Contentment

We prize but little what we share only in common with the rest, or with the generality of our species.… The common benefits of our nature entirely escape us. Yet these are the great things. These constitute what most properly ought to be accounted blessings of Providence; what alone, if we might so speak, are worthy of its care. Nightly rest and daily bread, the ordinary use of our limbs, and senses, and understandings, are gifts which admit of no comparison with any other. Yet, because almost every man we meet with possesses these, we leave them out of our enumeration. They raise no sentiment; they move no gratitude. Now, herein, is our judgment perverted by our selfishness. A blessing ought in truth to be the more satisfactory, the bounty at least of the donor is rendered more conspicuous, by its very diffusion, its commonness, its cheapness; by its falling to the lot, and forming the happiness, of the great bulk and body of our species, as well as of ourselves.… It is in those things which are so common as to be no distinction, that the amplitude of the divine benignity is perceived.

On the whole subject of religion one rule of modesty and soberness is to be observed, and it is this: In obscure matters not to speak or think, or even long to know, more than the Word of God has delivered. A second rule is that in reading the Scriptures we should constantly direct our inquiries and meditations to those things which tend to edification, not indulge in curiosity or in studying things of no use. And since the Lord has been pleased to instruct us, not in frivolous questions, but in solid piety, in the fear of his name, in true faith, and the duties of holiness, let us rest satisfied with such knowledge.

Never does a soul know what solid joy and substantial pleasure is till, once being weary of itself, it renounces all propriety, gives itself up to the author of its being, and feels itself become a hallowed and devoted thing; and can say from an inward sense and feeling, My beloved is mine (I account all his interest mine own) and I am his: I am content to be anything for him, and care not for myself, but that I may serve him.