1. The days are evil in a general sense.—This age, as well as the age of the apostles, is a wicked one.
2. Because they are days of distress.
3. The days are evil individually.—In the sense of affliction to a number of individuals.
4. It is an evil day that we are ever exposed to enemies and temptations.
5. Every day opportunities of improvement are wasted is an evil day.
6. The time will come when, as to many unhappy spirits, the opportunity of salvation will be lost for ever.—R. Watson.
The Redemption of Time.—The more the days are beset by things that grievously invade them, disturb them, waste them, the more careful and zealous should we be to save and improve all that we can. To this end—
I. It is of the highest importance that time should be a reality in our perception and estimate; that we should verify it as an actual something, like a substance to which we can attach a positive value, and see it as wasting or as improved as palpably as the contents of a granary or as the precious metals. The unfortunate case with us is, that time is apprehended but like air, or rather like empty space, so that in wasting it we do not see that we are destroying or misusing a reality. Time is equivalent to what could be done or gained in it.
II. Keep established in the mind, and often present to view, certain important purposes or objects that absolutely must be attained.—For example: that there is some considerable discipline and improvement of the mind, some attainment of Divine knowledge, some measure of the practice of religious exercises, and there is the one thing needful in its whole comprehensive magnitude.
III. That time be regarded in an inseparable connection with eternity is the grand principle for redeeming it; to feel solemnly that it is really for eternity, and has all the importance of this sublime and awful relation. It might be a striking and alarming reflection suggested to a man who has wasted his time—now the time has gone backward into the irrevocable past, but the effect of it, from the quality you have given it, is gone forward into eternity, and since you are going thither, how will you meet and feel the effect there?