Lifetime

“ Our sowing and our reaping, our time of rest and our time for work, the time to save and the time to spend, the time to gain and the time to lose,—all these, with all the fluctuating feelings they excite in us: in short, our whole life, from the cradle to the grave, is under, or should be under, law to Him. ”

“ Do we begin again in our new existence to learn much by experience, or have we full powers? My soul, whither wilt thou emigrate? Where wilt thou lodge the first night after leaving this body? Will an angel soothe thy fluttering, for sadly flurried wilt thou be in entering upon eternity? ”

“ And in like manner, by running along the line of future time, by contemplating the probable fortunes of those who are coming after us, by attempting something which may promote their happiness, and leave some not dishonorable memorial of ourselves for their regard, when we shall sleep with the fathers, we protract our own earthly being, and seem to crowd whatever is future, as well as all that is past, into the narrow compass of our earthly existence. ”

“ I stop to say that, during the months past, as before, her life had gone sweetly, pleasantly, without ruffle or labor or care or sickness, or division, even, into hours and days and nights,—a flowing onward, like time,—an existence so serenely perfect as not to be a subject of consciousness. ”

“ For if thy life aforetime and behind To thee was grateful, and not all thy good Was heaped as in sieve to flow away And perish unavailingly, why not, Even like a banqueter, depart the halls, Laden with life? why not with mind content Take now, thou fool, thy unafflicted rest? But if whatever thou enjoyed hath been Lavished and lost, and life is now offence, Why seekest more to add—which in its turn Will perish foully and fall out in vain? O why not rather make an end of life, Of labour? For all I may devise or find To pleasure thee is nothing: all things are The same forever. ”

“ The ten years from forty to fifty—the best ten years of his life! And if one counted the years before, the silent years of dreams, assimilation, preparation—then call it half a man's life-time: half a man's life-time thrown away! ”

“ How noble, how sacred, how wonderful is life! A few years, comparably brief as moments, on the mortal plane of existence, to be followed by an endless Eternity, spent in gleaning wisdom and happiness from the rich fields of infinite progression. ”

“ The daily and hourly duties of life are so indifferently fulfilled by me, that I feel almost rebuked if my mind wanders either to the far past or future while the present, wherein lies my salvation, is comparatively unthought of. To tell you the truth, I find in the daily obligations to do and to suffer which come to my hands, a refuge from the mystery and uncertainty which veil all before and after life. ”

“ Life changes. And what is more enthralling to the human mind than this splendid, boundless, coloured mutability!—life in the making? How strange it is, then, that we should be contented to take such small parts of it as we can grasp, and to say, "This is the true explanation." ”

“ If you shut out Eternity from our life in time, then it is an inexplicable riddle; and I, for my part, would venture to say that in that case, the men who answer the question, ‘Is life worth living?’ with a distinct negative, are wise. ”

“ HISTORY.
Among the fathomless things that are about us and within us, is the continuity of time. This gives to life one of its most solemn aspects. We may think to ourselves: Would there could be some halting-place in life, where we could stay, collecting our minds, and see the world drift by us. ”

“ But if the history of any human soul could be perfectly known, who would wish to describe this passage from the dawn of the ideal to the morning of the real—this transition from life as it is imagined through hopes and dreams to life as it is known through action and submission? ”

“ THE HOUR-HAND OF LIFE.—Life consists of rare single moments of the greatest importance, and of countless intervals during which, at best, the phantoms of those moments hover around us. Love, the Spring, every fine melody, the mountains, the moon, the sea—all speak but once fully to the heart, if, indeed, they ever do quite attain to speech. For many people have not those moments at all, and are themselves intervals and pauses in the symphony of actual life. ”

“ You find yourself in the presence of what is a far [Pg 348] deeper and more poignant trial than an old man's death—a young life cut off in its prime; the eclipse of a sun before the evening has arrived. Accustom yourself to consider the life that has passed as a whole. A human being has been called into the world—has lived in it ten, twenty, thirty years. It seems to you an intolerable instance of the injustice of fate that he is so early cut off. Estimate, then, that life as a whole, and ask yourself whether, so judged, it has been a blessing or the reverse. Count up the years of happiness. ”

“ At all events, it reminds us, if there he any materials for reflection within us, of the brevity of our span of life, and of the littleness of its aims; a visible Eternity seeming to lie before us, in the presence of which we are humbled. ”

“ Oh, to feel that your life—your very life—all the glory and beauty of this glorious and beautiful world—all the past, and the present, and the future—ambition, hope, a Cause perhaps—all depending on the speed of an animal and lying in the mad rush forwards! ”

“ Thy people,... when they have finished reaping one field, they begin to plough another; and, if the day were not enough, I have seen them plough by moonlight. What is their life to ours,—the life that is as naught to them? Blind that they are, they lose it all! But we live in the present. ”

“ How happy would it often be for us in life if we could thus blot out a single day! if, out of our existence as out of our history, we could extirpate one four and twenty hours, its never-to-be-recalled deeds, its thoughts affecting the mind for ever, its events affecting the whole course of after-existence! ”

“ Behold! what havoc the [Pg 57] scythe of time makes among the human race; if, by chance, we should escape the numerous evils incident to childhood and youth, and, with health and vigor, arrive to the years of manhood, yet withal, we must soon be cut down by the all-devouring scythe of time, and be gathered into the land where our fathers had gone before us. The THREE STEPS, usually delineated upon the Master's carpet, are emblematical of the three principal stages of human life, viz.: Youth, Manhood, and Age. ”

“ But in regard to this matter, I may be permitted to remark in passing that most of us miss our cue in the business of living, whether we are escorted by the best intentions or a few valorous vices. And my theory is that if we live long enough, we shall hear the Prompter in time to make a good ending. If we do not, there is a considerable stretch of eternity before us where no doubt adjustments may be made with a wider mind. ”

“ Manhood, steady and mature, with its resolute but quiet thoughts, its deep, unwavering purposes, and, more than all, its firm, profound affections, is passing thus, between the shores of Time—not only working for itself a channel broad and clear, but bearing on its bosom, toward Eternity, uncounted wealth of hopes. ”

“ Vigor of body, of mind, passions, desires, reason, all that goes to make up a human soul, were in the full tide of existence; and I was here surely not to contemplate death, but to fulfil the functions of life—of a new life. ”

“ MOMENTS IN LIFE. By moments in life, I mean certain periods which occur more or less frequently in our history,—when the spirit in which we then live, the step we then take, the word we then utter, or what we at that moment think, resolve, accept, reject, do, or do not, may give a complexion to our whole future being both here and hereafter. ”

“ They can muse over the events of past years. They can contemplate the mysteries of the future. The most momentous period of life is about at hand—that time when they will exchange this life for another. ”

“ Let us now measure our actions by the standard of that scene, let us now look upon the things of time in the light of eternity, and we shall see them better as they are, and live more as we shall wish then we had done. It is not too late. We can secure yet what remains of our life. ”

“ And after we have begun, and find ourselves in the midst of a life so large, so immense and so marvellous that it will require eternity to live it all, what are the great essentials that we should ever remember and apply? What are the great centres of life about which we may build a greater and a greater life? ”

“ Not on the earth do the great hours stand, which will ask thee whether thou hast kept or lost these five great things--but they will one day compare thy future soul with thy present. Ah! let me not think of myself, if thou shalt have lost all! ”

“ Thou art the main-spring, the vital secret, the fountain-source, of our existence. What is life but a genial current of joy and grace that wells up incessantly from Thy centred self? Thou art the life, the inner vitality, of our senses. ”

“ Thus, too, does more life come to me from contacts in the common round of action. And, I repeat, every truth thus gained expands a moment of time into illimitable being,—positively enlarges my existence, and endows me with a quality which time cannot weaken or destroy. ”

“ If we might but learn this lesson, we people of the laden hand and the empty heart, that since life is more than digestion and man more than beast or machine, since determining all is the spiritual world, they only are wise who set first things first, who use the garnered experience of the past and the opportunities of the present to the enriching of the soul, who listen among all the voices of time for the words that proceed from the lips of Him who inhabiteth eternity. ”

“ Life, for the first time in three years, seemed to him like a glorious thing; an irresistible, a soul-stirring purpose had taken possession of him, and he knew that no obstacle could stand against it. ”

“ Wouldst thou desire to live for ever? Wouldst thou only wish thy life to last for a thousand years? Remember the long hours of weariness in thy short career, thy frequent fainting under the burden. Thou wast aghast at the limited horizon of a short, uncertain and fugitive life: what wouldst thou have said if thou hadst seen an immeasurable, inevitably long future of weariness and sorrow stretch before thy eyes! ”

“ Here, I say, and in these discourses only, shall this be so; for, strictly speaking, and in the higher flights of speculation, Human Life on Earth, and Earthly Time itself, are but necessary Epochs of the One Time and of the One Eternal Life;—and this Earthly Life with all its subordinate divisions may be deduced from the fundamental Idea of the Eternal Life already accessible to us here below. ”

“ Therefore, improve the present and future moments to the best of purposes, as knowing the time will soon be upon you when you will wish that in living you had lived right, and acted rationally and like an immortal. ”

“ Shall you, and I, in love with life,
life's future schemes contrive,
The world in wonder not unjust,
that we are still alive?
What have we left? How mean in man
a shadow's shade to crave?
When life, so vain! ”

“ May God bless and direct our children! Infinite wisdom permits me not to see their union. Indeed my interest in all earthly things weakens. Even my solicitude for this event is somewhat diminished. The most important circumstance, if it have not God for its object, now seems comparatively little. The longest life with all its concerns, shrinks to a point in the sight of a dying man whose eye is filled by eternity. Eternity! ”

“ Who knows what adventures, what misfortunes, what domestic tragedies, what transformations in appearance, in habits, in life, would be found to have befallen that mere handful of humanity, within that short space of time! ”

“ As I peer back through the shadow of my years, seeing not too clearly, but through the thickening veil of wish and after-thought, I seem to view my life divided into four distinct parts: the Age of Miracles, the Days of Disillusion, the Discipline of Work and Play, and the Second Miracle Age. ”

“ “I am yours, for time and eternity—time and eternity.” ”

“ The next hypothesis concerning the matter is, that this world (our globe) is, and must, and will for all eternity be, the abiding place and scene of activity of all mankind, who ever have been or will be born on it, through all the past and all the future ages. ”

“ The same law of continuity which, in application to our characters, and our work, and our daily life, makes 'to-morrow as this day, and much more abundant,' in its application to the future life makes the life here its parent, and the life yonder the prolongation and the raising to its highest power, of what is the main though often impeded tendency and direction of the present. ”

“ At length the human period begins. A creature appears upon the scene unlike all that had preceded him, and whose nature it equally is to look back upon the events of the past,—among other matters, on that succession of beings upon the planet which he inhabits, with which we are this evening attempting to deal,—and to anticipate at least one succession more, in that still future state in which he himself is again to appear, in happier circumstances than now, and in a worthier character. ”

“ There are times in life when the soul, like a half-grown climbing vine, hangs [44] hovering tremulously, stretching out its tendrils for something to ascend by. Such are generally the great transition periods of life, when we are passing from the ideas and conditions of one stage of existence to those of another. ”