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The attitude of people towards a temporary state of affairs is very different from their attitude towards something permanent. No man fits up his room at an hotel as he does his home. When one is waiting in the vestibule of a public hall he does not give much thought to the inconveniences of his situation. The thing for which he has come is behind those doors. When a man rides in a street-car he would rather have a seat and less crowding; but he never thinks of making a serious matter of that. His object is to get down to business. Now do we recognise the larger applications of the same principle? Suppose we set this life of sixty or seventy years over against the eternal life of the future. The two spaces are related to each other as the vestibule to the hall, the transit on the car to the day's business. But remember that Paul does not use the fact of the shortness of life to encourage a sense of indifference to life's duties. There may be in the ante-chamber some beautiful pictures and sculptures, &c. These things are for us: we may and ought to enjoy them. We are not excused from the courtesies of life, even on a street-car. The other world may be, and is, the prime fact; but this world is a fact, too, though a secondary one. If Paul says, "It remaineth that those who have wives be as though they had none," we are not to conclude that because a man expects to depart for heaven in a short time, he is therefore to treat his wife as though she were not. This being premised, note the bearing of this fact on —

I. OUR DOMESTIC RELATIONS (ver. 29). These are the nearest and dearest of all earthly ties; they call out our deepest affections, our best energies. And God Himself instituted them, and Christ sanctified them at Cans; and Paul chooses them to illustrate the love of Christ for the Church. Yet it remaineth, that they that have wives be as though they had none.

1. If our earthly homes crowd out the attractions of the heavenly home, we are misusing them. When home ceases to be the nursery of consecrated power, a scene of preparation for heaven, and becomes, instead, a base for fashion and shallow pleasure, then it is time to face the hour when a voice shall call us forth from these beloved doors, to return no more.

2. And then, too, we know that often the family relation is not the type of heaven. We know how men make it the instrument of fostering their pride of birth, and how, for the sake of preserving a family name, loveliness and innocence are allied with senility and debauchery.

3. On the contrary, in the New Testament domestic life is always treated with special reference to the life to come. The institution of the family, beyond any human institution, points up to God. God Himself. takes the name of the family head; marriage is to be in the Lord; children are to be trained in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

II. THE SORROW OF THIS WORLD (ver. 30).

1. Let us confine ourselves to one element — injustice. The innocent suffer; the bad prosper. Away back in the far past we find Job wrestling with the question. On the one hand, the reasoner asks, "How did it come to pass? Why is it allowed?" On the other hand, the man who is trying to live rightly asks, "What shall I do with it? How shall I adjust myself to it?"

2. Note the answers which are given to the latter question.

(1) Rousseau tells us it is all the result of false training. Human nature is good; and, if you only educate it properly, its evil will be checked, and we shall have a reign of liberty, equality, and fraternity. The value of Rousseau's answer may be estimated in the lurid light of the French Revolution.

(2) The communist says, "Only do away with all private interest, and merge all in the public, and all will be well." But, unfortunately, the history of Nihilism has some significant stories to tell of that experiment.

(3) There was the Stoic, who steeled himself against injustice, and cultivated insensibility to pain, anger, and pity alike.

(4) There was the Epicurean, saying, "I will keep out of all such relations with men as will engender injustice or cruelty."

3. All these views are strictly bounded by this life, and are opposed by that which is represented in our text. For the New Testament —

(1) Shows no sympathy with Rousseau's view. It treats injustice as an evil that will exist so long as human society is not under the power of Divine love.

(2) Does not give us a picture of any favoured man who escapes the world's injustice. On the contrary, the better its men the more they suffer at the world's hands.

(3) Gives us no men of iron, insensible to suffering. The victims of the world's cruelty are real sufferers.

(4) Puts every Christian in a positive attitude towards this fact. He cannot evade it; he must feel towards it in the right way. And if, as the gospel everywhere assumes, this state of things is passing away to give place to a better and more permanent one, then let the injustice and cruelty and sorrow be measured by the proportions of that larger life (2 Corinthians 4:17). We can be as though we wept not; i.e., we can be as useful and as kindly as if we had no cause to weep. We may have lost what is ours; but the time is short, and heaven will give it back with interest.

III. OUR JOYS (ver. 30). Not that we are to pass this life in gloom and sullenness because it is short. When the train goes through the tunnel let us be all the more cheerful because the sunlight will pour in by and by. But if there is grander joy in the life beyond this, it is not the part of wisdom to be too much absorbed in earthly joy.

IV. THE BUYING AND SELLING, THE POSSESSING AND USE OF THE WORLD IN GENERAL (ver. 31). All these things, in New Testament thought, have their value determined by two facts — the shortness of this life, and the overshadowing, transcendent grandeur of the life to come. Does it not become us to hold this world lightly in view of these two truths — so little time left, and eternity approaching? An old woman sat one day beside her apple-stand in a great thoroughfare. A well-known judge walked up and stopped for an apple. "Well, Molly," said he, "don't you get tired of sitting here these cold, dismal days?" "It's only a little while, sir," was the answer. "And the hot, dusty days?" "Only a little while, sir." "And the rainy, drizzly days, and your sick, rheumatic days?" "It's only a little while, sir." "And what then, Molly?" "Then, sir, I shall enter into that rest which remains for the people of God; and the troublesomeness of the way there don't pester nor fret me. It's only a little while." "But," said the judge, "what makes you so sure, Molly?" "How can I help being sure, since Christ is the way., and I am His? Now I only feel Him along the way; I shall see Him as He is in a little while, sir." "Ah!" said the judge, "you've got more than the law ever taught me." "Yes, sir, because I went to the gospel." "Well," said he, as he took up his apple, and began to walk off, "I must look into these things." "There's only a little while, sir."

(M. R. Vincent, 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;