(From Winslow’s, “Integrity and Uprightness”)
Time is the preface to eternity. And as the
preface indicates the character of the volume,
so the present use of time is the foreshadowing
in each one’s history of the future.
We may rob God by a misuse of time.
Time is a solemn and priceless gift, and
involves a responsibility and an account
of a most tremendous character.
What sin, what madness, then, to abuse a
privilege so solemn; to misuse a blessing so
precious. To employ time in vain pleasures
and frivolous pursuits; to use it in senseless
puerilities, sinful engagements; to devote it
too absorbingly even to literary and noble
pursuits: the studies of the antiquarian, the
researches of the historian, the fascination
of art, the discoveries of science; may verge
upon the crime of robbing God of one of His
most costly loans! All these absorbing
engagements are limited to the present,
and have no essential relation to the soul’s
certain and solemn future.
Oh, you killers of time!
How will the ghost of your murdered hours
haunt and upbraid you through the interminable
centuries of eternity! Oh, what would you not
then give for one hour of that precious period
of your existence which now you waste and
fritter and destroy in vain, useless, and sinful
trifles, chimeras, and shadows.
Remember, you rob God when your time is not
consecrated to His glory. Ponder well the inspired
precept, “Redeeming the time, because the days
are evil.” Consider, the apostolic exhortation,
“Brethren, the time is short.”
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