"How swift the shuttle flies that weaves thy shroud! "Fond fool! six feet shall serve for all thy store; Hall's Satires. "We have heard of so many thousand generations passed, and we have seen so many hundreds die within our knowledge, that I wonder any man can make account to live one day; I will die daily. It is not done before the time, which may be done at all times."-Bp. Hall. "The created world is but a small parenthesis in eternity, and a short interposition, for a time, between such a state of duration as was before it, and may be after it."-Sir Thomas Browne, Christ. Morals. "All the succession of time, all the changes in nature, all the variation of light and darkness, the thousand thousands of accidents in the world, and every contingency to every man, and to every creature, doth preach our funeral sermon, and calls us to look and see how the old sexton Time throws up the earth, and digs a grave, where we must lay our sins or our sorrows, and sow our bodies, till they rise again in a fair, or an intolerable eternity.” -Jer. Taylor. Deus propitius esto mihi peccatori! ECCLES. ix. 5. "The living know that they shall die." How altogether different are knowledge and practice! the East is scarcely further from the West. The sentence of death has passed upon all men, in that all have sinned,-yet how few keep constantly before their eyes the sacred truth, that their days are but, "as it were, a span long." Who considereth well that "man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery?" that "he cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower?" that "he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay?" Who layeth this to heart, and looking to his uncertain state, is "in the fear of the Lord all the day long?" Few, few, it is to be feared, of the many thousands around us, meditate on these things. Their heart turneth rather to their covetousness, than 1 Ps. xxxix. 16. to the taking down of these tabernacles. They bethink them not that the body is but as a scaffolding, and that it is never intended to continue, in its present estate, but for a while. That a more perfect, yea, a glorious body, awaits the good, when the grave and the gate of death is past, is far above out of their sight. And yet, as saith the text, "The living know that they shall die." years And how should they not? Who has lived but a few in this fleeting world, and has not been conversant with continual spectacles of mortality? Are we not taught daily, by the death of others, how frail and uncertain our own condition is? We cannot deny it. In the secluded village we hear the passing bell, in the city the mourners go about the streets, because "man goeth to his long home"." As it was in the beginning, so is it now, and so will it be, till the number of the elect is filled up. No age is exempt. The infant of stammering tongue gives up the ghost, and his sun goes down while it is yet day. Youth knows no continuance, and can make no contract for the morrow. "The strong men bow themselves." And then for age, "the almond tree flourishes, and the grasshopper is a burden, and desire fails." There is no abiding. Within a while, "the dust shall return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it 3." Who can take up his parable and gainsay the truth, that "The living know that they shall die?" 2 Eccles. xii. 5. 3 Ibid. 7. And how should they not? For besides what we see continually around us,-besides the loss of fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, friends, kinsfolk, and acquaintance,-God hath spoken in his holiness, and in his holy Word hath declared unto us, that there is "but a step between us and death." Scripture indeed is hardly ever more full than in laying before us the uncertainties of this life in the most beautiful and natural language, as well as by imagery the most affecting. If we be but endued with the grace of his Holy Spirit, who commanded and his Holy Word was written, we cannot fail to read that "we all do fade as a leaf"." "The days of man are but as grass, for he flourisheth as a flower of the field. For as soon as the wind goeth over it, it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more "." And again, "All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away." We dwell, as saith holy Job, "in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth,"-we are "destroyed from morning to evening 8. No sun riseth upon the same number of souls. telleth another" of those that are gone before, "and one night certifieth another" how like' death is to " 6 "One day 4 1 Sam. xx. 3. 71 Pet. i. 24. 5 Isa. lxiv. 6. 6 Ps. ciii. 14, 15. 8 Job iv. 19, 20. So the Heathen Poets: e. g. Hom. II. E. 231. év0' “Yπvų σύμβλητο, κασιγνήτῳ Θανάτοιο, and I. 671. Ὕπνῳ καὶ θανάτῳ dievμáoσiv. Hesiod, Theogon. 757, and Virg. Æn. vi. 275, “Et consanguineus Leti Sopor." |