Time is the preface to eternity. And as the preface indicates the character of the volume, so our present use of time is the foreshadowing of our future eternal history. 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 levities and sinful engagements; to devote it too absorbingly even to literary and noble pursuits: the studies of the antiquarian, the researches of the historian, the fascinations 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, dreams, and shadows.
[Octavius Winslow]
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Ephesians 5:16 … Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
1 Corinthians 7:29 … But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none;
Psalm 90:12 … So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.❤
