rtain and plain
and applying to you, which, if accepted, would profoundly modify your
life, you ought to take it into account. And what I want you to do, dear
friends, now, is to look in the face this fact, which you all
acknowledge so utterly that some of you are ready to say, 'What was the
use of coming to a chapel to hear that threadbare old thing dinned into
my ears again?' and to take it into account in shaping your lives. Have
you done so? Have you? Suppose a man that lived in a land habitually
shaken by earthquakes were to say, 'I mean to ignore the fact; and I am
going to build a house just as if there was not such a thing as an
earthquake expected'; he would have it toppling about his ears very
soon. Suppose a man upon the ice-slopes of the Alps was to say, 'I am
going to ignore slipperiness and gravitation,' he would before long find
himself, if there was any consciousness left in him, at the bottom of a
precipice, bruised and bleeding. And suppose a man says, 'I am not going
to take the fleetingness of the things of earth into account at all, but
intend to live as if all things were to remain as they are'; what would
become of him do you think? Is he a wise man or a fool? And is he _you_?
He _is_ some of you! 'So teach us to number our days that we may apply
our hearts unto wisdom.'

Then let me say to you, see that you take noble lessons out of these
undeniable and all-important facts. There is one kind of lesson that I
do not want you to take out of it. 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow
we die,' or, to put it into a more vulgar formula, 'A short life and a
merry one.' The mere contemplation of the transiency of earthly things
may, and often does, lend itself to very ignoble conclusions, and men
draw from it the thought that, as life is short, they had better crowd
into it as much of sensual enjoyment as they can.

'Gather ye roses while ye may' is a very common keynote, struck by poets
of the baser sort. And it is a thought that influences some of us, I
have little doubt. Or there may be another consideration. 'Make hay
whilst the sun shines.' 'Hurry on your getting rich, because you have
not very long to do it in'; or the like.

Now all that is supremely unworthy. The true lesson to be drawn is the
plain, old one which it is never superfluous to shout into men's ears,
until they have obeyed it--viz., 'Set not thine heart on that which is
not; and which flieth away as an eagle towards heaven.' Do you,