We live in an age of progress, – an age of steam-engines and machinery, of locomotion and invention. We live in an age when the multitude are increasingly absorbed in earthly things, — in railways, and docks, and mines, and commerce, and trade, and banks, and shops, and cotton, and corn, and iron, and gold. We live in an age when there is a false glare on the things of time, and a great mist over the things of eternity. In an age like this it is the bounden duty of the ministers of Christ to fall back upon first principles. Necessity is laid upon us. Woe is unto us, if we do not press home on men our Lord’s question about the soul! Woe is unto us, if we do not cry aloud, ‘The world is not all. The life that we now live in the flesh is not the only life. There is a life to come. We have souls.’ 

– J.C. Ryle, Old Paths, pg. 40

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