_Direct._ VIII. Remember the swift and constant motion of your neglected time. What haste it makes! and never stays! That which was here while you spake the last word, is gone before you can speak the next! Whatever you are doing, or saying, or thinking of, it is passing on without delay! It stayeth not while you sleep! Whether you remember, and observe it, and make use of it, or not, it glides away! It stayeth not your leisure! It hasteth as fast while you play, as while you work; while you sin, as when you repent! No monarch so potent as to command it a moment to attend his will! We have no more Joshuas to stop the sun. It is above the jurisdiction of the princes of the earth: it will not hear them if they command or request it to delay its haste but the smallest moment! Crowns and kingdoms would be no price, to hire it to loiter but while you draw another breath! Your lives are not like the clothes of the Israelites in the wilderness, that wax not old; but like the provisions of the Gibeonites, worn and wasted while you are passing but a little way! And is time so swift, and you so slow? Will you stand still and see it pass away, as if you had no use for it; no work to do; nor any account to give?
_Direct._ IX. Consider also, how unrecoverable time is when it is past. Take it now, or it is lost for ever. All the men on earth, with all their power, and all their wit, are not able to recall one minute that is gone! All the riches in this world cannot redeem it, by reversing one of those hours or moments, which you so prodigally cast away for nothing. If you would cry and call after it till you tear your hearts, it will not return. Many a thousand have tried this by sad experience, and have cried out too late, Oh that we had now that time again which we made so light of! But none of them did ever attain their wish! No more will you. Take it therefore while you have it. It is now as liberal to the poorest beggar as to the greatest prince! Time is as much yours as his. Though in your youth and folly you spend as out of the full heap, as if time would never have an end, you shall find it is not like the widow's oil, or the loaves and fishes, multiplied by a miracle; but the hour is at hand, when you will wish you had gathered the fragments and the smallest crumbs, that nothing of so precious a commodity had been lost; even the little minutes, which you thought you might neglect and be no losers. Try whether you can stop the present moment, or recall that which is gone by already, before you vilify or loiter away any more; lest you repent too late.