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If a woman take leaven and hide it in meal, the meal will be changed into bread; but the meal must work before the bread can be made. The end is a good end, but the process by which it is reached is not pleasant and seemly. The meal will heave and labour, and must. In like manner, when a new principle of life is infused into human society, when, for example, the gospel of Christ is brought into vital contact with a society like that of ancient Corinth, the new quickening principle must work in and upon it before it can be changed, and in order that it may be changed, into more wholesome and happier forms. To hasten the process, and to make the bread all the sweeter when it came, St. Paul threw in the salt of his good counsel. He answers the questions by which the Corinthians were troubled, and which they were not able to answer for themselves. A grown man, who is governed solely by maxims and rules, not by reasons and principles, is a pedant or a slave rather than a man.

I. USE THE WORLD, BUT DON'T ABUSE IT. This is the broad general principle which covers, modifies, sanctifies all the details of practical life. Christ had said, "Be not of this world"; He had revealed a larger, fairer, more enduring world than the outward set of phenomena and conditions by which we are surrounded. And when the gospel came to the Corinthians, that spiritual world, which in its perfection is also a future world, seemed so attractive to some of them, so near, so momentous, that they heartily despised this present world and all that had once endeared it to them. This was one view of the case. And the other was: "If time be so short, and the world so near its end, let us make the most of them while they last, and take our fill of pleasure as long as we can. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." Both these conclusions, opposite as they are, were drawn from the same premises; and each of them is equally remote from the true conclusion. St. Paul rebukes them both. To the Stoic conclusion, "Renounce the world," he replies, "Nay, but use the world"; to the Epicurean conclusion, "Live only to enjoy this world," he replies, "Nay, do not abuse the world." To all who held them he says, "All things are yours. You may use and enjoy them all. But give the best things the best place in your thoughts. Let that which is largest, fairest, most enduring, take the deepest, strongest hold upon your hearts."

II. THE APOSTLE ASSIGNS TWO REASONS FOR THUS USING THE WORLD AS NOT ABUSING IT.

1. The brevity of time. "This I say, brethren, the time is short in order that henceforth... we may use the world as not abusing it." Time is a word whose value wholly depends on our construction of it. It is variable as a chameleon, and takes its hue from the moods in which we regard it. An hour is much to a child, little to a man. To the same man an hour at a merry Christmas feast is one thing, and an hour on the rack of pain or expectation is a very different thing. Nay, so purely relative is time, that its length contracts or expands according as we look before or after. It is of little use talking to you of the brevity of the time to be; but look back on the years that have gone, and confess that "the time is short," that now, if ever, you must bring your life under law to God.

"The Bird of Time has but a little way

To flutter — and the bird is on the wing."But the words rendered "the time is short" mean literally "the season is contracted, the opportunity lessened." Every year, every season of life, brings its own opportunities with it, and these, once neglected, never return. Every day, moreover, carries off with it an indelible record of how you have either used or abused it — a record which can never be obliterated, or even modified. As an old Persian poet finely says —

"The moving finger writes; and having writ,

Moves on: nor all your piety and wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,

Nor all your tears wash out a word of it."

2. The second reason which the apostle assigns for a wise use of life is the transitoriness of the world. In the Pauline vocabulary the word "world" includes nature, human society, and ecclesiastical forms, or, rather, it denotes all the visible and perishable elements of them. And all these change, and live by change. The more delicate and sensitive phenomena of nature vary even as we look upon them. The bare boughs put forth ]eaves of a tender green; the green shifts into yellows, browns, and crimsons; then the leaves fall, and the boughs are bare again. The birds come and go. The clouds shift and fly. The wind veers from point to point. The very rocks crumble. The sea eats away the land. The ice splits the mountains. And men change. The boy grows up into the man, the man marries and has children, sickens, dies. One generation goeth and another cometh. Modes of thought and government and the customs of society are for ever on the flux; "the old order changeth, giving place to the new." And we ourselves change. Our deepest impressions are fleeting unless they are continually recalled and retouched. Our most intense delight, whether drawn from some beautiful scene in nature, or from sacred human affections, or from fellowship with God, loses its edge and keenness as the months go by. There is no affection so sharp, there is no joy so pure, but that time dulls it. Let us, therefore, use the world as not abusing it. To-morrow becomes to-day so fast, and to-day yesterday, that we dare not attach ourselves to the present moment, and should not fail to avail ourselves of whatever grace or opportunity it may bring. We, changeful as we are, have an abiding life beneath all our changes, and though the world be changeful too, yet its various phenomena are the passing forms of an external substance. And the question for us is — Which shall we care most for, for which shall we most habitually and earnestly provide, that which is changeful and perishable in us and in the world around us, or that which liveth and abideth for ever?

(S. Cox, D. D.)

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KJV: But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none;

WEB: But I say this, brothers: the time is short, that from now on, both those who have wives may be as though they had none;