should be ready to take up his reflection, and ponder it most seriously and closely.

"This I say, brethren, the time is short-the fashion of this world passeth away." Short, indeed, is the time allotted to man upon earth. Sometimes he but opens his eyes, as it were, on the light of life, and then closes them suddenly in the sleep of death. A large proportion of the human race seem only born to die. -They expire in infancy. They depart before any of their intellectual faculties attain their vigour, and almost before they begin their operations. It would seem as if they only came into this world that they might possess immortal souls, and then were called away to people another. Short, emphatically, is the time of these.

Others die in the bloom of life. When the mental powers have just begun to expand; when the endowments of nature, or the fruits of education are but making their appearance; when the indications of future character are beginning to display themselves-their race is cut short; it is abruptly indeed; and they "go the way by which they shall not return." How narrow the space assigned to these. Their days are but

"as a hand's breadth."

Another class leave the world in the midst of its busiest scenes. While they are engrossed with its cares, pressed with its demands, perplexed with its anxieties, devoted to its pleasures, or eager after its possessions and honours, the hand of death arrests them; and man, "at his best estate, is seen to be altogether vanity."

Or if you consider the period allotted to those who reach the utmost boundary of human life, still it is short. To how many do I speak, who cannot reasonably expect to add to their lives a longer space than that which they have already past? To how many who cannot, without presumption, reckon on as much? And there is not one, let it be remembered, who has any assurance of

greatly prolonging the period already fulfilled. Look back then on the past. What a trifle does it seem! Think that you may not, or that you cannot double it-that you may not, or cannot add much to it-and what a mere speck of existence does life appear. The beginning and the end seem to be separated by a distance, scarcely more than sufficient to determine that they are not the same. Truly "there is but a step between us and death.-Our days on earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding; they are swifter than a post, they fly away; they are passed away as the swift ships, and as the eagle that hasteth to the prey. Man's days are as grass, as a flower of the field so he flourisheth. For. the wind passeth over it, and it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more. Our life is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away. The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow, for it is soon cut off, and we fly away."

If then our time be so short, with what singular propriety are all the concerns which fill it up, denominated, as they are in the text, a fashion.-"The fashion of this world passeth away."-All that life contains, just makes a transient show, which engages attention or admiration for a little, and then it is gone; it is out of date-By those who succeed on the stage of life, it is neglected, disregarded, and perhaps forgotten. The fashions of a preceding generation are usually considered as obsolete; often they are viewed as stupid, barbarous, or ridiculous.

There is a meaning and a beauty, in the original term, which is rendered fashion, which, perhaps, cannot be communicated in any single word of our language. It signifies

and note, and Parkhurst and Schleusner xμa.-See Doddridge's paraphrase on the word.

the passing and specious appearance of a thing which is not, in reality, what it seems to be. It intimates that it is not so much the substance, as the form, or show of things-of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, riches or poverty-which we experience here: that the world, in regard to these things, even for the short time that they continue, is changing its countenance, and that we shall very speedily be done with them forever: that joy is often turned into sorrow, and that sorrow frequently brightens into joy; that pleasure terminates in pain, and that pain may be productive of pleasure; that riches are frequently exchanged for poverty, and poverty for riches; and that the whole of these changes are soon run over and finished: that it is therefore not so much a world, as the appearance of a world, which we inhabit; for that all is fluctuating and fleeting, and will soon be irretrievably past and gone. All our connexions, all our sorrows, all our joys, and all those schemes and occupations which now engage our thoughts and employ our time, will presently interest us no more than if they had never existed. In a future state, where each of us will speedily find himself, none of these things will have any place; and our situation there will be no otherwise affected by them, than as they shall be found to have been concerned in promoting the welfare or the injury of our immortal souls. Well did the psalmist say-"Surely man walketh in a vain show." Let us now consider,

II. The duties which are here detailed, and which the view we have taken of human life is specially calculated to enforce, and to urge us immediately to perform-"It remaineth, that both they that have wives, be as though they had none; and they that weep as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy as though they possessed not; and they that use this world, as not abusing it."

"It remaineth," that is-nothing

else is left for us to do, if we would act as wisdom and duty dictate, but immediately to consider and treat this vain and passing world according to its true character; and that this will be done when those who are connected with it by strong and tender ties, or deeply engaged in its concerns and pursuits, loosen their affections from the objects which enthral them, and become, in a certain sense, as much disengaged as if those objects did not exist.-You will carefully observe, my brethren, the qualification with which this statement is closed. It is only in a certain sense that we are to sit loose to the connexions and employments of this life. In some respects, and those too of a religious kind, it is not proper that they who have wives be as though they had none; or that they that weep be as though they wept not; or that they that buy, be as though they possessed not. We are not only permitted, but absolutely bound, by our religious obligations, to perform all the relative duties of our condition in life, and to fill every station which God in his providence has assigned us, with active usefulness; and in every lawful undertaking to acquit ourselves with diligence and fidelity. It will be proper, therefore, in this place, to explain distinctly, and to request you to keep constantly in view, the qualified meaning of the apostolick injunction. That meaning will I think be rendered obvious, by the two following remarks.

1. Those who sustain tender relations, or are otherwise peculiarly circumstanced, are to be as though they were not thus circumstanced, in regard to their habitual meetness, or preparedness, to leave the world. No considerations whatever, of a worldly kind, are to be made the occasion or the excuse, for not possessing the temper and disposition of mind necessary to a comfortable departure, at any moment when we may be called out of life. No connexion, no engagements, no attachments to the dearest relatives, should render us either unfit or unwilling to be

separated from them, at the call of God. This remark contains the principal idea necessary to be mentioned. And it is, you will observe, the very idea of the apostle himself; for the whole scope of the discourse, of which the text is a part, is directed to this very point.

2. The other remark, which is indeed only illustrative of the former, and descriptive of the manner in which the duty it specifies may be carried into practice, is, that we should so sensibly and constantly keep in mind the shortness and the uncertain continuance of every relation, attachment, or pursuit which affects us, as to have the bands of it broken, as it were, beforehand, and we be standing in habitual disengagedness to obey our summons from the world.

Let us now, very cursorily go over the several members of that portion of the text which we here consider, subject to the qualifications just explained.

1. "It remaineth, that they that have wives, be as though they had none." The drift of the apostle's discourse in the context, led him to speak only of the conjugal relation; but it is too evident to need proof, that what he says is equally applicable to all relations; whether they be those of husband and wife, parent and child, brother and sister, or such as subsist by strong attachments, between parties not naturally connected with each other. On all who sustain these relations it is incumbent, in the sense and for the reason as signed in the text and already explained, to be as though they had none. The shortness of life, and the uncertain duration of these tender ties, admonish us to this. They admonish us not to have our hearts so bound up in them, as to forget that they must be sundered, or so as to render this thought intolerable. They admonish us not to let an excessive devotion to them prevent an attention to the concerns of our souls-to the "one thing needful." They admonish us not to idolize these objects

of affection, by putting them in the place of God, and seeking that happiness from them which is to be found in Him alone. They admonish us to recollect continually, that they are the subjects of the same mortality with ourselves; and to cherish no more than that temperate and well regulated affection for them, which shall render a separation supportable. They admonish us, in a word, to view them in the light of temporary and transient relations, which when they shall have answered the purpose of their institution-of which God the institutor is to be the judgemust be dissolved; and all who are interested in them, enter on a new, a higher, and a more important mode of existence.

Such is the import of the phrase we consider. And before I proceed farther, I will meet an objection, which, I am aware, is made to this statement of duty, and which, with little variety, affects all the subsequent particulars. It is said that this demand of religion,-the temper here recommended, in regard to the nearest and tenderest relations of life

must destroy that natural affection which is at once so useful and amiable in our present state and circumstances; and that if it were thoroughly realized, it would convert us into stoicks and into drones. To this objection, one would suppose that it was a sufficient answer to say, that religion, in this respect, only requires us to consider things as they are, and to treat them accordingly. What I have represented as the doctrine of the apostle, and all that can be urged in the same strain, is just a plain and rational deduction from acknowledged factsthat life is short, and that its connexions and interests are changeable and uncertain. Admit the factsand who can deny it-and then all that is asked, is to cultivate the temper, and pursue the conduct which they dictate. Is not this the demand of reason? More than this religion does not require.

But the charge in question needs

not the answer we have given it. We deny the justice of the charge totally and directly.-Nay, we maintain that the very contrary effects from what it supposes, may be shown to be those which naturally and actually result from obedience to the requisition of the text. An habitual and impressive sense of the vanity and uncertainty of worldly good, tends, we affirm, to make its possessor more careful than all other men, in the performance of every duty. Impressed constantly with his liableness to be called hence, he will manifestly be most powerfully urged to have every thing in readiness for his departure. Keeping in perpetual view the dissolution of those tender bonds which connect him with his earthly relatives, he will, as the natural consequence, be peculiarly careful to do nothing which shall be cause of regret when they are dissolved. Take a familiar illustration of this important truth. You have it in the case of a man who is preparing for a long, and for aught he knows, a final absence from his family. How will he act? How will he feel toward the partner of his life, and the pledges of their mutual affection? Will he not be more than ordinarily industrious and careful to have all his worldly concerns adjusted, and placed in the most perfect order and the most advantageous train? Will not the prospect of his journey brighten all his affections, enkindle all his sensibilities, and increase all his attentions, towards the objects of his love, from whom he is so speedily to part? Will it not, likewise, produce the same effect in them? Will there not be an unusual care to avoid every thing which can produce the smallest alienation of the heart, or wound of the feelings? Will there not be an amiable contest of tenderness and kindness, in all the parties who are to be affected by the separation ? Yet the mind, though cherishing these habits, will, by familiarizing the parting scene, meet it, at length, with much less pain than if it had come by surprise.

Such exactly is the tendency of the Christian duty which the apostle inculcates. He who considers the world itself as a pilgrimage, and contemplates a speedy and final absence from it, will act in this very manner. It will put perpetual order into his affairs; it will put double tenderness into his heart; and at the same time, it will prepare him to relinquish all. How often do you see all this corroborated by fact? How often do you see those who have been careless or unkind, rendered active and assiduous, by the approach of death? The apprehension of approaching dissolution, makes the dissipated father, if he retains any portion of natural affection, anxious to arrange his affairs, with all the little order, which his time and their derangement will admit. Death at hand, softens the resentments of those who had cherished long unkindness-it is considered as the period for concession and forgiveness. The Christian then, who, from a sense of duty, always brings death near to himself, has all this for his habitual temper; and he has it too without the keen remorse which arises from the sense of past neglect-yea, he has a holy and sublime pleasure, in cultivating habitually towards both enemies and friends, the very temper and feelings with which he would wish to go to the tribunal of his final Judge.

2. "It remaineth that they whe weep be as though they wept not, and they who rejoice as though they rejoiced not." The shortness and vanity of life, are surely a powerful reason why we should not give excessive indulgence either to sorrow or to joy. It has already been remarked, that they often produce each other; and let me now remind you, that there can be no sufficient cause in earthly things for a high degree of either. The things themselves, fading as they are, do not merit it; and the temper, which we ought to possess does not permit it. It is both unreasonable in itself and unsuitable for our present state. Christians, can you as