of an eye; still we are men, not insects; we are living spirits, not passing clouds.  “He maketh the winds His messengers; the momentary fire, His minister";[252] and shall we do less than these?  Let us do the work of men while we bear the form of them; and, as we snatch our narrow portion of time out of Eternity, snatch also our narrow inheritance of passion out of Immortality—­even though our lives be as a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.

But there are some of you who believe not this—­who think this cloud of life has no such close—­that it is to float, revealed and illumined, upon the floor of heaven, in the day when He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him.[253] Some day, you believe, within these five, or ten, or twenty years, for every one of us the judgment will be set, and the books opened.[254] If that be true, far more than that must be true.  Is there but one day of judgment?  Why, for us every day is a day of judgment—­every day is a Dies Irae,[255] and writes its irrevocable verdict in the flame of its West.  Think you that judgment waits till the doors of the grave are opened?  It waits at the doors of your houses—­it waits at the corners of your streets; we are in the midst of judgment—­the insects that we crush are our judges—­the moments that we fret away are our judges—­the elements that feed us, judge, as they minister—­and the pleasures that deceive us, judge as they indulge.  Let us, for our lives, do the work of Men while we bear the form of them, if indeed those lives are Not as a vapour, and do Not vanish away.

“The work of men”—­and what is that?  Well, we may any of us know very quickly, on the condition of being wholly ready to do it.  But many of us are for the most part thinking, not of what we are to do, but of what we are to get; and the best of us are sunk into the sin of Ananias,[256] and it is a mortal one—­we want to keep back part of the price; and we continually talk of taking up our cross, as if the only harm in a cross was the weight of it—­as if it was only a thing to be carried, instead of to be—­crucified upon.  “They that are His have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts."[257] Does that mean, think you, that in time of national distress, of religious trial, of crisis for every interest and hope of humanity—­none of us will cease jesting, none cease idling, none put themselves to any wholesome work, none take so much as a tag of lace off their footmen’s coats, to save the world?  Or does it rather mean, that they are ready to leave houses, lands, and kindreds—­yes, and life, if need be?  Life!—­some of us are ready enough to throw that away, joyless as we have made it.  But “station in Life”—­how many of us are ready to quit that?  Is it not always the great objection, where there is question of finding something useful to do—­“We cannot leave our stations in Life”?