sketched, but if unsanctified, if pursued without reference to the glory of God, sooner or later, in eternity if not in time, they will be found to have been but vanity and vexation of spirit.
Young people, we do the more especially appeal to you. Before your eyes the Mirage is apt to expand in all its false and treacherous hues. Oh be persuaded now, ere it is too late. Repent and believe the gospel that you may be born again, receiving thus a new life with a new object: Christ in glory. In no other way will you be able to see that the attractions of this world are empty and vain.
“Ho, every one that thirsteth,
Come ye to the waters,
And he that hath no money; come ye, buy and eat;
Yea, come, buy wine and milk
Without money and without price.
Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread;
And your labor for that which satisfieth not?
Hearken diligently unto Me, and eat ye that which is good,
And let your soul delight itself in fatness.
Incline your ear, and come unto Me:
To any weary-hearted wanderer who has long chased the mirage, we would tender the Savior's gracious invitation: "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light." Justified through faith in the Son of God and sanctified by His Spirit, you will find that repose which you have so long unsuccessfully sought in an ensnaring world. The Savior's commandments you will discover to be not grievous, His service to be perfect freedom. The close of life, which to so many reveals only the illusions they have followed, shall to you furnish matter for adoring and grateful retrospection. Death itself will be stripped of its sting. It shall prove the portal through which you shall enter upon joys infinite in degree and everlasting in duration, while through eternity you shall bless that Divine grace which first led you to abandon forever the vain pursuit of THE MIRAGE OF LIFE.
The book of Proverbs, portions of which are quoted in this little volume, we would especially commend to the attention of those who have come to know the Lord as Savior, as giving heavenly wisdom for an earthly path. "It is a great blessing to be provided with a book that sets forth the path of prudence and of what is really life, and that in connection with a wisdom which comes from God. This path is amidst the labyrinth of this world in which a false step may lead to such bitter consequences." Some of these have been illustrated in the lives of those brought before us in THE MIRAGE OF LIFE.
The book of Ecclesiastes is also quoted from and in a certain sense is the converse of the book of Proverbs. It is the experience of a man who makes trial of everything under the sun that could be supposed capable of rendering men happy through everything that human capacity can entertain as a means of joy.
The effect of this trial was the discovery that all is vanity and vexation of spirit; that every effort to be happy in possessing the earth, in whatever way it may be, ends in nothing.
The heavenly calling of the Christian can only be found in the New Testament.
The above quotations are from the Synopsis by J.N.D. And below we give a quotation from his lecture on First John.
“We must be broken off from the world. He gives us everything needful in the way but never presents that as our end. This world is neither Canaan nor Egypt, but a wilderness. By clinging to it we are not in the wilderness but in Egypt and that is why we need chastening; for if we would make a Canaan of it, then it will become Egypt to us. The moment we make it our home and settle down in it, it is our Egypt.”
“Love not the world,
Neither the things
That are in the world.
If any man love the world,
The love of the Father
Is not in him.
“For all that is in the world,
The lust of the flesh, and
The lust of the eyes, and
The pride of life,
Is not of the Father,
But is of the world.
“And the world passeth away,
And the lust thereof
But he that doeth
The will of God
Abideth forever."