on the verge of the grave, what he thinks of Time and Life.  He will tell you that the three-score years and ten, or even the hundred-and-twenty years of Jacob, are but “few and evil.”  And, therefore, if you are tempted to unbelief in respect to this question, we appeal to experience—­experience alone can judge of its truth.

Once more, time is short with reference to its opportunities.  For this is the emphatic meaning in the original—­literally, “the opportunity is compressed, or shut in.”  Brethren, time may be long, and yet the opportunity may be very short.  The sun in autumn may be bright and clear, but the seed which has not been sown until then will not vegetate.  A man may have vigour and energy in manhood and maturity, but the work which ought to have been done in childhood and youth cannot be done in old age.  A chance once gone in this world can never be recovered.

Brother men—­have you learned the meaning of yesterday?  Do you rightly estimate the importance of to-day?  That there are duties to be done to-day which cannot be done to-morrow?  This it is that throws so solemn a significance into your work.  The time for working is short, therefore begin to-day; “for the night is coming when no man can work.”  Time is short in reference to eternity.  It was especially with this reference that the text was written.  In those days, and even by the apostles themselves, the day of the Lord’s appearance and second advent seemed much nearer than it was.  They believed that it would occur during their own lives.  And with this belief came the feeling which comes sometimes to all.  “Oh, in comparison with that vast Hereafter, this little life shrivels into nothing!  What is to-day worth, or its duties or its cares?” All deep minds have thought that.  The thought of Time is solemn and awful to all minds in proportion to their depth—­and in proportion as the mind is superficial, the thought has appeared little, and has been treated with levity.  Brethren, let but a man possess himself of that thought—­the deep thought of the brevity of time; this thought—­that time is short, and that eternity is long—­and he has learned the first great secret of unworldliness.

2.  The second motive which the apostle gives us is the changing character of the external world.  “The fashion of this world passeth away”—­literally “the scenery of this world,” a dramatic expression, drawn from the Grecian stage.  One of the deepest of modern thinkers has told us in words often quoted, “All the world’s a stage.”  And a deeper thinker than he, because inspired, had said long before in the similar words of the text, “the scenery of this world passeth away.”

There are two ways in which this is true.  First, it is true with respect to all the things by which we are surrounded.  It is only in poetry—­the poetry of the Psalms for example—­that the