'The world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth
the will of God abideth for ever.'--1 John ii. 17.
John has been solemnly giving a charge not to love the world, nor the
things that are in it. That charge was addressed to 'children,' 'young
men,' 'fathers.' Whether these designations be taken as referring to
growth and maturity of Christian experience, or of natural age, they
equally carry the lesson that no age and no stage is beyond the danger
of being drawn away by the world's love, or beyond the need of the
solemn dehortation therefrom.
My text is the second of the reasons which the Apostle gives for his
earnest charge. We all, therefore, need it, and we always need it;
though on the last Sunday of another year, it may be more than usually
appropriate to turn our thoughts in its direction. 'The world passeth
away, and the lust thereof.' Let us lay the handful of snow on our
fevered foreheads and cool our desires.
Now there are but two things set forth in this text, which is a great
and wonderful antithesis between something which is in perpetual flux
and passage and something which is permanent. If I might venture to
cast the two thoughts into metaphorical form, I should say that here are
a river and a rock. The one, the sad truth of sense, universally
believed and as universally forgotten; the other, the glad truth of
faith, so little regarded or operative in men's lives.
I ask you, then, to look with me for a few moments at each of these
thoughts.