re
concealed behind the side flats before the gazer has taken in the whole
picture, so equably, constantly, silently, and therefore unnoticed by
us, all is in a state of continual motion. There is no _present_ time.
Even whilst we name the moment it dies. The drop hangs for an instant on
the verge, gleaming in the sunlight, and then falls into the gloomy
abyss that silently sucks up years and centuries. There is no present,
but all is movement.

Brethren, that has been the commonplace of moralists and poets and
preachers from the beginning of time; and it would be folly for me to
suppose that I can add anything to the impressiveness of the thought.
All that I want to do is to wake you up to preach it to yourselves, for
that is the only thing that is of any use.

'So passeth, in the passing of an hour
Of mortal life, the leaf, the bud, the flower.'

But besides this transiency external to us, John finds a corresponding
transiency within us. 'The world passeth, and the lust thereof.' Of
course the word 'lust' is employed by him in a much wider sense than in
our use of it. With us it means one specific and very ugly form of
earthly desire. With him it includes the whole genus--all desires of
every sort, more or less noble or ignoble, which have this for their
characteristic, that they are directed to, stimulated by, and fed or
starved on, the fleeting things of this outward life. If thus a man has
anchored himself to that which has no perpetual stay, so long as the
cable holds he follows the fate of the thing to which he has pinned
himself. And if it perish he perishes, in a very profound sense, with
it. If you trust yourselves in the leaky vessel, when the water rises in
_it_ it will drown _you_, and you will go to the bottom with the craft
to which you have trusted yourselves. If you embark in the little ship
that carries Christ and His fortunes, you will come with Him to the
haven.

But these fleeting desires, of which my text speaks, point to that sad
feature of human experience, that we all outgrow and leave behind us,
and think of very little value, the things that once to us were all but
heaven. There was a time when toys and sweetmeats were our treasures,
and since that day how many burnt-out hopes we all have had! How little
we should know ourselves if we could go back to the fears and wishes and
desires that used to agitate us ten, twenty, thirty years ago! They lie
behind us, no longer part of ours