SELECTED BY CHANCELLOR J. H. VINCENT, D.D.
[December 7.]
But by what means can a mortal man, the creature of a day form any idea of eternity? What can we find within the compass of nature to illustrate it by? With what comparison shall we compare it?… What are any temporal things, placed in comparison with those that are eternal? What is the duration of the long-lived oak, of the ancient castle, of Trajan’s pillar,[1] of Pompey’s amphitheater?[2] What is the antiquity of the Tuscan urns,[3] though probably older than the foundations of Rome; yea, of the pyramids of Egypt, suppose they have remained upward of three thousand years; when laid in the balance with eternity? It vanishes into nothing. Nay, what is the duration of “the everlasting hills,” figuratively so called, which have remained ever since the general deluge, if not from the foundation of the world, in comparison of eternity? No more than an insignificant cipher. Go farther yet; consider the duration, from the creation of the first-born son of God, of Michael, the archangel, in particular, to the hour when he shall be commissioned to sound his trumpet, and to utter his mighty voice through the vault of heaven, “Arise ye dead and come to judgment!” Is it not a moment, a point, a nothing, in comparison of unfathomable eternity?… In order to illustrate this, a late author has repeated that striking thought of St. Cyprian:[4] Suppose there were a ball of sand, as large as the globe of earth; suppose a grain of this sand were to be annihilated, reduced to nothing, in a thousand years; yet that whole space of duration, wherein this ball would be annihilating at the rate of one grain in a thousand years, would bear infinitely less proportion to eternity, duration without end, than a single grain would bear to all the mass!
To infix this important point the more deeply in your mind, consider another comparison: Suppose the ocean to be so enlarged as to include all the space between the earth and the starry heavens. Suppose a drop of water to be annihilated once in a thousand years; yet that whole space of duration, wherein this ocean would be annihilating at the rate of one drop in a thousand years, would be infinitely less in proportion to eternity than one drop of water to that whole ocean. See the spirits of the righteous that are already praising God in a happy eternity! We are ready to say, “How short will it appear to those who drink of the rivers of pleasure at God’s right hand!” We are ready to cry out:
“A day without night
They dwell in his sight,
And eternity seems as a day!”
But this is only speaking after the manner of men; for the measures of long and short are only applicable to time, which admits of bounds, and not to unbounded duration. This rolls on (according to our low conceptions) with unutterable, inconceivable swiftness; if one would not rather say, it does not roll or move at all, but is one still, immovable ocean. For the inhabitants of heaven “rest not day and night,” but continually cry, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord, the God, the Almighty, who was, and who is, and who is to come!” And when millions of ages are elapsed, their eternity is but just begun.… What then is he, how foolish, how mad, in how unutterable a degree of distraction, who, seeming to have the understanding of a man, deliberately prefers temporal things to eternal? Who (allowing that absurd, impossible supposition that wickedness is happiness—a supposition utterly contrary to all reason, as well as to matter of fact) prefers the happiness of a day, say a thousand years, to the happiness of eternity, in comparison of which, a thousand ages are infinitely less than a year, a day, a moment?—Wesley’s Sermons.