TIME AND ETERNITY.

[Preached at Lincoln's Inn, 1823, and at Madras, March 4. 1826.]

2 COR. iv. 18.

We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

THERE is an ancient fable told by the Greek and Roman Churches, which, fable as it is, may, for its beauty and singularity, well deserve to be remembered, that in one of the earliest persecutions to which the Christian world was exposed, seven Christian youths sought concealment in a lonely cave, and there, by God's appointment, fell into a deep and death-like slumber. They slept, the legend runs, two hundred years, till the greater part of mankind had received the faith of the Gospel; and that Church which they had left a poor and afflicted orphan, had "kings" for her "nursing fathers, and queens" for her "nursing mothers.”* They then at length awoke, and entering into their native Ephesus, so altered now that its streets were altogether unknown to them, they cautiously en

quired if there were any Christians in the city? "Christians!" was the answer,-" we are all Christians here!" and they heard with a thankful joy the change which, since they left the world, had taken place in the opinions of its inhabitants. On one side they were shown a stately fabric adorned with a gilded cross, and dedicated, as they were told, to the worship of their crucified Master; on another, schools for the public exposition of those Gospels, of which, so short a time before, the bare possession was proscribed and deadly. But no fear was now to be entertained of those miseries which had encircled the cradle of Christianity; no danger now of the rack, the lions, or the sword; the emperor and his prefects held the same faith with themselves; and all the wealth of the East, and all the valour and authority of the western world, were exerted to protect and endow the professors and the teachers of their religion.

But joyful as these tidings must, at first, have been, their further enquiries are said to have met with answers which very deeply surprised and pained them. They learned that the greater part of those who called themselves by the name of Christ, were strangely regardless of the blessings which Christ had bestowed, and of the obligations which he had laid on his followers. They found that, as the world had become Christian, Christianity itself had become worldly; and wearied and sorrowful they besought of God to lay them asleep again, crying out to those who followed them, "You have

shown us many heathens who have given up their old idolatry without gaining any thing better in its room; many who are of no religion at all; and many with whom the religion of Christ is no more than a cloak of licentiousness: but where, where are the Christians?" And thus they returned to their cave; and there God had compassion on them, releasing them, once for all, from that world for whose reproof their days had been lengthened, and removing their souls to the society of their ancient friends and pastors, the martyrs and saints of an earlier and a better generation.

The admiration of former times is a feeling at first, perhaps, engrafted on our minds by the regrets of those who vainly seek in the evening of life for the sunny tints which adorned their morning landscape; and who are led to fancy a deterioration in surrounding objects, when the change is in themselves, and the twilight in their own powers of perception. It is probable that, as each age of the individual or the species is subject to its peculiar dangers, so each has its peculiar and compensating advantages; and that the difficulties which, at different periods of the world's duration, have impeded the believer's progress to Heaven, though in appearance infinitely various, are, in amount, very nearly equal. It is probable that no age is without its sufficient share of offences, of judgments, of graces, and of mercies, and that the corrupted nature of mankind was never otherwise than hostile or in

remedy its misery. Had we lived in the times of the infant Church, even amid the blaze of miracle on the one hand, and the chastening fires of persecution on the other, we should have heard, perhaps, no fewer complaints of the cowardice and apostacy, the dissimulation and murmuring, inseparable from a continuance of public distress and danger, than we now hear regrets for those days of wholesome affliction, when the mutual love of believers was strengthened by their common danger; when their want of worldly advantages disposed them to regard a release from the world with hope far more than with apprehension, and compelled the Church to cling to her Master's cross alone for comfort and for succour.

Still, however, it is most wonderful, yea, rather by this very consideration is our wonder increased at the circumstance, that in any or every age of Christianity, such inducements and such menaces as the religion of Christ displays should be regarded with so much indifference, and postponed for objects so trifling and comparatively worthless. If there were no other difference but that of duration between the happiness of the present life and of the life which is to follow, or though it were allowed us to believe that the enjoyments of earth were, in every other respect, the greater and more desirable of the two, this single consideration of its eternity would prove the wisdom of making Heaven the object of our more earnest care and concern; of retaining its image constantly in our minds; of applying ourselves with a more excellent zeal to every thing which can

help us in its attainment, and of esteeming all things as less than worthless which are set in comparison with its claims, or which stand in the way of its purchase.

Accordingly, this is the motive which St. Paul assigns for a contempt of the sufferings and pleasures, the hopes and fears, of the life which now is, in comparison with the pleasures and sufferings, the fears and hopes, which are, in another life, held out to each of us. And it is a reason which must carry great weight to the mind of every reasonable being, inasmuch as any thing which may end soon, and must end some time or other, is, supposing all other circumstances equal, or even allowing to the temporal good a very large preponderance of pleasure, of exceedingly less value than that which, once attained, is alike safe from accident and decay, the enjoyment of which is neither to be checked by insecurity, nor palled by long possession, but which must continue thenceforth in everlasting and incorruptible blessedness, as surely as God himself is incorruptible and everlasting. But when, besides this great and preponderating consideration, we recollect the hollow and unsatisfactory nature of all the enjoyments and advantages which the present life can supply; when we recollect how small a share of those enjoyments the generality of mankind can hope for, and that those men who have seemed to fare most plentifully at the feast of worldly happiness have yet, by their own acknowledgments, arisen from that feast unsatisfied and disappointed; when