I have no time,--that is not only the most familiar and convenient excuse for not doing one’s duty; it is also, one must confess, the excuse which has in it the greatest appearance of truth. Is it a good excuse? I must at once admit that within certain limits the excuse is reasonable, but I shall try to show how it is that this lack of time occurs, and how one may, at least in some degree, find the time he needs. Thus my sermon differs from those of the preachers, in having, not three heads, but only two. This I say to propitiate those who may protest that they have no time for reading. The most immediate reason, then, for lack of time is to be found in the character of the present age. There is just now a prevailing restlessness, and a continuous mood of excitement, from which, unless one make himself a hermit, he cannot wholly escape. One who lives at all in these days must live fast. If one could observe the modern world as a bird might look down upon it, and at the same time could distinguish the details of its life, he would see beneath him a picture like that of a restless and swarming ant-hill, where even the railway trains, as they cross and recross each other by night and day, would be enough to bewilder his brain. Something of this bewilderment is, in fact, felt by almost every one who is involved in the movement of the time. There are a great many people who have not the least idea why they are thus all day long in a hurry. People whose circumstances permit complete leisure are to be seen rushing through the streets, or whirling away in a train, or crowding out of the theatre, as if there were awaiting them at home the most serious tasks. The fact is that they simply yield to the general movement. One might be led to fancy that the most precious and most unusual possession on earth was the possession of time. We say that time is money, yet people who have plenty of money seem to have no time; and even the people who despise money are constantly admonishing us, and our over-worked children, to remember the Apostle’s saying, and “to redeem the time.” Thus the modern world seems pitiless in its exhortation to work. Human beings are driven like horses until they drop. Many lives are ruined by the pace, but there are always more lives ready like horses to be driven.