Time

There are few words much oftener in our mouths than that short but most important word, time. In one sense, the thought of it seems to mingle itself with almost everything which we do. It is the long measure of our labour, expectation, and pain; it is the scanty measure of our rest and joy. Its shortness or its length are continually given as our reason for doing, or leaving undone, the various works which concern our station, our calling, our family, our souls. What present time is; which it is most difficult to conceive, if we try it by more exact thought than we commonly bestow on it; for even as we try to catch it, though but in idea, it slips by us. Subdivide ore" measure as we may, we never actually reach it. It was future, it is past; it is the meeting point of these two, and itself, it seems, is not. And so, again, whether there is really any future time; whether it can exist, except in our idea, before it is. Or whether there can be any past time; what that can be which is no more; whose track of light has vanished from us in the darkness; which is as a shadow that swept by us, and is gone. All this is full of wonder, and it may become, in many ways, most useful matter of reflection to those who can bear to look calmly into the depths of their being. It may lead us to remember how much of what is round us here is, after all, seeming and unreal, and so force us from our too ready commerce with visible shadows into communion with invisible realities. It may show us how continually we are mocked in the regions of the senses and the understanding, and so drive us for certainty and truth to the higher gifts of redeemed reason and fellowship with God. It may abate the pride of argument on spiritual things, and teach us to take more humbly what has been revealed. And this should give us higher notions of that eternity towards which we are ever drifting on. We are apt to think of it as being merely prolonged time. But the true idea of eternity is not prolonged time, but time abolished. To enter on eternity is to pass out of the succession of time into this everlasting present. And this suggests to us the two remarkable characters, which together make up the best account we can give of time. The one — how completely, except in its issue, it passes from us: the other — how entirely, in that issue, it ever abides with us. In itself how completely does it pass away. Past time, with all its expectations, pains, and pleasures, how it is gone from us! The pleasures and the pains of childhood, of youth, nay, even of the last year, where are they? Every action has tended more to strengthen the capricious tyranny of our self-will, or to bring us further under the blessed liberty of Christ's law. We are the sum of all this past time. It was the measure of our opportunities, of our growth. We are the result of all these minutes. And if we thus look on past time, how, at this break in our lives, should we look on to the future? Surely with calm trust, and with resolutions of increased earnestness. Let our thanksgivings grow into the one, our humiliation change into the other. If time is the opportunity and measure of this growth, what a work have we to perform in it! How should we strive to store it full with deeds which may indeed abide!

(Bishop S. Wilberforce.)