"Our religion is our recreation" - Spurgeon on Delight

"The thought of delight in religion is so strange to most men, that no two words in their language stand farther apart than ‘holiness’ and ‘delight.’ Ah, but believers who know Christ, understand that delight and faith are so blessedly married, that the gates of hell cannot prevail to divorce them. They who love God with all their hearts, find that his ways are ways of pleasantness, and all his paths are peace. Such joy, such brimful delights, such overflowing bliss, do the saints discover in their Lord, that so far from serving him from custom, they would follow him should all the world cast out his name as evil. We fear not God because of any compulsion, our faith is no fetter, our profession is no prison; we are not dragged to holiness, nor driven to duty. No, sirs, our religion is our recreation, our hope is our happiness, our duty is our delight.”

C. H. Spurgeon, The New Park Street Pulpit (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1994 reprint), Volume 1, page 66