is not a saying to us--You shall do this, you shall not do that--you
shall use this particular dress, you shall not use that--you _shall_
lead, you shall _not_ lead a married life--Christianity consists of
principles, but the application of those principles is left to every
man's individual conscience. With respect not only to this particular
case, but to all the questions which had been brought before him, the
apostle applies the same principle; the cases upon which he decided
were many and various, but the large, broad principle of his decision
remains the same in all. You may marry, and you have not sinned; you
may remain unmarried, and you do not sin; if you are invited to a
heathen feast, you may go, or you may abstain from going; you may
remain a slave, or you may become free; in _these things_ Christianity
does not consist. But what it does demand is this: that whether
married or unmarried, whether a slave or free, in sorrow or in joy,
you are to live in a spirit higher and loftier than that of the
world.

The apostle gives us in the text two motives for this Christian
unworldliness. The first motive which he lays down is this--"The time
is short." You will observe how frequently, in the course of his
remarks upon the questions proposed to him, the apostle turns, as it
were entirely away from the subject, as if worn-out and wearied by the
comparatively trivial character of the questions--as if this balancing
of one earthly condition or advantage with another, were but a solemn
trifling compared with eternal things. And so here, he seems to turn
away from the question before him, and speaks of the shortness of
time. "The time is short!"

Time is short in reference to two things. First, it is short in
reference to the person who regards it. That mysterious thing _Time_
is a matter of sensation, and not a reality; a modification merely of
our own consciousness, and not actual existence; depending upon the
flight of ideas--long to one, short to another. The span granted to
the butterfly, the child of a single summer, may be long; that which
is given to the cedar of Lebanon may be short. The shortness of time,
therefore is entirely relative--belonging to us not to God. Time is
short in reference to _existence_, whether you look at it before or
after. Time past seems nothing; time to come always seems long. We say
this chiefly for the sake of the young. To them fifty or sixty years