SERMON VII.
ON THE EMPLOYMENT OF TIME.
"Yet a little while am I with you, and then I go unto him that sent me." - John vii. 33.
An improper use of time is the source of all the disorders which reign amongst men. Some pass their whole life in idleness and sloth, equally useless to the world, their country, and themselves: others, in the tumult of business and worldly affairs. Some appear to exist only for the purpose of indulging an unworthy indolence, and escaping, by adversity of pleasures, from the weariness which every where pursues them, in proportion as they fly from it: others, in a continual search, amidst the cares of the world, for occupations which may deliver them from themselves. It appears that time is a common enemy, against which all men have agreed to conspire. Their whole life is one continued and deplorable anxiety to rid themselves of it. The happiest are those who best succeed in not feeling the weight of its duration: and the principal satisfaction they reap, either from frivolous pleasures or serious occupations, is the abridgment of days and moments, and deliverance from them, almost without a perception of their being passed.
Time, that precious deposit confided to us by the Lord, is therefore become a burden which fatigues and oppresses us. We dread, as the greatest of evils, its deprivation for ever; and we almost equally dread the obligation to support its weariness and duration. It is a treasure which we would wish to retain for ever, yet which we cannot suffer to remain in our possession.
This time, however, of which we make so little estimation, is the only mean of our eternal salvation. We lose it without regret, which is a crime; we employ it only for worldly purposes, which is a madness. Let us employ the time which God allows us, because it is short. Let us employ it only in labouring for our salvation, because it is only given us that we may be saved; that is to say, let us be sensible of the value of time, and let us lose it not : let us know the use of it, and employ it only for the purpose it was given. By these means, we shall avoid both the dangers of a slothful and the inconveniences of a hurried life. This is the subject of the present Discourse.
Part I. Three circumstances, in general, decide upon the value of things among men: the great advantages which may accrue to us from them; the short space we have to enjoy them; and, lastly, every hope destroyed of ever regaining them, if once lost. Now, behold, my brethren, the principal motives which ought to render time precious and estimable to every wise man: in the first place, it is the price of eternity: in the second place, it is short, and we cannot make too much haste to reap the benefit of it: and, lastly, it is irreparable; for, once lost, it can never be regained. It is the price of eternity. Yes, my brethren, man, condemned to death by the sin of his birth, ought to receive life only to lose it, even from the moment he has received it. The blood alone of Jesus Christ has effaced this sentence of death and punishment pronounced against all mankind in the person of the first sinner. We live, though the offspring of a father condemned to death, and inheritors ourselves of his punishment, because the Redeemer died for us. The death of Jesus Christ is, therefore, the source, and the only claim of right we have to life; our days, our moments, are the first blessings which have flowed to us from his cross; and the time which we so vainly lose, is the price, however, of his blood, the fruit of his death, and the merit of his sacrifice.
Not only as children of Adam, we deserve no longer to live; but even all the crimes we have added to those of our birth are become new sentences of death against us. So many times as we have violated the law of the Author of life, so many times, from that moment, ought we to have lost it.
Every sinner is, therefore, a child of death and anger; and every time the mercy of God has suspended, after each of our crimes, the sentence of condemnation and death, it is a new life, as it were, his goodness has granted, in order to allow us time to repair the criminal use we had hitherto made of our own.
I even speak not of the diseases, accidents, and numberless dangers which so often have menaced our life; which so often we have seen to terminate that of our friends and nearest connexions; and from which his goodness has always delivered us. The life which we enjoy is like a perpetual miracle, therefore, of his divine mercy. The time which is left to us, is the consequence of an infinity of tender mercies and grace, which compose the thread and the train, as it were, of our life. Every moment we breathe is like a new gift we receive from God; and to waste that time, and these moments, in a deplorable inutility, is to insult that Infinite Goodness which has granted them to us, to dissipate an inestimable grace which is not our due, and to deliver up to chance the price of our eternity. Behold, my brethren, the first guilt attached to the loss of time. It is a precious treasure left to us, though we no longer have a right to it, which is given to us for the purpose alone of purchasing the kingdom of heaven, and which we dissipate as a thing the most vile and contemptible, and of which we know not any use to make.
In the world, we would regard that man as a fool, who, heir to a great fortune, should allow it to be wasted through want of care and attention, and should make no use of it, either to raise himself to places and dignities, which might draw him from obscurity, or in order to confirm to himself a solid establishment, which might place him in future beyond the reach of any reverse.
But, my brethren, time is that precious treasure which we have inherited from our birth, and which the Almighty leaves to us through pure compassion. It is in our possession, and it depends upon ourselves to make a proper use of it. It is not in order to exalt ourselves to frivolous dignities here below, or to worldly grandeurs: alas ! whatever passes away is too vile to be the price of time, which is itself the price of eternity: it is in order to be placed in the heavens above, at the side of Jesus Christ; it is in order to separate us from the crowd of the children of Adam, above all the Caesars and kings of the earth, in that immortal society of the happy, who shall all be kings, and whose reign shall have no bounds but those of eternity.
What madness, then, to make no use of a treasure so inestimable; in frivolous amusements to waste that time which may be the price of eternal salvation, and to allow the hopes of our immortality to be dissipated in smoke ! Yes, my brethren, there is not a day, an hour, a moment, but which, properly employed, may merit us heaven. A single day lost ought therefore to leave us remorses a thousand times more lively and poignant than the failure of the greatest worldly prospects; yet, nevertheless, this time is a burden to us. Our whole life is only one continued science to lose it; and, in spite of all our anxieties to waste it, there always, however, remains more than we know how to employ; and yet, the thing upon the earth we have the smallest value for, is our time. Our acts of kindness we reserve for our friends; our bounties for our dependents; our riches for our children and relations; our praises for those who appear worthy of them: our time we give all to the world: we expose it, as I may say, a prey to all mankind; they even do us a pleasure in delivering us from it: it is a weight, as it were, which we support in the midst of the world, while incessantly in search of some one who may ease us of its burden. In this manner, time, that gift of God, that most precious blessing of his clemency, and which ought to be the price of our eternity, occasions all our embarrassments, all our weariness, and becomes the most oppressive burden of our life.
But a second reason which makes us feel still more sensibly our absurdity in setting so little value upon the time the Almighty leaves to us, is, that not only it is the price of our eternity, but likewise it is short, and we cannot hasten too much to employ it to advantage. For, my brethren, had we even a long series of ages to exist upon the earth, that space would, in truth, be still too short to be employed in meriting everlasting happiness; yet its duration would at least enable us to retrieve those accidental losses. The days and moments lost would at least form only a point, scarcely perceptible, in that long series of ages we should have to pass here below. But, alas! our whole life is but an imperceptible point. The longest endures so little; our days and our years are shut up in such narrow limits, that we see not what we can have still to lose, in a space so short and rapid. We are only, as I may say, a moment upon the earth: like those fiery exhalations, which, in the obscurity of night, are seen wandering in the air, we only appear to vanish in a moment, and be replunged for ever into our original and everlasting darkness. The exhibition we make to the world is but a flash, which is extinguished almost in the same moment it exists: we say it ourselves every day. Alas! how can we take days and hours of rest from a life which is itself but a moment? And besides, if you retrench from that moment all you are under the necessity of allowing to the indispensable necessities of the body, to the duties of your station, to unexpected events, and the inevitable complaisances due to society, what remains for yourself, for God, and for eternity? And are we not worthy of pity; we, who know not how to employ the little which remains to us, and who fly to the assistance of a thousand artifices to abridge its duration?
To the little time, my brethren, we have to live upon the earth, add the number of past crimes which we have to expiate in this short interval. How many iniquities are collected upon our heads since our first years! Alas! ten lives, like ours, would scarcely suffice to expiate a part of them; the time would still be too short; and it would be necessary to call upon the goodness of God to prolong the duration of our penance. Great God! what portion can remain to me for pleasures and indolence, in a life so short and criminal as mine? What place, then, can frivolous sports and amusements find in an interval so rapid, and which altogether would not suffice to expiate a single one of my crimes?
Ah! my brethren, do we even think upon it? A criminal condemned to death, and to whom a single day is only allowed to endeavour toward obtaining his pardon, would he find hours and moments still to trifle away? Would he complain of the length of the time which the humanity and goodness of his judge had awarded him? Would he be embarrassed how to use it? Would he search for frivolous amusements to assist him to pass those precious moments which were left him to merit his pardon and deliverance? Would he not endeavour to profit by an interval so decisive with regard to his destiny? Would he not replace, by the anxiety, vivacity, and continuance of his exertions, what might be wanting from the brevity of the time allowed to him? Fools that we are! Our sentence is pronounced; our guilt renders our condemnation certain: we are left a single day to shun the evil, and to change the rigour of our eternal decree; and this only day, this rapid day, we indolently pass in occupations vain, slothful, and puerile.
This precious day is a burden to us, wearies us; we seek to abridge it; scarcely can we find amusements sufficient to fill the void; the evening arrives without our having made any other use of the day left to us than that of rendering ourselves still more worthy of the condemnation we had already merited. And, besides, my brethren, how do we know that the abuse of the day, left to us by the Almighty's goodness, will not oblige his justice to abridge and to cut off a portion of it? How many unexpected accidents may arrest us in a course so limited, and crop, in their fairest blossoms, the hopes of a longer life! How many sudden and astonishing deaths do we see; and generally the just punishment of the unworthy use they had made of life! What age has ever witnessed more of these melancholy examples? Formerly these accidents were rare and singular; at present they are events which happen every day. Whether it be, that our crimes have drawn down upon us this punishment; whether it be, that excesses unknown to our forefathers lead us to them; but at present they are the deaths most common and frequent. Number, if you can, those of your relations, friends, and connexions, whom a sudden death has surprised without preparation, repentance, or a moment allowed them to reflect upon themselves, upon that God whom they have offended, and upon those crimes which, far from detesting, they never had leisure sufficiently to be acquainted with.
Will you tell us, after this, that there are many spare moments in the day; that we must contrive to amuse ourselves some way or another?
There are many spare moments in the day! But your guilt consists in leaving them in that frightful void. The days of the upright are always full. Spare moments in the day! But are your duties always fulfilled? Are your houses regulated, your children instructed, the afflicted relieved, the poor visited, the works of piety accomplished? Time is short; your obligations so infinite; and you can still find so many spare moments in the day? My God! how many holy characters have in solitude complained that their days passed too rapidly away; have borrowed from the night what the brevity of the day had taken from their labours and zeal; have lamented, even in the calm and leisure of their solitude, that sufficient time remained not for them to publish thy praises and eternal mercies: and we, charged with a multiplicity of cares; we, in the midst of the solicitudes and the engagements of the age, which absorb almost all our days and our moments; we, responsible to our relations, to our children, to our friends, to our inferiors, to our superiors, to our stations, to our country, for such an infinity of duties, — we still find a void in our life; and the little which remains to us, we think too long to be employed in serving and blessing thy holy name!
But we are happy, you say, when we know how to amuse ourselves, and innocently to pass away the time. But how do you know that your course is not already run, and that you do not perhaps touch the fatal moment which commences your eternity? Does your time belong to you, to be disposed of as you please? Time itself passes away so soon; and are so many amusements necessary to assist it in passing still more rapidly?
But is time given to you for nothing serious, great, and eternal; nothing worthy of the elevation and destiny of man? And the Christian and inheritor of heaven, is he upon the earth only to amuse himself?
But are there not, you say, many innocent recreations in life? I grant there are many: bat recreations suppose pains and cares, which have preceded them; while your whole life is one continued recreation. Recreations are permitted to those who, after fulfilling their duties, are under the necessity of affording some moments of relaxation to the weakness of human nature: but you, if you have occasion for relaxation, it is from the continuance of your pleasures, and even what you call your recreations: it is from the rage of inordinate gaming, of which the duration and earnest attention necessary, besides the loss of time, render you incapable, on quitting it, of application to any other duty of your station. What recreation can you find m a lawless and boundless passion, which occupies almost your whoie life, ruins your health, deranges your fortune, and renders you the continual sport of a miserable chance? And is it not with such characters that we find neither order, rule, nor discipline? All serious duties forgotten; disorderly servants; children miserably educated; affairs declining; and public scorn and contempt attached to their names and their unfortunate posterity? The passion of gaming is almost never unaccompanied; and to those of one sex especially, is always the source or the occasion of all the others. These are the recreations you believe innocent, and necessary to fill up the empty moments of the day.
Ah! my brethren, how many of the reprobate, in the midst of their anguish and punishments, entreat from the mercy of God only one of those moments which we know not how to employ! and, could their request be granted, what use would they not make of that precious moment! How many tears of compunction and penitence! How many prayers and supplications, to soften the Father of mercies, and to induce his paternal feelings to restore to them his affection? This only moment is nevertheless refused. Time, they are told, exists no more for them: and you find yourselves embarrassed with the little you are left? God will judge you, my brethren; and on the bed of death, and in that terrible hour which shall surprise you, in vain shall you demand a little more time; in vain shall you promise to God a more Christian use of what you will endeavour to obtain: his justice, without pity, will cut the thread of your days; and that time, which now oppresses and embarrasses you, shall then be denied.
But in what our blindness here is still more conspicuous, is, that not only the time which we lose with so much indifference and insensibility, is short and precious, but likewise irreparable; for, once lost, it is for ever gone, without resource.
I say irreparable: for, in the first place, riches, honours, reputation, and favour, though once lost, may again be retrieved. We may even replace each of these losses by other acquirements, which will repay us with usury; but the moments lost in inutility are so many means of salvation which we never again can possess, but which are for ever cut off from the number which God, in his compassion, had allotted to us. Indeed, in a space so short as we have to live, there cannot be a doubt but that the Almighty had his particular designs with jregard to each of our days and moments; that he hath marked the use we ought to have made of them; the connexion they were to have with our eternal salvation; and that, to each of them, he hath attached assistances of grace, in order to consummate the work of our sanctification. Now, these days and moments being lost, the grace attached to them must be equally so; the moments of God are finished, and return no more: the course of his mercies is regulated: we believed they were only useless moments we had lost; and with them we have lost inestimable succours of grace, which we find deducted from those the goodness of God had destined for us.
In the second place, irreparable, because every day, every moment, ought to advance us a step nearer heaven. Now, the days and moments lost leaving us in arrear, and the duration of our course being also determined, the end arrives when we are yet at a distance; when there is no longer time to supply the remainder of the career; or, at least, to regain the lost moments, and reach the goal, we must double our speed; — in one day fill up the course of many years; make the most heroic exertions; and hasten in a degree even beyond our strength; — proceed to excesses of holiness, which are miracles of grace, and of which the generality of men are incapable; and consummate, in a small interval, what ought to be the labour of a whole life.
In the last place, irreparable, with respect to the works of penance and reparation, of which, in a certain period of life, we are capable, but are no longer so, when we wait the infirmities of a more advanced age. For, after all, it is in vain to say then, that God expects not impossibilities; that there is a penance for every age; and that religion does not wish us to hasten our days, under the pretext of expiating our crimes. It is you who have placed yourselves in this state of impossibility: your sins diminish not your obligations: guilt must be punished, in order to be effaced. The Almighty had allowed you both time and strength to satisfy this immutable and eternal law: this time you have wasted in accumulating new debts: this strength you have exhausted, either by new excesses, or at least without making any use of it, to further the designs of God respecting you: the Almighty must therefore do, what you have never done yourselves, and punish, after your death, the crimes you have never been inclined to expiate during your life.
This is to say, in order to concentrate all these reflections, that with every moment of our life it is as with our death. We die only once, and from thence we conclude, that we must die in a proper state, because there is no longer a possibility of returning, to repair, by a second death, the evil of the first. In like manner, we only once exist, such and such moments: we cannot return upon our steps, and, by commencing a new road, repair the errors and faults of our first path j in like manner, every moment of our life which we sacrifice becomes a point fixed for our eternity; that moment lost, shall change no more: it shall eternally be Jthe same; it will be recalled to us, such as we had passed it, and will be marked with that ineffaceable stamp. How miserable, then, is our blindness, my brethren; we, whose life is only one continued attention to lose the time which returns no more, and, with so rapid a course, flies to precipitate itself into the abyss of eternity!
Great God! Thou who art the sovereign dispenser of times and moments; thou, in whose hands are our days and our years, with what eyes must thou behold us losing and dissipating the moments of which thou alone knowest the duration; of which, in irrevocable characters, thou hast marked the course and the measure; moments, which thou drawest from the treasure of thine eternal mercies, to allow us time for penitence; moments which, every day, thy justice presses thee to abridge, as a punishment for their abuse; moments which, every day before our eyes, thou refusest to so many sinners, less culpable than we, whom a terrible death surprises and drags into the gulf of thine eternal vengeance; moments, in a word, which we shall not perhaps long enjoy, and of which thou soon intendest to terminate the melancholy career! Great God! Behold the greatest and best part of my life already past and wholly lost. In all my days, there has not hitherto been a single serious one, — a single day for thee, for my salvation, and for eternity: my whole life is but a vapour, which leaves nothing real or solid in the hand of him who recalls it. Shall I, to the end, drag on my days in this melancholy inutility; in this weariness which pursues me, in the midst of my pleasures, and the efforts which unavailingly I make to avoid it? Shall the last hour surprise me, loaded with the void of my whole years? And, in all my course, shall there be nothing serious or important but the last moment, which will terminate it for ever, and decide my everlasting destiny? Great God! what a life for a soul destined to serve thee, called to the immortal society of thy Son and thy saints, enriched with thy gifts, and, in consequence of them, capable of works worthy of eternity! What a life is that life which, in reality, is nothing, has nothing in view, and fills up a time which is decisive of its eternal destiny, in doing nothing, and reckoning as well passed those days and hours which imperceptibly slip away!
But if inutility be opposite to the price of time, irregularity and multiplicity of occupations are not less so to the proper order of time, and to the Christian use we ought to make of it. You have just seen the dangers of a slothful, and I will now lay before you the inconveniences of a hurried life.
Part II. — To every thing we have hitherto said, my brethren, the majority of those who listen to me have, no doubt, secretly opposed, that their life is any thing but slothful and useless; that scarcely can they suffice for the duties, good offices, and endless engagements of their stations; that they live in an eternal vicissitude of occupations and business which absorbs their whole life;. and that they think themselves happy when they can accomplish a moment for themselves, and enjoy, at leisure, the situation which their fortune denies to them.
Now this, my brethren is a new way of abusing time, still more dangerous than even inutility and indolence. In effect, the Christian use of time is not merely the filling up of all its moments; it is that of filling them up in order, and according to the will of the Lord, who gives them to us. The life of faith is a life of regularity and wisdom: fancy, passion, pride, and cupidity, are false prinples of conduct, since they themselves are only a derangement of the mind and heart; and that order and reason ought to be our only guides.
Nevertheless, the life of the majority of men is a life always occupied and always useless; always laborious, and always void: their passions give birth to all their motions: these are the great springs which agitate men; make them run here and there like madmen; and leave them not a single moment's tranquillity; and, in filling up all their moments, they seek not to fulfil their duties, but to deliver themselves up to their restlessness, and to satisfy their iniquitous desires.
But in what does this order consist, which ought to regulate the measure of our occupations and to sanctify the use of our time? It consists, in the first place, in limiting ourselves to the occupations attached to our stations; in not seeking places and situations which may multiply them; and in not reckoning, among our duties, the cares and embarrassments which anxiety, or our passions, alone generate within us. Secondly, however agitated may be our situations, amidst all our occupations, to regard as the most essential, and the most privileged, those we owe to our salvation.
I say, in the first place, not to reckon, amongst the occupations which sanctify the use of our time, those which restlessness or the passions alone generate.
Restlessness! Yes, my brethren, we all wish to avoid ourselves. To the generality of men nothing is more melancholy and disagreeable than to find themselves alone, and obliged to review their own hearts. As vain passions carry us away, as many criminal attachments stain us, and as many thousand illicit desires occupy every moment of our heart, in entering into ourselves, we find only an answer of death, a frightful void, cruel remorses, dark thoughts, and melancholy reflections. We search, therefore, in the variety of occupations and continual distractions, an oblivion of ourselves: we dread leisure as the signal of weariness; and we expect to find, in the confusion and multiplicity of external cares, that happy intoxication which enables us to go on without perceiving it, and makes us no longer to feel the weight of ourselves.
But, alas! we deceive ourselves: weariness is never found but in irregularity, and in a life of confusion, where every thing is out of its place: it is in living by hazard that we are a burden to ourselves; that we continually search after new occupations, and that disgust soon obliges us to repent that we ever sought for them; that we incessantly change our situation, in order to fly from ourselves; and, that wherever we go, we carry ourselves: in a word, that our whole life is but a diversified art to shun weariness, and a miserable talent to find it. Wherever order is not, weariness must necessarily be found; and, far from a life of irregularity and confusion being a remedy, on the contrary, it is the most fruitful source and universal cause of it.
The just souls who live in regularity; they who yield nothing to caprice and temper, whose every occupation is exactly where it ought to be, whose moments are filled up, according to their destination, and to the will of the Lord who directs them, find, in order, a perfect remedy against, and protection from, weariness. That wise uniformity in the practice of duties which appear so gloomy in the eyes of the world, is the source of their joy, and of that happy equality of temper, which nothing can derange: never embarrassed with the present time which stated duties occupy; never in pain with regard to the future, for which new duties are arranged; never delivered up to themselves by the change of occupations which succeed each other; their days appear as moments, because every moment is in its place; time hangs not upon them, because it always has its distinction and use; and, in the arrangement of an uniform and occupied life, they find that peace and that joy which the rest of men in vain search for in* the confusion of a continual agitation.
Restlessness, by multiplying our occupations, leaves us therefore a prey to weariness and disgust; nor yet does it sanctify the use of our time: for if the moments, not regulated by the order of God, are moments lost, however occupied they may otherwise be; if the life of man ought to be a life of wisdom and regularity, where every occupation has its allotted place; what can be more opposite to such a life than this inconsistency, these eternal fluctuations in which restlessness makes us pass our time? But the passions which keep us in perpetual motion do not form for us more legitimate employments.
Yes, my brethren, I know that it is only at a certain age of life that we appear occupied with frivolity and pleasures. More serious cares and more solid avocations succeed to the indolence and to the vain amusements of our younger years: and, after wasting our youth in sloth and in pleasures, we appropriate our maturity to our country, to fortune, and to ourselves; but still, with respect to heaven we continue the same. I confess, that we owe our services to our country, to our sovereign, and to the national cares; that amongst the number of duties prescribed to us by religion, it places that of zeal for our sovereign and for the interest and glory of our country; and that religion alone can form faithful subjects, and citizens ever ready to sacrifice their all for the general good. But religion wishes not that pride and ambition should rashly plunge us in public affairs, and that we should anxiously endeavour, by all possible means, by intrigue and solicitations, to attain places, where, owing every thing to others, not a moment is left for ourselves: religion wishes us to dread these tumultuous situations; to give ourselves up to them with regret and trembling, when the order of God and the authority of our masters call us to them; and, were the choice left to us, always to prefer the safety and leisure of a private station to the dangers and eclat of dignities and places. Alas! we have a short time to exist upon the earth, and the salvation or eternal condemnation which awaits us is so near, that every other care ought to be melancholy and burdensome to us; and every thing which diverts our attention from that grand object, for which we are allowed only a small portion of days, ought to appear as the heaviest misfortune. This is not a maxim of pure spirituality; it is the first maxim and the foundation of Christianity.
Nevertheless, ambition, pride, and all our passions, unite to render a private life insupportable to us. What in life we dread most, is a lot and a station which leave us to ourselves, and do not establish us upon others. We consult neither the order of God, nor the views of religion, nor the dangers of a too agitated situation, nor the happiness which faith points out in a private and tranquil station, where we have nothing but ourselves to answer for, and frequently not even our talents; we consult only our passions, and that insatiable desire of raising ourselves above our brethren; we wish to figure upon the stage of life, and become great personages, and upon a stage, alas! which to-morrow shall disappear, and leave us nothing real but the puerile trouble and pain of having acted upon it. Even the more these stations appear surrounded with tumult and embarrassment, the more do they appear worthy of our pursuit: we wish to be in every thing: that leisure so dear to a religious soul, to us appears shameful and mean: every thing which divides us between the public and ourselves; every thing which gives to others an absolute right over our time; every thing which plunges us into that abyss of cares and agitations, which credit, favour, and consideration drag after them, affects, attracts, and transports us. Thus, the majority of men inconsiderately create to themselves a tumultuous and agitated life, which the Almighty never required of them, and eagerly seek for cares where they cannot be in safety, unless the order of God had prepared them for us.
Indeed, we sometimes hear them complaining of the endless agitations inseparable from their places; sighing for rest, and envying the lot of a tranquil and private station; repeating, that it should indeed be time to live for themselves, after having so long lived for others. But these are merely words of course; they seem to groan under the weight of affairs; but with much more uneasiness and grief would they support the weight of leisure and of a private condition: they employ one part of their life in struggling against each other for the tumult of places and employments, and the other they employ in lamenting the misfortune of having obtained them. It is a language of vanity: they would wish to appear superior to their fortune; and they are not so to the smallest reverse, or the slightest symptom of coldness which threatens them. Behold how our passions create occupations and embarrassments, which God required not, and deprive us of a time whose value we shall be ignorant of till we reach that moment when time finishes and eternity begins.
Yet still, my brethren, in the midst of the endless occupations attached to your stations, were you to regard as the most privileged those connected with your salvation, you would, in some measure at least, repair the dissipation of that portion of your life, which the world and the cares of this earth entirely occupy. But it is still on this point that our blindness is deplorable; we cannot find time for our eternal salvation. That which we bestow on fortune, the duties of a charge, the good offices expected from our station, the care of the body, and attention to dress; that which we give to friendship, society, recreation, and custom, all appear essential and indispensable: we even dare not encroach upon or limit these; we carry them beyond the bounds even of reason and necessity; and as life is too short, and our days too rapid to suffice for all, whatever we retrench is from the cares of our salvation: in the multiplicity of our occupations we are sure to sacrifice those which we ought to bestow on eternity. Yes, my brethren, in place of retrenching from our amusements, from the duties which ambition multiplies, from the ceremonies which idleness alone has established, from the cares and attentions we bestow on a vain dress which custom and effeminacy have rendered endless; in place of retrenching from these, at least some little time every day, scarcely do they leave us some accidental remains which by chance have escaped from the world and pleasure; some rapid moments the world wishes not, with which we are perhaps embarrassed, and which we know not how to dispose of otherwise. So long as the world chooses to engage us; so long as it continues to offer pleasures, duties, trifles, and complaisances, we yield ourselves up to it with delight. When all is over, and we no longer know how to fill up our vacant hours, we then consecrate to some languid practices of religion those outcast moments which weariness or a deficiency of pleasures leaves us: properly speaking, they are moments of recreation which we bestow upon ourselves rather than upon God; an interval we place between the world and us, in order to return to it with more relish, and breathe a little from the fatigue, the disgust, and the satiety which are the necessary consequences of a life devoted to the world and pleasures, which, prolonged beyond a certain measure, are immediately followed by weariness and lassitude.
Such is the use which even persons who deck themselves out with a reputation for virtue make of their time. Their whole life is one continued and criminal preference given to the world, fortune, ceremony, and pleasures, above the business of their salvation; all is filled up by what they give to their masters, friends, places, and appetites, and nothing remains for God and for eternity. It would appear that time is given to us, in the first place, for the world, ambition, and earthly cares; and should any portion of it happen afterward to remain, that we are entitled to praise when we bestow it on our salvation.
Great God! for what purpose dost thou leave us on the earth but to render ourselves worthy of thine eternal possession? Every thing we do for the world shall perish with it; whatsoever we do for thee shall be immortal. All our cares and attentions here are in general for masters, ungrateful, unjust, difficult to please, weak, and incapable of rendering us happy. The duties we render to thee are given to a Lord and Master, faithful, just, compassionate, almighty, and who alone can recompense those who serve him. The cares of the earth, however brilliant, are foreign to us; they are unworthy of us; it is not for them we are created; we ought only to devote ourselves to them as they pass, in order to satisfy the transitory ties they exact from us, and which connect us with mankind: the cares of eternity alone are worthy of the nobility of our hopes, and fill all the grandeur and dignity of our destiny. Without the cares of salvation, those of this earth are profane and sullied; they are no longer but vain, fruitless, and almost always criminal agitations. The cares of salvation alone consecrate and sanctify them, give to them reality, elevation, the price and the merit which they wanted. All other cares wound, trouble, harden, and render us miserable, but the duties we render to thee leave us a real and heartfelt joy: they strengthen, calm, and console us, and even soften the anguish and bitterness of the others. In a word, we owe ourselves to thee, O my God! before masters, superiors, friends, or connexions. Thou alone hast the first right over our hearts and reason, which are the gifts of thy liberal hand; it is for thee, therefore, that in the first place we ought to make use of them; and we are Christians before we are princes, subjects, public characters, or any thing else on the earth.
You will perhaps tell us, my brethren, that, in fulfilling the painful and endless duties attached to your station, you believe that you serve God, accomplish your measure of righteousness, and labour toward your salvation. I grant it; but we must fulfil these duties according to the views of the Lord, from motives of faith, and in the true spirit of religion and piety. God reckons only what we do for him; of all our pains, fatigues, submissions, and sacrifices, he accepts only those which are offered to his glory, and not to our own; and our days are only full in his sight when they are full for eternity. All actions, which have nothing for their object but the world; a fame limited to this earth; a perishable fortune; some praises they may attract to us from men, or some degree of grandeur and reputation to which they may raise us here below, are nothing in his presence, or, at least, are only puerile amusements, unworthy of the majesty of his regards.
Thus, my brethren, how different are the judgments of God from those of the world! In the world we call beautiful that splendid life in which great actions are numbered, victories gained, difficult negotiations concluded, undertakings successfully conducted, illustrious employments supported with reputation, eminent dignities acquired by important services, and exercised with glory; a life which passes into history, fills the public monuments, and of which the remembrance shall be preserved to the latest posterity. Such, according to the world, is a beautiful life. But if, in all this, they have sought more their own than the glory of God; if they have had nothing more in view than to erect to themselves a perishable edifice of grandeur on the earth; in vain shall they have furnished a splendid career to the eyes of men; in the sight of God, it is a life lost: in vain shall history record us; we shall be effaced from the book of life, and from the eternal histories: in vain shall our actions be the admiration of ages to come; they shall not be written on the immortal columns of the heavenly temple: in vain shall we have acted a dignified part upon the stage of all earthly ages; in the eternal ages we shall be as those who never were: in vain shall our titles and dignities be preserved upon the marble and brass; as the fingers of men have written them, they shall perish with them, and what the finger of God shall have written will alone endure as long as himself: in vain shall our life be proposed as a model to the ambition of our descendants; its reality, existing only in the passions of men, from the moment they shall cease to have passions and the objects which inflame them, shall be annihilated; this life shall be nothing, and shall be replunged into nonentity, with the world which admire it.
For, candidly, my brethren, can you really wish that in that awful and terrible day, when righteousness itself shall be judged, the Almighty should give you credit for all the pains, cares, and disgusts you have experiened and devoured, in order to raise yourselves in the world? That he should regard, as well employed, the time you have sacrificed to the world, fortune, glory, and the elevation of your name and race, as if you were upon the earth only for yourselves? That he should place, among the number of your works of salvation, those which have only had for principle, ambition, pride, envy, and self-interest; and that he should reckon your vices amongst your virtues.
And what will you be able to say to him on the bed of death, when he shall enter into judgment with you, and demand an account of the time which he had only granted you to be employed in glorifying and serving him? Will you say to him, Lord, I have gained many victories; I have usefully and gloriously served my prince and country; I have established to myself a great name amongst men? Alas! you have never been able to gain a victory over yourself; you have usefully served the kings of the earth, and you have neglected, with contempt, the service of the King of kings. You have established to yourself a great name amongst men, and your name is not known amongst the chosen of God: — time lost for eternity. Will you say to him, I have conducted the most difficult negotiations; I have concluded the most important treaties; I have managed the interests and fortunes of princes; I have been in the secrets and councils of kings? Alas! you have concluded treaties and alliances with men, and you have a thousand times violated the holy covenant you have entered into with God; you have managed the interests of princes, and you have never known how to manage the interests of your salvation; you have entered into the secrets of kings, and you have ever been ignorant of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven: — time lost for eternity. Will you say to him, my whole life has been only an incessant toil and a painful and continued occupation? Alas! you have always toiled, and you have never been able to do any thing to save your soul: — time lost for eternity. Will you say to him, I have established my children in the world; I have exalted my relations; I have been useful to my friends; I have augmented the patrimony of my ancestors? Alas! you have bequeathed great establishments to your children, and you have not left them the fear of the Lord, by bringing them up and establishing them in faith and piety: you have augmented the patrimony of your ancestors, and you have dissipated the gifts of grace and the patrimony of Jesus Christ; — time lost for eternity. Will you say to him, I have made the most profound studies; I have enriched the public with useful and curious works; I have perfected the sciences by new discoveries; I improved my great talents, and rendered them useful to mankind? Alas! the great talent confided to you was that of faith and grace, of which you have made no use: you have rendered yourself learned in the sciences of men, and you have always been ignorant in the science of the holy: — time lost for eternity. In a word, will you tell him, I have passed my life in fulfilling the duties and good offices of my station; I have gained friends; I have rendered myself useful and agreeable to my masters? Alas! you have had friends to boast of on the earth, and you have acquired none to yourself in heaven; you have made every exertion to please men, and you have done nothing to please the Almighty: — time lost for eternity.
No, my brethren, what a frightful void the greatest part of men, who had governed states and empires, who appeared to regulate the whole universe, and had filled in it the most distinguished places; who were the subjects of every conversation, and of the desires and hopes of men; who engrossed, almost alone, the whole attentions of the earth; what a frightful void will they, on the bed of death, find their whole life to be! Whilst the days of the pious and retired soul, regarded by them as obscure and indolent, shall appear full, complete, occupied, marked each by some victory of faith, and worthy of being celebrated by the eternal songs.
Meditate, my brethren, on these holy truths. Time is short; it is irreparable; it is the price of your eternal felicity; it is given to you only in order to render you worthy of that felicity. Calculate, therefore, what portion of it you should bestow on the world, pleasures, fortune, and on your salvation. My brethren, says the apostle, time is short; let us therefore use the world, as not abusing it; let us possess our riches, places, dignities, and titles, as though we possessed them not; let us enjoy the favour of our superiors, and the esteem of men, as though we enjoyed them not; they are only shadows which vanish and leave us for ever; and let us only reckon upon as real, in our whole life, the moments which we have employed for heaven.