, carry your theoretical recognition of the
greatness and solemnity of the purposes for which life has been given
here into each of the moments of the passing day, and you will find that
there is nothing so elastic as time; and that you can crowd into a day
as much as a languid thousand years do sometimes hold, of sacrifice and
service, of holy joys, and of likeness to Jesus Christ. He who has
learned that all the moments are heavy with significance, and pregnant
with immortal issues, he, too, in some measure may share in the
prerogative of the timeless God, and to Him 'one day may be as a
thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.' It is not the beat of
the pendulum or the tick of the clock that measure time, but it is the
deeds which we crowd into it, and the feelings and thoughts which it
ministers to us. This passing life draws all its importance from the
boundless eternal issues to which it leads. Every little puddle on the
paving-stones this morning, a quarter of an inch broad and a film deep,
will be mirroring bright sunshine, and blue with the reflected heaven.
And so we may make the little drop of our lives radiant with the image
of God, and bright with the certainties of immortality.

II. Now, note secondly, how to make the most of the season.

'Redeeming the time,' says the Apostle. The figure is very simple and
natural, and has only been felt to be difficult and obscure, because
people have tried to ride the metaphor further than it was meant. The
questions of who is the seller and what is the price do not enter into
the Apostle's mind at all. Metaphors are not to be driven so far as
that. We have to confine ourselves to the simple thought that there is a
need for making the opportunity which is given truly our own; and that
that can only be done by giving something in exchange for it. That is
the notion of purchase, is it not? Acquisition, by giving something
else. Thus, says Paul, you have to buy the opportunity which time
affords us.

That is to say, to begin with, life gives us opportunities and no more.
We _may_, in and through it, become wise, good, pure, happy, noble,
Christ-like, or we may not. The opportunity is there, swinging, as it
were, _in vacuo_. Lay hold of it, says he, and turn it into more than an
opportunity--even an actuality and a fact.

And how is that to be done? We have to give something away, if we get
the opportunity for our very own. What have we to give away? Well,
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