The fleeting allure of sinful pleasures contrasts sharply with the enduring joy found in righteousness, reminding believers that indulgence in vice ultimately leads to emptiness and spiritual darkness (Hebrews 11:25). Christian preaching often uses images of temporary flashes of light or momentary sweetness to depict the deceptive nature of sin's allure.
Sensual pleasures deceive and harm those who seek them, like a tree that drops stones.
Ariosto, in one of his romantic legends, tells us of a tree, many-branched, and covered with delectable bunches; but whose shook that tree to win the fruit, found, too late, that not fruit, but stones of crushing weight, came down upon his head. The sensualities which fools call pleasure are such a tree: they who seek its fruit become its victims. S. Coley.
Temporary pleasures can lead to early torment, revealing sin's ultimate penalty.
Pleasure is but like a wooden frame set under an arch till it be strong enough of its own weight to stand alone; so when, by any means, the Devil hath a man sure, he takes no longer care to cozen him with pleasures, but is content that he should begin an early hell, and be tormented before the time. Jeremy Taylor.
Momentary pleasure can bring lasting regret and bondage, as Lysimachus' story illustrates.
Lysimachus having his city besieged, and himself, with his whole army, being in great danger of perishing by thirst, in exchange for a cup of cold water, he delivered up the keys of the city to his enemy, which cold comfort he had no sooner tasted but his tongue bewrayed the grief of his heart, saying, "Oh that, in lieu of so momentary a pleasure, I should be made, of a sovereign, a servant; of a king, a captive!" It were to be wished that every one would apply this, and meditate with Microm, what shall the fornicator get, enduring an ocean of torture for a drop of pleasure? "Sweet meat must have sour sauce," says another. Spencer.
Pursuit of worldly pleasure leads to eternal loss, exemplified by Faust's tragic fate.
PLEASURE, Price of Goethe, in his "Faust," introduces for his hero a student longing for the pleasures of knowledge. The Devil appears to seduce him from his pursuit. Faust is to have all possible sensual enjoyment in life, but is to pay for it by yielding his soul to the Devil at last. At the end, Mephistophiles, jealous of his claim, appears and carries off his victim, the student's lost soul.
Worldly pleasures are brief flashes that leave darkness, unlike lasting true happiness.
You have seen the canopy of heaven covered with the black clouds of a thunder-storm, and every now and then the darkness has been made more visible or sensible by sudden flashes of lightning. Just like these flashes are the pleasures of the world: they last but for a moment, and leave darkness and misery behind; whereas true happiness sheds a continual daylight on the soul. Penny Magazine.
Pleasure enslaves more than hardship, leading to loss of health and happiness.
Philanthropists in prison cells, missionaries to the Fiji Islanders, people doing rescue work in the worst sections of great cities, Livingstone in Africa, all these, through zeal, can work till midnight to save lost men, but the votary of pleasure will toil on up and down a waxed floor till daylight, until the head reels and the whole heart is sick. In his “Confessions” Tolstoi says that for ten years he went from banquet to banquet, drinking rich wines, feasting, following his tailor, concocting flatteries, lies, sleeping by day and dissipating at night, and he adds, “My observation is that no galley-slave or apostle like Paul has to toil as hard as a society man and a society woman,” and both have lost their beauty, their happiness and their health before the life course is half run. So pleasure makes its disciples become galley-slaves. But pleasure promised a velvet path, air heavy with roses, the wine and nectar of Venus and Bacchus. Pleasure promised perfumed bowers, days of happiness, nights of laughter and song. But pleasure is a deceiver. (Text.)
— N. D. HILLIS
Many women pursue superficial pleasures, neglecting their higher spiritual duties.
What most women want to-day is a donkey-load of Paris dresses for their bodies, an automobile to pull them around, an army of servants to hook them up and then to unhook them. The mammonism of men to-day is the outer and physical embodiment of the inner and essential vulgarity of the whole pleasure-loving mob of women on the avenues, with their sipping of cocktails at the beginning of the meal in great restaurants, their flashing of jewels, their parade of gowns, their killing of time through bridge and games of chance. Killing time! When these golden hours are more precious than the purple drops of paradise itself. Oh, these superficial, frivolous, vapid women, who have turned their beautiful bodies into something scarcely better than the wire stands that exhibit gowns in merchants’ windows. And they use their very beauty as exemption from duty!
— N. D. HILLIS
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