“All things are full of labor; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.” (Ecclesiastes 1:8)

“O satisfy us early with thy mercy; That we may rejoice and be glad all our days.” (Psalm 90:14)

“Now the soul of man finds an imperfection in everything here, and cannot scrape up a perfect satisfaction and felicity. In the highest fruitions of worldly things, it is still pursuing something else, which speaks a defect in what it already hath. The world may afford a felicity for our dust, the body, but not for the inhabitant in it; it is too mean for that. Is there any one soul among the sons of men, that can upon due inquiry say, it was at rest and wanted no more, that hath not sometimes had desires after an immaterial good? The soul ‘follows hard’ after such a thing, and hath frequent looks after it, Ps. 63:8. Man desires a stable good, but no sublunary thing is so; and he that doth not desire such a good, wants the rational nature of a man. This is as natural as understanding, will, and conscience. Whence should the soul of man have those desires? How came it to understand that something is still wanting to make its nature more perfect, if there were not in it some notion of a more perfect being, which can give it rest?

Can such a capacity be supposed to be in it without something in being able to satisfy it? If so, the noblest creature in the world is miserablest, and in a worse condition than any other: other creatures obtain their ultimate desires, ‘they are filled with good,’ Ps. 104:28; and shall man only have a vast desire without any possibility of enjoyment? Nothing in man is in vain: he hath objects for his affections, as well as affections for objects. Every member of his body hath its end, and doth attain it. Every affection of his soul hath an object, and that in this world; and shall there be none for his desire, which comes nearest to infinite of any affection planted in him? This boundless desire had not its original from man himself. Nothing would render itself restless; something above the bounds of this world implanted those desires after a higher good, and made him restless in everything else. And since the soul can only rest in that which is infinite, there is something infinite for it to rest in. Since nothing in the world, though a man had the whole, can give it a satisfaction, there is something above the world only capable to do it, otherwise the soul would be always without it, and be more in vain than any other creature.

There is therefore some infinite being that can only give a contentment to the soul, and this is God. And that goodness which implanted such desires in the soul would not do it to no purpose, and mock it in giving it an infinite desire of satisfaction, without intending it the pleasure of enjoyment, if it doth not by its own folly deprive itself of it. The felicity of human nature must needs exceed that which is allotted to other creatures.” Stephen Charnock, The Complete Works of Stephen Charnock, Vol. 1. (Edinburgh; London; Dublin: James Nichol; James Nisbet and Co.; W. Robertson; G. Herbert, 1864–1866), 170–171.

“The fact is, that neither wealth, nor honor, nor anything that is of mortal birth can ever fill the insatiable, immortal soul of man. The heart of man has an everlasting hunger given to it, and if you could put worlds into its mouth it would still crave for more; it is so thirsty, that if all the rivers drained themselves into it, still, like the deep sea which is never full, the heart would yet cry out for more. Man is truly like the horse-leech; ever he says, ‘Give! give! give!’ and until the Cross be given to the insatiable heart, till Jesus Christ, who is the fullness of him that filleth all in all, be bestowed, the heart of man never can be full.” C. H. Spurgeon, “The Young Man’s Prayer,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, Vol. 9. Originally preached on June 7, 1863. (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1863), 319.

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be thankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. (San Francisco: Harper-Collins, 1952), 136f.