If these beings were to meet together, and talk about time, they must talk in a very different language. Half an hour to those who were to live but a month, must be a very different thing, to what it is to those, who are to live an hundred years.
As therefore time is thus a different thing, with regard to the state of those who enjoy it; so if we would know what time is with regard to ourselves, we must consider our state.
Now since our eternal state, is as certainly ours, as our present state; since we are as certainly to live for ever, as we are now to live at all; it is plain, that we cannot judge of the value of any particular time, as to us, but by comparing it to that eternal duration for which we are created.
If you would know what five years signify to a being that was to live an hundred, you must compare five to a hundred, and see what proportion it bears to it, and then you would judge right.
*So if you would know, what twenty years signify to a son of Adam, you must compare it, not to a million of ages, but to an eternal duration, to which no number of millions bears any proportion; and then you will judge right, by finding it nothing.
18. Consider therefore this; how would you condemn the folly of a man, that should lose his share of future glory, for the sake of being rich, or great, or praised, or delighted in any enjoyment, only one poor day before he was to die!
But if the time will come, when a number of years will seem less to every one than a day does now; what a condemnation must it then be, if eternal happiness should be lost, for something less than the enjoyment of a day!
Why does a day seem a trifle to us now? It is because we have years to set against it. It is the duration of years that makes it seem as nothing.
*What a trifle therefore must the years of a man’s age appear, when they are forced to be set against eternity, when there shall be nothing but eternity to compare them with!
*And this will be the case of every man, as soon as he is out of the body; he will be forced to forget the distinction of days and years, and to measure time, not by the course of the sun, but by setting it against eternity.