The Bitterest Ingredient in the Cup of Divine Displeasure by Samuel Davies

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4 18

Visible things are perishable, and may soon leave us. When we think that they are ours, they often fly from our embrace. Riches may vanish into smoke and ashes by an accidental fire. We may be thrown down from the pinnacle of honour, and sink into utter disgrace. Sensual pleasures often end in excess and disgust, or in sickness and death. Our friends are torn from our bleeding hearts by the inexorable hand of death. Our liberty and property may be wrested from us by the hand of tyranny, oppression, or fraud. In a word, there is nothing which we now enjoy, but we may quickly lose.

On the other hand, our miseries here on earth are temporary. The heart receives many a wound, but it heals again. Poverty may end in riches. A blemished character may be cleared up, and from disgrace we may rise to honor. We may recover from sickness. and if we lose one comfort, we may obtain another.

But, in eternity, everything is everlasting and unchangeable. Happiness and misery are both without end, and the subjects of both well known that this is the case. It is this eternality and perpetuity which completes the happiness of the inhabitants of heaven. The least suspicion of an end would intermingle itself with all their enjoyments and embitter them, for the greater the happiness, the greater the anxiety at the expectation of losing it.

But oh, how transporting for the saints on high
To look forward through the succession of eternal ages,
With an assurance that they shall be happy
Through them all, and that they shall feel no change
But from glory unto glory.

On the other hand, this is the bitterest ingredient in the cup of divine displeasure in the future state, that the misery is eternal. Oh, with what horror does that despairing cry, Forever, forever, forever, echo through the vaults of hell!

And now, need I offer anything further to convince you of the superior importance of invisible and eternal things to visible and temporal things? Can you need any arguments to convince you that an eternity of the most perfect happiness is rather to be chosen than a few years of sordid, unsatisfying, sinful pleasures?