Now, by the phrase here the writer does not merely mean the succession
of moments, but he wishes to emphasise the view that these are epochs,
sections of 'time,' each with its definite characteristics and its
special opportunities, unlike the rest that lie on either side of it.
The great broad field of time is portioned out, like the strips of
peasant allotments, which show a little bit here, with one kind of
crop upon it, bordered by another little morsel of ground bearing
another kind of crop. So the whole is patchy, and yet all harmonises
in effect if we look at it from high enough up. Thus each life is made
up of a series, not merely of successive moments, but of well-marked
epochs, each of which has its own character, its own responsibilities,
its own opportunities, in each of which there is some special work to
be done, some grace to be cultivated, some lesson to be learned, some
sacrifice to be made; and if it is let slip it never comes back any
more. 'It might have been once, and we missed it, and lost it for
ever.' The times pass over us, and every single portion has its own
errand to us. Unless we are wide awake we let it slip, and are the
poorer to all eternity for not having had in our heads the eyes of the
wise man which 'discern both time and judgment.' It is the same
thought which is suggested by the well-known words of the cynical book
of Ecclesiastes--'To every thing there is a season and a time'--an
opportunity, and a definite period--'for every purpose that is under
the sun.' It is the same thought which is suggested by Paul's words,
'As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good to all men. In due
season we shall reap if we faint not.' There is 'a time for weeping
and a time for laughing, a time for building up and a time for casting
down.' It is the same thought of life, and its successive epochs of
opportunity never returning, which finds expression in the threadbare
lines about 'a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood,
leads on to fortune,' and neglected, condemns the rest of a career to
be hemmed in among creeks and shallows.
Through all the variety of human occupations, each moment comes to us
with its own special mission, and yet, alas! to far too many of us the
alternations do not suggest the question, what is it that I am hereby
called upon to be or to do? what is the lesson that present
circumstances are meant to teach, and the grace that my present
condition is meant to force me to cultivate or exhibit? There is one
point, as it were, upon the road where we may catch a view far away
into the distance, and, if we are not on the lookout when we come
there, we shall never get that glimpse at any other point along the
path. The old alchemists used to believe that there was what they
called the 'moment of projection,' when, into the heaving molten mass
in their crucible, if they dropped the magic powder, the whole would
turn into gold; an instant later and there would be explosion and
death; an instant earlier and there would be no effect. And so God's
moments come to us; every one of them--if we had eyes to see and hands
to grasp--a crisis, affording opportunity for something for which all
eternity will not afford a second opportunity, if the moment be let
pass. 'The times went over him,' and your life and mine is parcelled
out into seasons which have their special vocation for and message to
us.
How solemn that makes our life! How it destroys the monotony that we
sometimes complain of! How it heightens the low things and magnifies
the apparently small ones! And how it calls upon us for a sharpened
attention, that we miss not any of the blessings and gifts which God
is meaning to bestow upon us through the ministry of each moment! How
it calls upon us for not only sharpened attention, but for a desire to
know the meaning of each of the hours and of every one of His
providences! And how it bids us, as the only condition of
understanding the times, so as to know what we ought to do, to keep
our hearts in close union with Him, and ourselves ever standing, as
becomes servants, girded and ready for work; and with the question on
our lips and in our hearts, 'Lord, what wouldst Thou have me to do?
and what wouldst Thou have me to do _now_?' The lesson of the day
has to be learned in a day, and at the moment when it is put in
practice.
II. Another thought suggested by this text is, the Power that moves
the times.
As far as my text represents--and it is not intended to go to the
bottom of everything--these times flow on over a man, as a river
might. But is there any power that moves the stream? Unthinking and
sense-bound men--and we are all such, in the measure in which we are
unspiritual--are contented simply to accept the mechanical flow of the
stream of time. We are all tempted not to look behind the moving
screen to see the force that turns the wheel on which the painted
scene Is stretched. But, Oh! how dreary a thing it is if all that we
have to say about life is, 'The times pass over us,' like the blind
rush of a stream, or the movement of the sea around our coasts, eating
away here and depositing its spoils there, sometimes taking and
sometimes giving, but all the work of mere eyeless and purposeless
chance or of natural causes.
Oh, brethren! there is nothing more dismal or paralysing than the
contemplation of the flow of the times over our heads, unless we see
in their flow something far more than that.
It is very beautiful to notice that this same phrase, or at least the
essential part of it, is employed in one of the Psalms ascribed to
David, with a very significant addition. He says, 'My times are _in
Thy hand_.' So, then, the passage of our epochs over us is not
merely the aimless flow of a stream, but the movement of a current
which God directs. Therefore, if at any time it goes over our heads
and seems to overwhelm us, we can look up through the transparent
water and say, '_Thy_ waves and _Thy_ billows have gone over
me,' and so I die not of suffocation beneath them. God orders the
times, and therefore, though, as the bitter ingenuity of Ecclesiastes,
on the lookout for proofs of the vanity of life, complained, in a
one-sided view, as an aggravation of man's lot, that there is a time
for everything, yet that aspect of change is not its deepest or
truest. True it is that sometimes birth and sometimes death, sometimes
joy and sometimes sorrow, sometimes building up and sometimes casting
down, follow each other with monotonous uniformity of variety, and
seem to reduce life to a perpetual heaping up of what is as painfully
to be cast down the next moment, like the pitiless sport of the wind
amongst the sandhills of the desert. But the futility is only
apparent, and the changes are not meant to occasion 'man's misery' to
be 'great upon him,' as Ecclesiastes says they do. The diversity of
the 'times' comes from a unity of purpose; and all the various methods
of the divine Providence exercised upon us have one unchanging
intention. The meaning of all the 'times' is that they should bring us
nearer to God, and fill us more full of His power and grace. The web
is one, however various may be the pattern wrought upon the tapestry.
The resulting motion of the great machine is one, though there may be
a wheel turning from left to right here, and another one that fits
into it, turning from right to left there. The end of all the opposite
motions is straight progress. So the varying times do all tend to the
one great issue. Therefore let us seek to pursue, in all varying
circumstances, the one purpose which God has in them all, which the
Apostle states to be 'even your sanctification,' and let us understand
how summer and winter, springtime and harvest, tempest and fair
weather, do all together make up the year, and ensure the springing of
the seed and the fruitfulness of the stalk.
III. Lastly, let me remind you, too, how eloquently the words of my
text suggest the transiency of all the 'times.'
They 'passed over him' as the wind through an archway, that whistles
and comes not again. The old, old thought, so threadbare and yet
always so solemnising and pathetic, which we know so well that we
forget it, and are so sure of that it has little effect on life, the
old, old thought, 'this too will pass away,' underlies the phrase of
my text,
How blessed it is, brethren! to cherish that wholesome sense of the
transiency of things here below, only those who live under its
habitual power can fairly estimate. It is thought to be melancholy. We
are told that it spoils joys and kills interest, and I know not what
beside. It spoils no joys that ought to be joys. It kills no interests
that are not on other grounds unworthy to be cherished. Contrariwise,
the more fully we are penetrated with the persistent conviction of the
transiency of the things seen and temporal, the greater they become,
by a strange paradox. For then only are they seen in their true
magnitude and nobility, in their true solemnity and importance as
having a bearing on the things that are eternal. Time is the
'ceaseless lackey of eternity,' and the things that pass over us may
become, like the waves of the sea, the means of bearing us to the
unmoving shore. Oh! if only in the midst of joys and sorrows, of heavy
tasks and corroding cares, of weary work and wounded spirits, we could
feel, 'but for a moment,' all would be different, and joy would come,
and strength would come, and patience would come, and every grace
would come, in the train of the wholesome conviction that 'here we
have no continuing city.'
Cherish the thought. It will spoil nothing the spoiling of which will
be a loss. It will heighten everything the possession of which is a
gain. It will teach us to trust in the darkness, and to believe in the
light. And when the times are dreariest, and frost binds the ground,
we shall say, 'If winter comes, can spring be far behind?' The times
roll over us, like the seas that break upon some isolated rock, and
when the tide has fallen and the vain flood has subsided, the rock is
there. If the world helps us to God, we need not mind though it
passes, and the fashion thereof.
But do not let us forget that this text in its connection may teach us
another thought. The transitory 'times that went over' Israel's king
are all recorded imperishably on the pages here, and so, though
condensed into narrow space, the record of the fleeting moments lives
for ever, and 'the books shall be opened, and men shall be judged
according to their works.' We are writing an imperishable record by
our fleeting deeds. Half a dozen pages carry all the story of that
stormy life of Israel's king. It takes a thousand rose-trees to make a
vial full of essence of roses. The record and issues of life will be
condensed into small compass, but the essence of it is eternal. We
shall find it again, and have to drink as we have brewed when we get
yonder. 'Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man
soweth that shall he also reap.' 'There is a time to sow,' and that is
the present life; 'and there is a time to gather the fruits' of our
sowing, and that is the time when times have ended and eternity is
here.