restlessness

"What meaneth this restlessness of our nature? What meaneth this unceasing activity which longs for exercise and employment, even after every object is gained which first roused it to enterprise? What mean those unmeasurable longings which no gratification can extinguish, and which still continue to agitate the heart of man, even in the fullness of plenty and of enjoyment? If they mean anything at all, they mean that all which this world can offer is not enough to fill up his capacity for happiness--that time is too small for him and he is born for something beyond it--that the scene of his earthly existence is too limited and he is formed to expatiate in a wider and a grander theatre--that a nobler destiny is reserved for him--and that to accomplish the purpose of his being he must soar above the littleness of the world and aim at a loftier prize.

It forms the peculiar honour and excellence of religion that it accommodates to this property of our nature--that it holds out a prize suited to our high calling--that there is a grandeur in its objects which can fill and surpass the imagination--that it reveals to the eye of faith the glories of an imperishable world--and how from the high eminencies of heaven a great cloud of witnesses are looking down upon earth, not as a scene for the petty anxieties of time, but as a splendid theatre for the ambition of immortal spirits." ~Thomas Chalmers