(c) The implied Absurdity of it. What a contrast between the safe
'munitions of rocks' and the unsheltered security of these Damascene
gardens! What fools to leave the heights and come down into the plain!
Think of the contrast between the sufficiency of God and the emptiness
of the substitutes. Forgetfulness of Him and preference of creatures
cannot be put into language which does not convict it of absurdity.

II. The Busy Effort and Apparent Success of a Godless Life.

(a) If a man loses his hold on God and has not Him to stay himself on,
he is driven to painful efforts to make up the loss. God is needed by
every soul. If the soul is not satisfied in Him, then there are hungry
desires. This is the explanation of the feverish activity of much of our
life.

(b) Such work is far harder than the work of serving God. It takes a
great deal of toil to make that garden grow. The world is a hard
taskmaster. God's service is easy. He sets us in Eden to till and dress
it, but when we forget Him, the ground is cursed, and bears thorns and
thistles, and sweat drips from our brows.

Men take more pains to damn themselves than to save themselves. There is
nothing more wearying than the pursuit of pleasure. 'Pleasant
plants'--that is a hopeless kind of gardening. There is nothing more
degrading.

'Ye lust and desire to have,'--what a contrast is in, Ask and have! We
might live even as the lilies or the ravens, or with only this
difference, that we laboured, but were as uncaring and as peaceful as
they.