I. St. Paul tells us that the time is short. In one sense not an unimportant one time is very long. The great God who is working out His plan in the universe has no stint of time. What we see is but a point in an infinite line, of which we can see neither beginning nor end. It is thoughts like these which free us from besetting impatience, that strengthen faith. We may be in a hurry and restless, but God is in no hurry; the evolution of His purpose is certain, though to us it may seem slow. It is like the movement of the shadow on the sundial. But it is quite possible to dwell too much on this aspect of Him, and to let it paralyse our action and make us fatalists. And it is therefore the more necessary to think of St. Paul's view that time is short; to learn how to be earnest without being impatient, to know that our time is short, and that we have much to do, and yet to be willing when we have done our best to leave the result in God's hands.
II. The time is very short for the work we have to do. There is: (1) the work of self-discipline, the discipline of the mind; (2) the opening of the mind in new directions; (3) the discipline of the flesh; (4) work for others and for God. God shows us His work to do in the world and bids us help, but our help must be genuinely our own; if we will not do our work, then it remains undone undone for ever. Here lies the infinite pathos of wasted time; it is irrecoverably gone. If we do not do what we have to do, not we ourselves, nor any one else, not God Himself, can do the work. It is left undone. Do you remember a passage of George Eliot which ends "God cannot do Antonio Stradivari's work without Antonio"? Some two or three centuries ago, in a town in North Italy, lived Antonio Stradivari, a maker of violins. They are now world-famous and almost priceless. Some one once sneeringly told him that if God wanted violins He could certainly make them for Himself, and Antonio said, No, that this was Antonio Stradivari's work; not even God could do it without Antonio. This saying is daring, but true true for him, and true for you and me. You and I have our work to do, our work for God and for one another, and God cannot do our work for us. We must do it ourselves, and our time is short
J. M. Wilson, Sermons in Clifton College Chapel,p. 79.
Suppose a man with more or less struggle, with what grace he can, has accepted the shortness of life as a conviction. What effect will that conviction have upon his life? What effect ought it to have? Evidently it ought to go deeper than his spirits. It ought to do something more than make him glad or sorry.
I. First of all, must it not make a man try to sift the things that offer themselves to him, and then to find out what his things are? The indiscriminateness of most men's lives impresses us more and more. Many men's souls are like omnibuses, stopping to take up every interest or taste that holds up its finger and beckons them from the side walk. Conscientiousness, self-knowledge, independence, and the toleration of other men's freedom which always goes with the most serious and deep assertion of our own freedom, are closely connected with the sense that life is short.
II. The sense of the shortness of life brings a power of freedom in dealing with the things which we do take to be our own. He who knows he is in the world for a very little while, who knows it and feels it, is not like a man who is to live here for ever. He strikes for the centre of living. He cares for the principles and not for the forms of life. He is like a climber on a rocky pathway, who sets his foot upon each projecting point of stone, but who treads on each, not for its own sake, but for the. sake of the one above it.
III. In the shortness of life the great emotions and experiences by which the human character is ruled and shaped assume their largest power and act with their most ennobling influence.
IV. All men who have believed that there was another life have held in some way that this life was critical, and man is made so that some sense of criticalness is necessary to the most vigorous and best life always.
V. When your time of intercourse is short with any man, your relations with that man grow true and deep. Cannot the men and women whom we live with now be sacred to us by the knowledge of what wonderful mysterious ground it is that we are walking on together, here in this narrow human life, close on the borders of eternity?
Phillips Brooks, Sermons,p. 313.
References: 1 Corinthians 7:29. Preacher's Monthly,vol. vii., p. 338; J. S. Howson, Penny Pulpit,No. 3961.