Unsatisfied Appetite by Dr. South

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 17, 1871

Unsatisfied Appetite.

By Dr. South

Must it not now be one of the greatest miseries for a man to have a perpetual hunger upon him, and to have his appetite grow fiercer and sharper amid the very objects and opportunities of satisfaction? Yet so it is usually with men hugely rich. They have, and they covet; riches flow in upon them, and yet riches are the only things they are still looking after. Their desires are answered, and while they are answered they are enlarged; they grow wider and stronger, and bring such a dropsy upon the soul, that the more it takes in the more it may; just like some drunkards, who even drink themselves athirst, and have no reason in the world for their drinking more but their having drank too much already. There cannot be a greater plague than to be always baited with the importunities of a growing appetite. Beggars are troublesome, even in the streets as we pass through them; but how much more when a man shall carry a perpetually clamorous beggar in his breast, which shall never leave off crying, Give, give, whether a man has anything to give or not! Such a one, though ever so rich, is like a man with a numerous charge of children, with a great many hungry mouths about him to be fed, and little or nothing to feed them with. For he creates to himself a kind of new nature, by bringing himself under the power of new necessities and desires. Whereas nature considered in itself, and as true to its own rules, is contented with little, and reason and religion enables us to take up with less, and so adds to its strength by contracting its appetites and retrenching its occasions.—Dr. South.