The World Going

The fashion of this world passeth away.” — 1 Corinthians vii.,31.

THERE are many who find in this subject only an element of sadness. I find in it chiefly an element of joy. As Paul sometimes used figures drawn from the theatre, I think that I have a right to say that as the shifting scenes at the end of an act do not indicate that the play is ended, but only that it is developing, so all the changes on earth are but the shifting scenes in the great drama of God’s providence, which will come to a glorious and successful completion. I want, to-night, to take a Christian and manly view of this subject, and not the view of a sickly sentimentalist. I am glad that the fashion of the world, and that the world itself, is passing away, for it is only making room for something better. In the same procession in which march the manners, and the customs, and the institutions of the world, march the dispensations of God’s providence by which the Church is to be made mightier, and society purer. Roll on, oh wheel of the ages! Though institutions fall, though governments be crushed, though empires be depopulated, though the world be destroyed, roll, great wheel of the ages! Let all crowns melt, if our King gets his dominions! Let all armies be routed, if from the ruins Christ shall marshal his armies with banners! Let this earth burn, if out of the leaping flames there shall spring the new heaven and new earth in which dwelleth righteousness!

I propose to talk to you about the transitory nature of all earthly things, and then to guard you against some wrong applications of the subject.

I suppose you have all noticed the changes -m families. Where are the prominent families of forty years ago? They ruled society as with a sceptre. The cut and the style of their dress decided the apparel of the city. They walked with an air of opulence, or dashed down behind well-groomed steeds clattering on the pavements. As they passed, all hats were lifted; as they entered a room, all conversation was hushed or turned upon them. Poets, rulers, millionaires, sat at their table. They drank their wine from chalices that had glittered in the banquets of a century They sat in antique chairs, in which lordly men had lounged, looking at the walls papered with the many scenes of the chase, in which their ancestors had mingled with sounding horn, and baying hounds, and broken antlers. They were praised — they were sought after. Other vehicles halted to let theirs pass, and to their haughty look men bowed obsequiously, and danced around them with flattering attentions. “Where are those families now? Some of them, I am glad to say, their name mighty on ‘Change, and mighty in social circles, untouched of disaster. But where are the most of them? Shall I tell you the story? The coat of arms is lost. The pictures and the golden urn. long ago went to the auctioneer’s room. Halls, so airy and grand, have become a nest of brokers’ shops. He goes along the street, broken down with dissipations, buttons off, and rum-blossoms on — the last relic of that great house. In that old arm-chair, that went down into the rookciy; in the pictures, whose torn canvas was pitched into the garret rubbish; in those halls that have p?ichanged the lordly step of the proprietor for the shuffling feet of bargain makers, I bear a voice, loud and deep, sounding above cartman’s dray and auctioneer’s mallet, “The fashion of this world passeth away!”

So, likewise, has it been with all human achievements. The bridge, that taxed the brain of the architect, no more crosses the stream; but the romantic school-boy sits on the crumbling abutments making rhymes about the mutation of all earthly things. To the structure that once caused the mill-wright many sleepless nights, the farmer no more brings his grist. The old wheel, broken and covered with weeds, no more dashes the mountain stream to foam. The fine house, that overshadowed all the others on the block, now crumbles; the small window-panes, and old-time roof, and outlandish stairs, seeming in sorrow to say, oh for those days when people passing here would exclaim, “AVho lives there?” Many of the books that were popular in the libraries forty years ago are gone now — gone down into the cellar, gone into the garret, or stand begging on the book-stand on the street corner, or sleep their last sleep in the antiquarian’s library. Not knowing where they tread, the Tennysons, and Longfellows, and Bancrofts, walk over the graves of historians and poets, taking by storm the libraries of the world; mounting up on ladders of shelves until they plant their batteries of light and truth on the very heights of knowledge. The great libraries at the Vatican, and in Munich and Dresden, are only the AVestminster Abbeys in which royal books have been buried. The tooth of Time is gnawing away at reputations that it was supposed could never be damaged or lost. Book-worms are boring down tbrougli the passage that was expected to be immortal, while those old ambitious authors or their spirits seem wandering up and down the aisles of the national library, unable to find their way out into the sunlight, with skeleton fingers fumbling the venerable pages, with trembling voice seeming to say, “Gone and forgotten!” The old philosophers, who spent much of their time in tinkering with electricity, are mostly forgotten, while Morse lassoes the lightning, and Cyrus W. Field with it lashes fast two hemispheres. Time follows right after Old Mortality, but with sharper chisel and stronger hand, battering to pieces the monuments, and the sarcophagus, and the Pyramids. Lord and squire, duke and duchess, earl and viscount, baron and knight, are sharing the same fate with- Lovell operative, and Nantucket whaleman, and Scranton coal-heaver. Feather and crest, star and epaulet, and cockade sharing the same fate with shoe-maker’s last and blacksmith’s apron.

So has it also been with great cities. Where is Nineveh, the blossoming splendor of the Assyrian empire, all nations driving their caravans into her streets? City of precious stones — jasper, and chrysoprasus, and chalcedony; her fountains tossing up into basins of alabaster, and amidst exquisite statuary; the wealth and pomp of the world passing through her streets, strolling through her galleries of art, shouting in her amphitheatres, mingling in her scenes of splendor and triumph, Alas for Nineveh! The antiquarian plunges his crow-bar into the grave of all that buried splendor, and the broken pillars respond, and the slabs of gypsum speak out, and the engraved cylinders break the silence, and all the ground

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sends up rumbling, rueful, and woeful voices: ‘’The fashion of this world passeth away!” Where is Tadmor, the city of palms, built by the munificent hand of King Solomon? Warlike tribes dashed back from her walls as a wave splits into foam upon a rocky beach. Palm trees grew along all her streets, and overshadowed many of her buildings, until the city was a bower of beauty. The wealth of all nations unpacked and unrolled in her markets. Iler Temple of the Sun, with three hundred and ninety columns, on double rows, heaving up toward heaven, on shoulders of marble, the worship, and the pomp, and the genius, and the wealth of a great nation. Oh, Tadmor! the cup of mirth to thy lip, the crown of greatness on thy brow, where art thou? The huts that cluster around her ruins make no answer. The broken tombs, and the defaced sculpture, and the mutilated frieze respond not; but the sands of the desert drift across the place, and in the low, mournful moan of the desert wind I hear it: “The fashion of this world passeth away!”

So, also, my friends, has it been with all earthly autliorily. Of how much worth now is the crown of Cassar? Who bids for it? Who cares now any thing about the Amphictyonic Council or the laws of Lycurgus? Who trembles now because Xerxes crossed the Hellespont on a bridge of boats? Who fears because ISTebuchadnezzar thunders at the gates of Jerusalem? Who cares now whether or not Cleopatra marries Antony? Who crouches before Ferdinand, or Boniface, or Alaric? Can Cromwell dissolve the English Parliament now? Is William, prince of Orange, king of the Netherlands? No; no I However much Elizabeth may love the Kussian crown, she must pass it to Peter, and Peter to Cathei’ine, and Catherine to Paul, and Paul to Alexander, and Alexander to Nicholas. Leopold puts the German sceptre into the hand of Joseph, and Philip comes down off the Spanish throne to let Ferdinand go on. House of Aragon, house of Hapsburg, house of Stuart, house of Bourbon, quarreling about every thing else, but agreeing in this: “The fashion of this world passeth away.” Bat have all these dignitaries gone? Can they not be called back? I have been in assemblages where I have heard the roll called, and many distinguished men have answered. If I should call the roll to-night of some of those mighty ones who have gone, I wonder if they would not answer. I will call the roll. I will call the roll of the kings first: Alfred the Great! William the Conqueror! Frederick II.! Louis XYI.! No answer. I will call the roll of the poets: Robert Southey! Thomas Campbell! John Keats! George Crabbe! Robert Burns! Lord Byron! No answer. I call the roll of the artists: Michael Angelo! Paul Veronese I William Turner! Christopher Wren! No answer. Eyes closed. Ears deaf Lips silent. Hands palsied. Sceptre, pencil, pen, sword, put down forever. In literature, in art, in government, “The fashion of this world passeth away.”

But I find a more striking illustration of my subject (at any rate, it is more impressive to my own mind) when I look at the changing shape of this physical earth. Do you know that even the mountains on the back of a thousand streams are leaping into the valley? The Alleghanies are dying! The dews, with crystalline mallet, are hammering away the rocks. (So when you say any tiling is “as firm as a rock,” you say nothing.) Frosts, and showers, and lightnings are sculpturing Mount Washington and the Catskills. Niagara every year is digging for itself a quicker plunge. The sea all around the earth on its shifting shores is making mighty changes in bar, and bay, and frith, and promontory. Some of the old sea-coasts are midland now. Oft’ Nantucket, eight feet below low-water mark, are found now the stumps of trees, showing that the waves are conquering the land. Parts of Nova Scotia are sinking. Ships to-day sail over what, only a little while ago, was solid ground. Near the mouth of the St. Croix River is an island which, in the movements of the earth, is slowly but certainly rotating. All the face of the earth changing — changing. In 1831, an island springs up in the Mediterranean Sea. In 1866, another island comes up under the observation of the American consul as he looks oft’ from the beach. The earth all the time changing, the columns of a temple near Bizoli show that the water has risen nine feet above the place it was when those columns were put down. Changing! Our Colorado River, once vaster than the Mississippi, flowing through the great American desert, which was then an Eden of luxuriance, has now dwindled to a small stream creeping down through a gorge. The earth itself, that was once vapor, afterward water — nothing but water — afterward molten rock, cooling off through the ages until plants might live, and animals might live, and men might live, changing all the while, now crumbling, now breaking off The sun, burning down gradually in its socket. Changing! changing! an intimation of the last great change to come over the world even infused into the.

mind of the heathen who has never seen the Bible. The Hindoos believe that Bramah, the creator, once made all things. He created the water, then moved over the water, out of it lifted the land, grew the plants, and animals, and men on it. Out of his eye went the sun. Out of his lips went the fire. Out of his ear went the air. Then Bramah laid down to sleep four thousand three hundred and twenty million years. After that, they say, he will wake up, and then the world will be destroyed, and he will make it over again, bringing up land, bringing up creatures upon it; then lying down again to sleep four thousand three hundred and twenty million years, then waking up and destroying the world again — creation and demolition following each other, until after three hundred and twenty sleeps, each one of these slumbers four thousand three hundred and twenty million years long, Bramah will wake up and die, and the universe will die with him — an intimation, though very faint, of the great change to come upon this physical earth spoken of in the Bible. But while Bramah may sleep, our God never slumbers nor sleeps; and the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, and the earth and all things that are therein shall be burned up.

“Yell,” says some one in the audience, “if that is so; if the world is going from one change to another; if the fashion of this world is passing away, then what is the use of my toiling for its betterment?” That is the point on which I want to guard you. I do not want you to become misanthropic. It is a great and glorious world. If Christ could afford to spend thirty-three years on it for its redemption, then you can afford to toil and pray for the betterment of the nations, and for the bringing on of that glorious time when all people shall see the salvation of God. While, therefore, I want to guard you against misanthropic notions in respect to this subject I have presented, I want you to take this thought home with you: This world is a poor foundation to build on. It is a changing world, and it is a dying world. The shifting scenes and the changing sands are only emblems of all earthly expectation. Life is very much like this day through which we have passed. To many of us it is storm and darkness, then sunshine, storm and darkness, then afterward a little sunshine, now again darkness and storm. Oh, build not your hopes upon this uncertain world! Build on God. Confide in Jesus. Plan for an eternal residence at Christ’s right hand. Then, come sickness or health, come joy or sorrow, come life or death, all is well, all is well, though the fashion of this world does pass away.

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