Wesley Corpus

2. Now, what a poor pittance of duration is this, compared to the life of Methuselah! "And Methuselah lived nine hundred and sixty and nine years." But what are these nine hundred and sixty and nine years to the duration of an angel, which began "or ever the mountains were brought forth," or the foundations of the earth were laid And what is the duration which has passed since the creation of angels, that which passed before they were created, to unbeginning eternity -- to that half of eternity (if one may so speak) which had then elapsed And what are threescore years and ten to this 3. Indeed, what proportion can there possibly be between any finite and infinite duration What proportion is there between a thousand or ten thousand years, or ten thousand time ten thousand ages, and eternity I know not that the inexpressible disproportion between any conceivable part of time and eternity can be illustrated in a more striking manner than it is in the well-known passage of St. Cyprian: "Suppose there was a ball of sand as large as the globe of earth, and suppose one grain of this were to be annihilated in a thousand years; yet that whole space of time wherein this ball would be annihilating, at the rate of one grain in a thousand years, would bear less, yea, unspeakably, infinitely less, proportion to eternity, than a single grain of sand would bear to that whole mass." What, then, are the seventy years of human life, in comparison of eternity In what terms can the proportion between these be expressed It is nothing, yea, infinitely less than nothing!