(2) Again, this is true with respect to ourselves. — " The fashion of this world passeth away " in us. The feelings we have now are not those which we had in childhood. There has passed away a glory from the earth — the stars, the sun, the moon, the green fields have lost their beauty and significance — nothing remains as it was, except their repeated impressions on the mind, the impressions of time, space, eternity, colour, form; these cannot alter, but all besides has changed. Our very minds alter. There is no bereavement so painful, no shock so terrible, but time will remove or alleviate it. The keenest feeling in this world time wears out at last, and our minds become like old monumental tablets which have lost the inscription once graven deeply upon them.
Tf Jesus (on whom be peace !) said, " The world is a bridge ; pass over it, but do not build upon it." — Inscription on a bridge at Fatehpur Sikri2
Tf Perhaps no one has pictured with truer hand the changing fashion of the world in the passing of human life than Long-
1 James Martineau. 2 Field, A Little Book of Eastern Wisdom, 97.
i CORINTHIANS vn. 29-31 233
fellow in his poem, "The Old Clock on the Stairs," in which he tells
us that
Through days of sorrow and of mirth, Through days of death and days of birth, Through every swift vicissitude Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood, And as if, like God, it all things saw, It calmly repeats those words of awe, — "For ever — never! Never — for ever!"
In that mansion used to be Free-hearted Hospitality ; His great fires up the chimney roared; The stranger feasted at his board; But, like the skeleton at the feast, That warning timepiece never ceased, — " For ever — never ! « Never — for ever ! "
There groups of merry children played,
There youths and maidens dreaming strayed ;
0 precious hours ! 0 golden prime,
And affluence of love and time !
Even as a miser counts his gold,
Those hours the ancient timepiece told, —
"For ever — never!
Never — for ever!"
From that chamber, clothed in white, The bride came forth on her wedding night; There, in that silent room below, The dead lay in his shroud of snow; And in the hush that followed the prayer, Was heard the old clock on the stair, —
"For ever — never!
Never — for ever!"
All are scattered now and fled, Some are married, some are dead; And when I ask, with throbs of pain, " Ah ! when shall they all meet again ? " As in the days long since gone by, The ancient timepiece makes reply, —
"For ever — never!
Never — for ever!"
234 SPIRITUAL DETACHMENT
Never here, for ever there, Where all parting, pain, and care, And death, and time shall disappear,— For ever there, but never here! The horologe of Eternity Sayeth this incessantly, —
"For ever — never!
Never — for ever!"
Adaptability.
Literature.
Banks (L. A.), Hidden Wells of Comfort, 79. Bramston (J. T.), Fratribus, 34. Capen (E. H.), The College and the Higher Life, 195. Clarke (J. E.), Common-Life Sermons, 159. Darlow (T. H.), The Upward Calling, 13. Doney (C. G.), The Throne-Room of the Soul, 89. Goulbum (E. M.), Occasional Sermons, ii. 139. Greenhough (J. G.), The Mind of Christ in St. Paul, 156. Horwill (H. W.), The Old Gospel in the New Era, 15. Irons (J. C.), Memorial of a Faithful Ministry, 208. Jenkins (E. E.), Life and Christ, 167. Keble (J.), Sermons for Saints* Days, 100. Liddon (H. P.), Clerical Life and Work, 311.
„ Sermons on Special Occasions, 26.
Lightfoot (J. B.), Sermons on Special Occasions, 55. Maclaren (A.), Expositions : 1 and 2 Corinthians, 142. Metcalf (R), The Abiding Memory, 29. Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xx. (1874) No. 1170;
xxv. (1879) No. 1507. Young (D. T.), The Enthusiasm of God, 13. Christian World Pulpit, xvii. 138 (Beecher) ; xviii. 60 (Charlton) ; li. 65
(Holland), 280 (Stalker), 308 (Thomas) ; lxxv. 353 (Carpenter). Contemporary Pulpit, 2nd Ser., i. 165 (Goulburn). Homiletic Review, xlv. 323 (Gregg).
**
Adaptability.
I am become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some. i Cor. ix. 22.
No one, perhaps, of St. Paul's sayings describes the general effect of his life and character with such terseness, or so vividly, as this. Not that the Apostle can be thought of as deliberately framing an epigram which might afterwards do duty in a biography. He is on his defence, as against the charge, widely circulated by his Corinthian opponents, that he was really a selfish person who was making a good thing out of the Gospel ; he is showing that, if he chose to stand upon the letter of his rights, he might have claimed more, and done less, than he did. Had silence been possible, we may be sure that he would gladly have said nothing about himself ; but since there is this hostile criticism in the way of his usefulness, and he is forced to speak, he boldly asserts the rights which he had waived, and the lofti- ness of the motives which governed him. In so varied and complex a life as his, there was of course much that could not be compressed into any single saying ; but nowhere else does he so nearly bring himself before us as a whole, or trace with so delicate yet powerful a hand the leading feature of his great career, as in the words, " I am become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some."