{'Xcept in the moral and spiritual impressions left by it upon your souls. "The fashion -0f this world passeth away;" the whole structure, the modes of existence, the relations of existence in their variety and multiplicity, all present objects, the totality which no mind can compute,-all this is in motion, the duration has been shortened, and the end is near at hand. Reviewing this argument of the apostle, may we not claim that it presents time in a light altogether new, that its estimate of duration is somethin" intrinsically different from that measured by the time-keeper of the heavens, and that it inspires our sense of successional moments in a way peculiar to itself? Nothing in us is more closely connected with the external framework of the universe than our sensibility to time. Yet., while this natural capacity is subjected to.an outward machinery, it is also dominant over that machinery, so that an instant may be expanded into an hour or an hour into days. In this respect, moods assert a mastering force, emotions are well-nigh omnipotent, and the heavenly orbs take their motions from our pulses. If Christianity took no knowledge of this phenomenon of experience, it would be strangely exceptional to its method of operating on man, which allows no recess of his bein" to l"emain unvisited by its light and warmth. Its teaching is, "The time is shortcn~d," and it makes its doctrine available to practise us in the highest moral wisdom, usin" the world without abusing its relations. Now, it is worthy of notice that the civi~ lization of our century has advanced in no direction more remarkably than in victory over time. The era opened with the st.eam-engine, and has progressed with the telegraph and telephone, and, in each case, the triumph has been in a fuller control of time. Time has been shortened and yet lengthened, so that we do in weeks what our grandfathers required years to accomplish. Time has been intensified. To-day in Europe is to-day in the backwoods of America, and the yesterday of China and Egypt is a part of the breakfast table-talk of this morning. Obviously, sensuous life, in its connections and sympathies, gets the most, at present, of this stimulation. One, however, who takes a broad view of providence, cannot think that the tendency of this increased sensuousness is necessarily downwards into sensualism. For, indeed, Christianity is often most active where we least suspect itg presence, since the "kingdom of God," in ·civilization as in all else, "cometh not with observation." This enhanced sensuousness, if we read aright the signs of the times, is gathering together a vast fund of raw materials for transformation into a more capacious and robust Christian manhood. Within the realm of natural law, Christianity is signalizing its power more and more, and the day is not distant when "uniformity," "evolution," "homologies," will have a wider and profounder interpretation than they have now. "'l'he earth helped the woman;" it still helps the woman ; and age by age the apocalyptic wonder reveals fresh wonders. Silently, unobserved by the multitude, hidden even from scientific thinkers, God is reclaiming nature for his Son; and he who, eighteen hundred years ago, multiplied bread for the hungry, healed diseases, and established his claim as the Lord of nature, is making ready to reaffirm that sovereignty in a manner more resplendent than by miracles. And as to this matter of shortened and intensified time, who but the Lord Jesus as Son of man was the first sublime instance of ascendancy over the limitations of time? Thirty years of seclusion, three years of work, young manhood cut short in its prime, and yet those three years giving birth to centuries which, amid manifold evils, have yet steadily progressed in the direction of a regenerated humanity. For him, indeed, time was shortened, and his is the perfect example of using the world without the sli"htest abuse. And just in the proportion we have his Spirit, shall we feel that the so~! has a calendar of days unknown in the chronometry of the material '.l.niverse.-L.
Ver. 2.-Christianity and marriage. The human mind is influenced by the law of action and reaction, and hence human opinion tends to extremes. Corinth was a city famous, or rather infamous, for its licentiousness; not only was society corrupt; relicrion sanctioned and spread the prevalent moral corruption. No place was more rem~rkable for the union between splendour and impurity. When a Christian com- munity was formed at Corinth, it was natural enough that some of the old leaven of sensuality should appear and threaten to corrupt the mnss. Hence the tolerance of fornication and, in one case, even of adultery and incest. But whnt is remarkable is that in the very same society there should be a faction or a tendency of thought and en. vn. 1-40.] THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. 239